The Cleaner

A Novel

By: Brandi Wells

Narrated by: Francine Brody

Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

“So inappropriately fun to read.” –Booklist, starred review

“Welcome to the office building at night, an eerie ship helmed by one woman desperate for connection.” —Julia Fine, author of Maddalena and the Dark

Every night, she cleans. On the fourth floor of an unnamed office in an unnamed city, the night cleaner comes and does what she does best—sorts out the messes of the daytime employees. None of them know her, but she knows everything about them: Sad Intern’s dreams to get promoted, Résumé Woman’s nasty flight-risk behavior, Mr. Buff’s secret smoking habit (not very conducive to his fitness journey).

She’s the office mastermind, the one everyone needs, and no one even knows she exists. And tonight, while scrolling through your emails, she’ll discover the secret you’ve been hiding—the one that will put everyone’s job at risk.

After all, protecting the employees is her responsibility: whether it’s from rats and window smudges or from the sinister CEO who may be driving the company into ruin. And you’re about to find out that, sometimes, your most powerful enemy is the one you don’t even see.

©2024 Brandi Wells (P)2024 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

not worth your time

this book water my time waiting for something to change in the story..

if ypu give it minutes you'll know the whole book..
nothing changes. very repetitive to the end.

Mystery with a little bit of forced introspection

This is an interesting read. A night-shift cleaner re-creates the people they clean up after by the refuse they leave behind. Equal parts anthropological archaeologist and armchair psychiatrist, the cleaner attempts to make the office run more smoothly in their own way.
The cleaner's narration makes me feel self-conscious, and a little disgusted, of both what people might infer from my tailings and the hero-complex I feel that most of us wrap around ourselves at work. I don't think of myself as an arrogant person, but I do perceive the work that I do as having an outsized impact on the success/failure of whatever work environment I am a part of at the time. Seeing this from the perspective of this character, and the slightly over-the-line actions the cleaner takes, justified by the perceived positive impact on the lives of those action's targets, makes me question myself in unexpected ways.