This book was unhinged. It went in ways I was not preparing and I'm not sure how I feel about it... I loved some parts and genuinely didn't like others. It's hard to come up with a solid opinion.

I did not finish this book and left it at about 30 percent, I don't know why but it didn't pull me in like I thought it would.

The Cleaner by Brandi Wells is a sharp, suspenseful, and highly original novel that delves into the life of a mysterious night cleaner who observes everything but is invisible to the employees of the office she meticulously tidies. Set in an unnamed city, the cleaner is the unseen force that maintains order in a chaotic workplace, quietly navigating the secrets and dysfunctions of the people who work there.

As she moves through the darkened hallways, she knows far more about her colleagues than they could ever imagine—from Sad Intern's aspirations to Mr. Buff's hidden vices. Her duties go beyond just cleaning; she uncovers the buried truths that could unravel careers and destroy lives. When she stumbles upon a dangerous secret involving the company’s sinister CEO, her loyalty to the employees is tested, and she must decide whether to protect them or expose the truth.

Wells cleverly weaves a story that is part psychological thriller, part office drama, with a healthy dose of social commentary. The cleaner's perspective on power, secrecy, and vulnerability adds an intriguing layer to the narrative, making it a compelling and thought-provoking read. The Cleaner is a gripping tale that will keep readers on edge, wondering how much we truly know about the lives of those around us—and what happens when the most powerful enemy is the one we never see coming.

Smart, witty, dark, and I just wanted to keep reading! As someone who also works in an office, this was an harrowing and gripping insight into the inner workings of alleged corporate life.

I got to about 50% through this book before I gave up. This book was very anticlimactic and it was advertised to me as a thriller but it definitely is not.

What a strange book. The Cleaner is a nameless person. In fact, nobody in the book has names. The security person is known as “L” and the delivery person is known as either “they/them/their” or “M”.
The Cleaner works at night cleaning the offices and cubes of workers in an office building. “I watch over everyone. Sometimes they make the wrong decisions, and I help them see their mistakes. They just need someone to force them to do the right thing.”
Based on things she finds on the desks and in the desk drawers, she comes up with nicknames for the employees. Such as Yarn Guy (he has spools of yarn in a drawer), Mr. Buff (he has several containers of protein powders in a drawer), Sad Intern (self-help books, probiotics, dry shampoo) and Scissors Guy (he has several scissors). She takes things from the desks and puts them on other people’s desks. Sometimes she brings things in to leave on desks. She even accesses the CEO’s computer.
This is labeled as a mystery/thriller, but I didn’t get any suspense out or mystery out of this book. I kept waiting for something to happen but all she does is clean and move things from desk to desk.

An interesting look at office life from told from the perspective of an under-appreciated night shift cleaner who knows more than people think and finds herself helping out in unexpected ways. I didn't love the audio narrator for this one but overall it was an entertaining debut recommended for fans of books like The maid or Hotel 21. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

Hmmm….cleaners and maids are having a great season in books right now, but this title fell short for me.

This book honestly just wasn't my cup of tea. I couldn't get into it. I was so tempted to not finish it but I was honestly hoping it would get better.

Thank you for my free arc in exchange for my honest review.

This was such a strange, quirky and kind of creepy read. Fans on Nita Prose's 'The Mystery Guest' will love this book!

While I did like it, I did not love it and would most likely not read again. It failed to keep me intrigued and I felt like this was a flop. The premise was great but lacked in execution. Some readers may love this, but this reader did not.

The Cleaner is an enjoyable read with a question mark from beginning to end as we follow an unnamed woman who cleans a building at night which includes the offices on the fourth floor. Wells does not give us too many hints as to what is happening, not even the names of those involved. The cleaner only gives initials or names she has made up. They are L (the cleaner’s boss) and M (a nighttime driver who brings supplies). Told in one full chapter it details the obsession the cleaner has with the workers of the fourth floor, as well as who she imagines them to be in their lives outside of the office. We don’t know much about the cleaner which just adds to the mystery and intrigue of the story. The snippets we learn about her are aha moments.

The cleaner cleans a building at night in New York City. There she fantasizes about the workers on the fourth floor the offices she is responsible for cleaning. She takes her job very seriously. But she does more than just fantasize. She gives these unknown workers names such as Scissors Guy, The Intern, Mr. Buff and Yarn Guy. She sits and goes through their desks as she allows herself to imagine their life inside and outside the office. She signs into their computers, moves things not only around their desks, but to other’s desks when she feels the workers should actually get to know each other better. She sabotages a secret smoker by spraying disinfectant on his stash of cigarettes she finds. She hides and moves scissors from someone she feels is hording them. And then there are her “favorites”. The Intern who just started and keeps vitamins and laxatives in her desk and Yarn Guy who she seems to fancy who has knit items in his desk.

They are her life. She despises her boss L who does nothing but follow her around and M seems to have a small crush on the cleaner, but she doesn’t have time for that as the worker’s on the fourth floor keep her very busy. Especially Yarn Guy whom she imagines when she is away from the office how well the two would get along if only, she could meet him in person.

When she discovers the CEO of wrongdoing, she takes it upon herself to figure out how to ruin him to help the workers on the floor keep their jobs. Forget the fact she has no idea what the CEO does but what she discovers while browsing his office and computer makes her decide to destroy him.

She takes care of the people she cleans for. She knows what’s best for them, even when they don’t.

The Cleaner is a wonderfully written story which is both funny and scary at the same time. It will make you uncomfortable, yet you won’t be able to stop reading. It will make you question if this story is far from the truth in some offices. It will certainly make you check your desk if you work in an office just to make sure someone isn’t “taking care” of you at night!

Thank you #NetGalley #HanoverSquarePress #TheCleaner #BrandiWells for the advanced copy.

THE CLEANER by Brandi Wells initially felt too real to keep reading; it felts like it was describing the corporate office and its inhabitants from one of my old jobs. Very well done. However, after that initial discomfort, the story felt repetitive and flat. The premise of THE CLEANER is fantastic, but the execution fell short, perhaps relying too much on novelty.

The cleaner, by Brandi Wells, is such an odd book. The story is told through the eyes of an unnamed office cleaner who works the night shift. She is seen by few colleagues and appreciated by none. Sharing her work with the reader, we learn from the beginning that she is unreliable and falls into chaos in her efforts to help colleagues she feels responsible for, and to save the company from the CEO… at least this is what she thinks she is doing.

The general premise of the book sounded promising. But the constant invasion of people’s privacy (searching desk drawers, removing/destroying documents and personal belongings, even hacking computers) in order to sabotage those she thinks are ungrateful was bizarre, making her character unappealing. Unfortunately, the novelty of the story wore off quickly. There was no bombshell, just minor ebbs and flows that felt repetitive and went nowhere. The ending was a letdown.

Many thanks to Bookbrowse and NetGalley for the advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review!

The Cleaner by Brandi Wells is a most unusual book. First of all, there weren’t any chapters in the copy I read and I had to adapt my reading style accordingly.

But that aside, this book just didn’t appeal to me. I found the actions of the cleaner rather reprehensible. Her notion that her job as the overnight cleaner of the office building gave her license to manipulate the various employees as well as make sweeping assumptions about their work ethics, personalities, and ambitions was bizarre. Not only that, the cleaner (her name is never revealed) routinely searched desks, removed and destroyed documents and memos, and took various items for herself.

Her justifications were warped and she believed that she was responsible not only for cleaning the office but everyone who worked there. The author created a character who felt unseen and who developed obsessions about people she had never even met. She was someone to pity but at the same time it was difficult to do so. I can understand the underlying premise and the message the author was trying to convey but the unappealing character overshadowed the message and minimized any sympathy I had for the cleaner. NetGalley provided an advance copy.

this is more of an unreliable narrator character study type of book as opposed to a thriller or mystery. I enjoyed following the MC with her schemes and quirks (and the premise is really interesting), I personally just wanted a little more meat to the actual story.

This is one of the strangest and most fascinatingly addictive novels I have read. If you like The Maid by Nita Prose, you'll love The Cleaner. It makes you wonder who might be lurking around. My Mind went a lot of places. Creeptastic and different.

I'd give this book negative stars if I could.

To summarize, The Cleaner is about a janitor who takes it upon herself to snoop in other people's things in the building where she works. She plays matchmaker, crochet enthusiast, morality judge, corporate embezzlement investigator, and mother hen. For some employees she leaves little tidbits to encourage their professional growth, relationships or hobbies; for others, she sabotages their employment or their marriages. She is sociopathically meddlesome, narcississtic, and benevolent, all at the same time.

Not only was the writing dull and monotone, but the characters were never fully developed, or even named. It became confusing trying to remember who was who (characters were named with an initial or some nickname, like Yarn Guy). Most people like to gain something from their reading, but my experience with this book was creepy, painful, boring, and tasteless. I'm pretty sure the janitors that I know would all be offended that they were represented in such a derogatory way.

Save your time and money.

The Cleaner by Brandi Wells

I enjoyed reading this book about a cleaner who works at night in a mostly empty building. During the day its desk-filled floors are occupied by office workers. The cleaner takes a lot of pride in her work, even though the people she cleans up after never seem to notice her hard work. Although she is invisible to the people she cleans up after, she wants to feel connected to them. So she imagines personalities and solves imaginary problems of the people who occupy all those desks, fantasizing what it would be like to earn their appreciation and friendship.

Soon those imaginary personalities become more and more real to the cleaner. As the unseen cleaner goes about vacuuming and wiping down the office surfaces, she begins making subtle changes that can alter the day-to-day course of a worker's life. This book is often funny but also fascinatingly disturbing.

The Cleaner is responsible for spending her nights cleaning an office building. She takes her role extremely seriously and never thinks of her job as menial. Her at the buildings security guard have a love hate relationship as the Cleaner doesn’t feel the guard takes her job seriously enough. When The Cleaner finds out a secret the CEO of the company she cleans for is keeping she had a decision to make. Does she use it against him to save the company or keep it hidden.

This book certainly had a unique premise and the writing style was very different from many books I’ve read but did have a somewhat Blackman feel to it. I am hoping the finished copy was laid out a bit better but the ARC had no chapters so it’s all just one long read. Overall, the book was a bit of a miss for me as I kept waiting for something to happen or understand where the story was going. At the end it did pick up for me somewhat but I wouldn’t put this one at the top of my list. I could relate to The Cleaner in terms of how much pride she has in her job as I feel I have the same pride at my job. Good debut book by the author and I will leave it to you to decide on reading it or not

In this dark comedy, author Brandi Wells shines glaring, humming overhead light on a grimy, mundane occupation. The unnamed cleaner works the night shift at an unnamed company in an unnamed city. Is this titular character despicable? No. Deluded? Definitely. She has mommy issues, thus a driving need to care for others. Yet she has no actual human connections. She fancies herself the office hero, the company savior, despite not knowing what the company does, and despite not ever having met the people she's saving. Is the Cleaner likeable? That's not even the right question. The point isn't how we like her. It's how we're led to sympathize with her -- the unseen, unappreciated service worker who keeps things running in spite of the indignities. Wells allows us to know this character in granular detail. We cringe at her inappropriate snooping and disturbing behavior, but then we cringe at the obliviousness and detritus that she must deal with each night. Not everyone will like this novel. Without chapter breaks or named characters, it rambles and drudges because that is how this character rolls. No wonder she is driven to rise above. I was with her all the way.

[Thanks to Hanover Square Press and BookBrowse for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]