The Guardian reviews Service, the debut novel by Lauren Mooney, a contemporary ghost story that uses the haunted-house genre to examine present-day class inequality and economic precarity. The book follows Danielle, a low-paid personal assistant at a whimsical arts charity called Hodgepodge, whose exploitative boss Jeannie treats her as a personal servant. After a breakup leaves Danielle unexpectedly homeless with no savings or family support, she moves into Jeannie's isolated ancestral home, where the boundaries between past and present begin to dissolve.

At the rambling house, Westerley, Danielle experiences unsettling occurrences — a fresh bowl of peaches, a face at the window, hobnailed boots on the stairs — as she slips between her role as a 21st-century employee and that of a 19th-century maidservant, especially once Jeannie and her predatory son Edward arrive. The reviewer situates the novel alongside classic hauntings such as Shirley Jackson's Hill House and Susan Hill's Eel Marsh House, and praises its chilling atmosphere and sharp "evisceration of the class system." The central point is how little has changed in over a century regarding poverty, servitude and abuse, though the review notes the book can occasionally feel heavy-handed, suggesting Mooney might have trusted her readers and her own writing more.