Book Reviews

Warning: This post contains spoilers!

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

I just finished reading The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware.  I was excited to see this "new" book on the library shelf because I had recently read The Woman in Cabin 10 by the same author and enjoyed it.

The setting:
Harriet (Hal) Westaway is left on her own, struggling to make ends meet after her mother is killed in a hit and run auto accident. Hal is left to fend for herself in a small English residence in Marine View Villas. She works as a tarot card reader on a nearby pier.  Her bills are piled up, "final notices" stamped on each one.  She also has another problem:  a loan from a local loan shark is due and his goons are sent after her.

One mysterious letter arrives announcing that her grandmother has passed away and Hal is requested to attend the reading of the will.  Hal barely has money to get to the Trepassen house in St. Piran.  Also, there is another problem: Hal knows that there must be some kind of mix-up because Hal's grandparents had been dead for more than twenty years.

Hal's circumstances are dire, so she decided to make the pilgrimage to St. Piran to hopefully con some money out of her "relatives" in order to get back on her feet financially, and to pay off the loan shark once and for all. 

But nothing in Hal's life is simple.  She is welcomed with open arms from her "uncles" and "aunt".  As events unfold Hal discovers that her mother isn't who she thought she was, and as a result, Hal's own identity comes into question.  To further complicate matters, Hal finds an old diary and photograph book.  They provide evidence that much more than a simple identity crisis is going on.  A much more sinister chain of events has transpired, and it all unravels as Hal discovers more and more about her mother's past.

Spoiler alert!  Don't read any further if you don't want more details about the book. 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Now to give a more detailed review.  Again, the following has spoilers, so if you haven't read the book yet, you might want to come back later after you've had a chance to do so.

I love how this is a mystery with twists and turns.  Ruth Ware does a great job of keeping the reader engaged.  It is one of the characteristics of her style that I find irresistible.  However, there were a couple of plot holes that I had trouble reconciling.

 The initial problem that sets off events in Hal's birth.  Her mother, Maud, was actually the cousin to her biological mother.  Hal discovers this towards the end of the novel.  But it makes clear what happened and how events got set in motion.  Hal's father, Ezra, and brother to Maud, killed his cousin Maggie.  When Maggie was pregnant with Hal, she and her cousin Maud escaped Trepassasen and tried to start a new life for themselves.  However, with a child to support, and only tarot reading to bring in money, Maggie knew she needed help.  So she went back to confront Ezra.  She wanted him to take responsibility for his child, at least in part.

Here is where I have a problem.  Out of rage, Ezra kills Maggie.  Why?  He doesn't want anyone to know that he fathered a child out of wedlock, apparently.  This makes no sense because Hal was born in 1994.  That was not such a big deal then.  Certainly not worthy of the rage.  Then again, Ezra is also portrayed later, as a sociopath.  Even so, it still seems unlikely that finding out he had a child would provoke him to murder.

I could reconcile this in my head as a crime of passion, but it doesn't stop there.  Hal finds out later that Ezra was the one who mowed down Maud in front of Hal's house.  And, get this, Ezra and Maud are twins.  So, I find it hard to swallow that the mere fact of Hal's existence would prompt such an act. Yet, nothing else comes to the fore as the plot unfolds.  In fact, Ezra's killing spree continues.

Here's the other plot hole with which I have an issue:   Ezra kills Mrs. Warren, the life-long housekeeper at Trepassen.  Hal discovers a shrine created by Mrs. Warren in honor of Ezra.  Dozens of pictures of just him, all taken while he was growing up.  Mrs. Warren obviously considered Ezra the golden child.  Hal discovers that Mrs. Warren knew all along of who Hal really was, and what had happened to both Maud and Maggie.  However, Mrs. Warren had kept Ezra's dark secrets for years.  Despite the fact that Mrs. Warren would never rat out Ezra, he ends up killing her.  I may have missed it, but it seems like there is no reason for her killing.  In real life, yes that happens, but in a "who dunnit" book, readers like to have some sort of explanation.

While there are some plot holes, this is an excellent book.  It is a page-turner, especially after about halfway into the book.   I couldn't put it down from there until the end.  If you want some great reading this summer, check it out.