Title: The Death of Mrs Westaway
Expected publication: 28 June 2018
My Rating:🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
"Seven for a secret
Never to be told."
Book Description:
When Harriet Westaway receives an unexpected letter telling
her she’s inherited a substantial bequest from her Cornish grandmother, it
seems like the answer to her prayers. She owes money to a loan shark and the
threats are getting increasingly aggressive: she needs to get her hands on some
cash fast.
There's just one problem - Hal's real grandparents died more
than twenty years ago. The letter has been sent to the wrong person. But Hal
knows that the cold-reading techniques she’s honed as a seaside fortune teller
could help her con her way to getting the money. If anyone has the skills to
turn up at a stranger's funeral and claim a bequest they’re not entitled to,
it’s her.
Hal makes a choice that will change her life for ever. But
once she embarks on her deception, there is no going back. She must keep going
or risk losing everything, even her life…
My musings:
Stop Press! Lovers of character-driven, atmospheric
thrillers with a spooky setting, listen up! You’d better put May and June on
your calendars, because this is when Ruth Ware’s latest book The Death of Mrs
Westaway will be released, and it’s a pearler! Ever since reading The Woman in
Cabin 10 and The Lying Game, Ware has been firmly embedded on my favourite
authors list, and I was doing a little happy dance around my house when I
received a copy of her new book from Netgalley.
For me, The Death of Mrs Westaway has all the hallmarks of a
fantastic read. Ware is a master at characterisations, and has created another
charismatic main protagonist and a great cast of supporting characters who
immediately drew me into the story. I once followed a thread on a book blogging
site, discussing whether people could visualise characters’ faces when reading
or whether they remained shadowy featureless shapes. For me, this depends very
much on the author’s writing skill, and I am happy to say that Ware falls
squarely into that category. It’s in the small details, the casual
observations, the little quirks that make her characters come to life, and the
book played out almost movie-like in my mind, each fictional person as real to
me as flesh-and-blood people I have known for years.
Hal, the mousy bespectacled girl who is constantly being
underestimated by those who first meet her played a wonderful lead, and I
immediately warmed to her. Left destitute, with loan sharks threatening her
after the sudden death of her mother, young Hal has her back against the wall
and we feel her desperation as she is looking for a way out of her seemingly
hopeless situation. When a letter arrives to tell her that she has been named
as an heir to part of the late Mrs Westaway’s estate, it offers a perfect way
out – even if it means lying about her true identity. Would I consider doing this
in her situation? Would you? Don’t you just love an ethical dilemma in a
suspense story? To see what Hal decides to do you will have to read it for
yourself ....
Aside from the characters, there is Ware’s hallmark
claustrophobic setting that characterises all her novels. From the isolated
house in the forest in her debut novel In a Dark Dark Wood, to the luxury yacht
in The Women in Cabin 10, to the rustic beach house in The Lying Game – I loved
them all! In The Death of Mrs Westaway the setting is a spooky, Gothic English
manor house which has seen better days, and which harbours a dark secret. As
the Westaways come together under its crumbling roof, the tension is sure to
mount, and there is a constantly growing thread of menace and danger that had
me eagerly turning the pages for more. I can see why comparisons with Agatha
Christie’s writing have been made, because this is a very character driven
novel, relying on the interactions between people and the things left unsaid to
create almost unbearable suspense. As with her characters, Ware knows how to
introduce small, seemingly innocuous elements into her setting that serve to
ratchet up the tension, such as the dilapidated boathouse on a weed-choked
lake, the mournful cawing of the magpies and the dark staircase to the small
attic room Hal is being put up in during her stay at the house. I also loved
the unusual element of Hal’s tarot cards to add to the breadcrumb-like trail of
clues left for the reader, which made for a very unique feature in this
outstanding novel!
Summary:
Ware has done it again and created a cast of vivid characters coming together in an eerie claustrophobic setting where past secrets are bound to raise their ugly heads and family skeletons are aired in her latest tense psychological thriller.
The Death of Mrs Westaway is sure to be one of my favourite reads of 2018, and I cannot recommend it highly enough to all lovers of the genre!
Thank
you to Netgalley and Random House UK for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
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