The Death of Mrs. Westaway

Let’s begin with the good: the setting was absolutely marvelous. Ruth Ware expertly designed this creepy gothic manor with the wonderful addition of good-old-Mrs.Warren, the crusty curmudgeon that comes with the house in all its glory. The premise also made for a nice change - of course there was the classic funeral scene where we’re able to get our first glimpse of many of the secondary characters, but the idea of a woman attending a funeral for somebody not related to her was unique.

I think I enjoyed the tarot as well - it added to the mystique of the environment and made Hal more likable for me, and it’s a subject of which I don’t have much knowledge so I enjoyed the readings and it felt as though Ware either enjoyed tarot readings herself or else did quite an extensive amount of research.

Unfortunately, a lot of the plot is unforgivable. First off- Westaway is not a common last name. So the fact that Hal doesn’t instantly think she’s probably actually related to these people seems almost moronic. Yes, I understand that she believes her mother and the stories she told her, but let’s be real, parents lie -- I also instantly knew that the one-night-stand was a lie. It just felt like the classic cover-up because the mom didn’t want the child to know the truth.

Hal’s internal monologue is a little overbearing at times, slowly, painstakingly piecing things together that the reader had figured out ages ago. And- okay - the fact that they’re both named Margarida… I mean, come on. This family is just whack. The fact that both the women are named Margarida and Hal still takes SO LONG to even CONSIDER that she might be related to these Westaways… that may have been the worst of it.

I will say that the intrigue of what would happen next, even if I was annoyed and sometimes frustrated by the pace of it all - did satisfy me to keep going. There wasn’t exactly a point where I felt it was so obvious that I had to stop reading. A large part of that was the setting - I enjoyed that thoroughly. I could see it all in my head vividly. I also quite liked the family - the three brothers- Ezra, Able and Harding. I think they were well-written characters with somewhat believable dialogue. I guess the real frustrations here are the unreasonably slow pace with which Hal figures things out. She trudges along so slowly that it’s unbelievable. It just feels like there was so much Ware wanted to write and include (including those letters from the diary with some of the backstory) that she forced Hal to work slowly to the point of tortoise-hood.

And, of course, once the reveal comes, the fact that the two women’s names are both Margarida made it that much more difficult for me to understand what was happening. I listened to a lot of this book as an Audiobook (Imogen Church is a marvel, by the way), and so when she quickly stats listing off these revelations I couldn’t keep up. Maybe it was because of the troll-like pace with which she first made connections and revelations, but it was just way too fast and too much to understand in the course of a few sentences. Heck, for some times I thought maybe Hal was the byproduct of Ezra and Maud’s incest… because Hal kept saying “Maud was her mother, and then her mother was Maggie”. She’s trying to say the woman she knew as her mother - the one who raised her - was Maud. And Maggie was her birth mother. But then it’s all still so confusing because why did Maud even start taking care of Hal? Did she arrange for Maud to take care of her before she went off to visit Ezra and eventually got killed off? It doesn’t make much sense… and it doesn’t get much clearer.

This book is frustrating. Characters were alright and the setting was magnificent but all of that couldn’t forgive this confused mush of a plot. Amusingly enough, upon finishing the book I wasn’t as frustrated as I am now, writing this review. Because the more I think about it, the more gaping the plot holes were and the more disillusioned the entire narrative was. I guess if you want to like this book and maintain in the feel-good realm after having completed it, you shouldn’t think about it too much once it’s over. It’ll ruin it for you - just look at what it did to me.