Title: The Death of Mrs. Westaway
Author: Ruth Ware
Publisher: Scout Press / Simon & Schuster Inc.
Rating: 📖📖📖📖 / 5
What would you do if one day you received a letter that named you a beneficiary of an inheritance from a woman you never knew? Would you ignore it? Would you go to the address provided and figure out what's going on? This is the exact predicament Harriet "Hal" Westaway finds herself in when a mysterious letter is delivered to her run-down flat at a time when she needed the money the most. Her only known grandparents died over twenty years ago and her mother, who died three years ago, never spoke much about her family. Hal decides to take up the offer and travels to Trepassen to attend the funeral of the late Mrs. Hester Westaway with the plan to assume the role of family member although she believes it to be a mistake. While at the estate Hal meets her new "family" and realizes that the family dynamic was not what she expected and the matter of money becomes the least of her problems.
This is the first of Ruth Ware's books I've finished and all in all I was not disappointed! I read the last 200 some pages in about a day, unable to put it down at all! I enjoyed Ware's writing and the way she painted mental pictures in a way that I don't encounter often. She uses many "stereotypical" mystery aspects (ie an old, creepy house, a grumpy old woman leaving a large will) but reinvents them in a more modern way. She mixes the old world that Mrs. Westaway lived in with the more modern world of Hal in a way that lays a good foundation for a mystery. The heroine is likable (not a drug addict, alcoholic or an overall bad person) and I think the whole way through the story you will root for her and want to know her mysterious background.
But where there are many highs, there is one major flaw in this book: the ending. There was such great build up to the resolution of the whole mystery and THAT'S how Ware ended it. No spoilers obviously, but I felt like the ending was rushed and just did not live up to the rest of the story. I was left with so many questions that needed to be resolved and just weren't. It seemed like the story was too heavily focused on Hal that Ware forgot to develop the family in general. However, I do believe that mystery readers will enjoy this book as well as any general reader. I would recommend scooping it up and reading it for yourself!
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