The Death of Mrs. Westaway

If you love Ruth Ware, buckle up for a ride that you are not going to forget!

Hal is not sure what the letter from the lawyers office has to do with her, but she is about to get the surprise of her life. Pretending to be someone she is not, she heads off to claim an inheritance - one that she hopes will get her out of her financial troubles, and possibly give her a little comfort for the next few years. Instead, she stumbles on a msyterious disappearance, and a troubled family. Will Hal live long enough to get to safety?


What a great read! I could not put the book down! I was hooked from the start, although in the beginning, I was not sure if I was going to love the book or just like it. By the end of the book, I was sitting there wondering how anyone could NOT love this novel! Suspense, mystery and a touch of terror..... perfection!

Some adult language in the book

I couldn't finish this. Too many other books I desperately want to read, and too many things about this book bothered me. Errors (Gypsy Rose Lee was a burlesque dancer, not a fortune teller), oddities (the nursery rhyme about counting birds is specifically about crows, not magpies), and word overuse (I stopped at the umpteenth usage of “shivered”. It was sometimes used twice in the same paragraph, and was pulling me out of the story. Finding it over and over was like hearing an unwanted beat in my head.) I truly wanted to like this novel, and I hung on longer than I wanted to out of hope.

I was expecting (based on the promotion on the back cover) a modern Agatha Christie. Not even close. I don't recall Christie ever wasting this much time getting to the point. It took three-quarters of the book to determine if there even was a murder at all. The writer avoids anything interesting happening to set up for a “big finish.”

This novel is more akin to a V.C. Andrews story with a young woman at the heart of a “deep, dark” secret. V.C. Andrews was never this boring, however. Melodramatic and cheesy, maybe. But it was good cheese and never boring.

One of the problems is that Ware wants us to be in love with her protagonist, Hal, but she doesn't give enough reason to feel that way. Yes, she is impoverished and an orphan I can feel sorry for, but like her? Hal is deadly dull. Ware keeps trying to tell us about her qualities without showing any examples, and she wants to have it both ways. Hal cons a family, but we can't hate her because she feels guilty about it. She seems mousy but is secretly “strong” underneath. Complex characters that act one way and feel another are great and what I want as a reader if only the writer is bold enough to go for it. Show the character doing a few bad things. Show how the character is conflicted and give some development about their past to add depth.

As for the story itself, there's not much to it. You can see most of the “twists” coming from the setup. Every character is so bland, and I don't know any more about them than I did at the start. Hal doesn't change or grow during the story. She gets new family members and a solution to her financial problems without sacrifice.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway feels like an early draft of a story that was underdeveloped.

I really liked this!! I thought the pacing the first 85% of the book was fantastic, I loved our main character, and found our supporting characters also super intriguing. I also have to say that the inheritance plotline is one of my FAVORITE mystery tropes haha! So just keep that in mind.

But this book was great. My only gripe was the end took a bit too long for me to wrap up and I figured out every element of the mystery while it wrapped up. I am very satisfied with the ending though.

I figured out several of the twists beforehand, but the one I didn't figure out put a new look on the ones that I did figure out. So it was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed the most of the characters. They were well written. Most of the bad ones are believably bad. There is only one that character that I wasn't totally convinced about, but that didn't affect my overall enjoyment of the story. I enjoyed this much more than I did The Girl in Cabin 10 because the characters were more likable. Their faults were more believable and they were less annoying overall.

Basically, it is a family secret mystery in an old British estate. Of course I love it!

The writing was fantastic - I was feeling creeped out a little in the dark. I had to read the plot twist a few times to fully understand it, but I thought it was great. Enjoyed this book even more because it gave off a lot of [b:Rebecca 17899948 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386605169l/17899948.SX50.jpg 46663] vibes - a housekeeper like Mrs. Danvers and a boathouse off of the house. Very much enjoyed this and definitely recommend!

[b:The Death of Mrs. Westaway 36373481 The Death of Mrs. Westaway Ruth Ware https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518710953l/36373481.SY75.jpg 57880170]Family Reunion or Family Disaster? First off, I want to thank my secret Santa of last year for getting me on to Ruth Ware I would not have gotten around to purchasing this if it had not been for her. I have since finishing this also read a few other books by the same author that I can not way to tell you all about. But let me start here. Never had I read a book that made me want to play the game clue as much as this did. Hal receives a letter in the mall saying that she is due to inherit something from her family's estate, except the letter is sent to the wrong person. Which is what we are led to believe. She takes the money she makes reading fortunes to meet this family and con them. But as the story unfolds, we find out that Hal belongs there more then you think. I love the who done it aspect of it, plus there's a murder and a few more twists that make this worth the time. Three solid stars.

I was intrigued by the premise of this book and couldn't wait to get my hands on it. The only character to really have any depth was the main protagonist. All of the other characters were one dimensional which took away from the potential of this being a more engaging mystery. The story was suspenseful at times but just seemed to plod along and go nowhere at certain points. I ultimately found the ending to be anti-climactic and a little disappointing so it ended up being an average read for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a complimentary digital review copy of this book.

I initially picked up this book because a booktuber I really like to watch mentioned it and said that it was a great mystery with twists and turns at every corner and boy, was she right! I read Ruth Ware's, The Woman in Cabin 10 and was kind of disappointed especially after all the hype and the expectations that I would love it. Well, this one didn't disappoint! Ruth Ware definitely deserves all the recognition she has gotten and can masterfully weave a twisty and very horrifying mystery masterpiece so I will definitely be reading more of her books in the future. The Death of Mrs. Westaway is about a girl named Maggie who receives a letter, naming her a beneficiary in Mrs. Westaway's will and even though she suspects that it might just all be a huge mistake, money issues force her to make the trip in hopes of being able to claim some kind of monetary payout. It's about how she stumbles upon a lot more than she ever imagined or bargained for.

First of, this book is probably one of the best mysteries I have ever read in my life so far. The plot is intricate and nothing like I have ever encountered before. The pacing is also pretty even all throughout the book and you get a little more reveal all throughout. I dislike books that reveal all their secrets at the very end and seem hurried to close but this one didn't do that. I think that's part of the reason I couldn't stop reading it and literally couldn't put it down for the life of me. If I wasn't a stay-at-home-mom of two, I would have read this in one sitting without a doubt.

Secondly, the character development is superb. I really got a sense of who the main heroine, Hal, is and I related to her in numerous ways. There was a very strong sense of humanity in her and she couldn't have easily been a real life person, struggling to make her life in this world and life. I loved that she was the underdog and there were almost more faults to her than attributes, yet she still persevered and held her own until the very end. The other characters were more unremarkable to me but Hal definitely stuck with me.

Further on, the writing style of Ruth Ware is one I have really learned to love. It's superb for these mystery style novels and helps the story flow at the perfect pace and it almost seems as though the pages just kind of turn themselves and before I know it I am done with the whole novel. I will definitely be reading all her other works and am very glad that she has a bunch.

In conclusion, The Death of Mrs. Westaway is a mystery novel that stands out amongst the other ones in the genre. I would recommend it to anyone who loves a good page-turning mystery, with endless twists and turns that you will probably not see coming. I wasn't sure about Ruth Ware as an author before but now I can honestly say that I am a huge fan after this book. I hope she keeps writing stories as intricate and uniquely profound as this one because I am completely in awe!

I think this is my favorite Ruth Ware book so far. It was a very enjoyable, suspenseful read. Although I had pretty much figured it all out halfway through, it was still fun to read and see how it unfolded.

Hal receives a letter that her grandmother has died and left her an inheritance. The only problem is Hal is not Mrs. Westaway's granddaughter. Or is she? The story is about Hal's journey into a past she never knew she had with a family that may actual be her blood relatives. We follow Hal as she learns bits of information along the way that reveal her true origins.

I found this mystery to be very engrossing. I was never bored. The old house in which it is set is just creepy enough to keep the reader on edge. The characters each have some element of mystery about them that leads to a lot of speculation from the reader. I found it fun to try to solve the mystery, which I did pretty early on. It was still fun to continue reading to see if I was correct.

I would definitely recommend this Ruth Ware book to other readers. I would actually suggest starting with this one as I feel it is the best.

it was a little slow getting started but i really enjoyed it overall! super atmospheric and reminded me a lot of agatha christie, with the victorian air of it all.

there's one detail that really confused me towards the end but it's a spoiler.

however, while i feel that the book did wrap up rather well there is something that is bugging me that i can't wrap my head around. a good portion of the plot hinges on the idea of dark eyes versus blue eyes and who has which. on page 149, harriet is looking at a picture of a girl she presumes to be her mother, a girl named maggie. we know for a fact that this is maggie, as it's confirmed by someone who was also in this picture. the book reads, “Hal looked at the girl sitting on the grass, at her unflinching dark eyes.” then, much later on, on page 332, when hal seems to be uncovering the final parts of the mystery, there's a passage that says, “Maggie who had written the diary. And she wasn't looking at the camera. She was looking at Ezra, with her blue, blue eyes.”so.does maggie have dark eyes like hal? or blue eyes?? because in the first passage, maggie's dark eyes are what led hal to realizing that maggie was, in fact, her mother.

I'M SO CONFUSED

BUT I ENJOYED IT THOROUGHLY NONETHELESS EXCEPT THAT ONE BIT

Not quite what I expected. Yet I did like it.
I was able to guess all the twists though that was because I was expecting twists and because they were quite clearly laid out, once you knew to look for twists.
It was well written and I did like the family dynamic, though to be honest, I felt slightly bored at times.
i would be happy to read more from the author.

Es mi primer libro de Ruth Ware. Y no será el último.

Me encantan esas historias que me mantienen intrigada con ganas de seguir y seguir leyendo para saber que más pasará y cómo acabará todo.

Este es de ese tipo de libros. Engancha de principio a fin. Quizás a medida que avanza, aún más.

Lo recomiendo!

This is a mystery novel that seems to want to take after the likes of Agatha Christie, but lacks the necessary strengths to do so. Ruth Ware is a prominent thriller writer, and though she decides to dip into mystery here, I did not think she was very successful.

The pros: It was cleanly written and edited, with decently solid characters, which almost tricks you into believing it is well done, but then come...

The cons: I think Ware's attempt to format this one as a mystery was a mistake. While it has many of the tropes of classic mystery (the house in the English countryside, a contested will, mistaken identity, family members with secrets, a nursery rhyme that for some reason keeps coming up...), it lacks what mystery readers love—the puzzle.

It's not that you can't figure it out as you go along, because you definitely can. It's just that you are about 50-100 pages ahead of the protagonist (the amateur “detective,” in this case) the entire book. Unlike detectives in most mystery novels, the main character Hal only KIND OF wants to find out the truth and takes FOREVER to do so.

As it turns out, everything she needs to solve the mystery is readily available to her the entire time, she just never feels like looking at any of it, as she is so caught up in her own emotions.

This brings me to the next downfall of this novel: the protagonist represents bad women stereotypes. It may not seem like it at first, but as you go along you realize that she is so caught up with her own emotions (fear of being found out, heartbreak at losing her mother, confusion at the mystery), that it stands directly in the way of her using her REASON to put two and two together and ask OBVIOUS questions. What is even more grating is that she thinks she is self-aware—referring to herself as this headstrong woman in search of the truth, denying being mousy and weak—but she then she acts mousy and weak the entire time.

The denouement was still an entertaining read, despite that fact that I had figured it out 50 pages earlier. Not sure I will read another book by Ruth Ware anytime soon... but maybe this one was a fluke.

This book was much more slow paced than the thrillers I usually go for, but I think the slow pace set up a creepy vibe that i enjoyed in the beginning. 
The plot twists weren't all that exciting, some of them just don't make sense to me. I feel like I have a lot of unanswered questions, and felt like some aspects didn't tie in together well.

Hal's character was very interesting to read about because she was so honest, and I haven't read a character with such a strong moral compass before. .

This was my first Ruth Ware read, and I might check out more. 

This is one of those books where I liked the journey as it was happening but looking back on it left me confused. Looking back on it after finishing the mystery, many characters behaved in strange ways that only served to make things mysterious rather than make sense for their personality/what they knew.
All of that being said, the story itself is quite a fun read. The writing has some beautiful moments, especially the descriptions of the house and the characters. There were a few twists I expected and one that I didn't, which left me pleasantly surprised. Overall, I enjoyed the book!