The Death of Mrs. Westaway

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