The Death of Mrs. Westaway

by Ruth Ware

Saturday, February 27, 2021

Featured image for The Death of Mrs. Westaway

Some good characters here and a decent plot too but ultimately I just felt that it didn’t hang together properly. I thought the story was pretty transparent and foresaw what was coming, which is fine by me, sometimes I guess right and sometimes I don’t, both are good. But there were a few things scattered through the book that I thought were clues that just turned out to fairly minor inconsistencies but left me feeling like the book hadn’t been proofread. I like stories where the solution would have been much simpler if people just talked to each other, but of course they don’t do that in fiction any more than they do in the real world. We make up theories and worry about what other people will think, and that aspect of life is well represented here. The psychology is good, and the book was a quick and mostly enjoyable read. Just in the end it felt like there were numerous ways that it could have been better, and perhaps that just means the author made me think, but it felt a bit unfinished.