“The Death of Mrs. Westaway” - Ruth Ware

 🛶 Oooo boy! This novel is dripping with dread. If you enjoy psychological suspense, know that the “Rebecca” comparisons are apt! The Mrs. Warren character sent Danvers-esque chills down my spine!

 🛶 And if the echoes of Daphne du Maurier’s writing style aren’t enough, Ware nods to the great Agatha Christie as well! I wondered if Hal would turn out to be like Pilar in “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas” as the beginning of DMW certainly shapes up like that novel (cantankerous matriarch here).

“Trepassen House.… What had happened to that house, and that family? The picture-postcard tranquility she had seen in that photograph, tea on the lawn, like something from an Agatha Christie novel.”

— The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

🛶 I enjoyed DMW even more than “The Lying Game” which was also gripping (posted about in May). This was a complex mystery with so many undercurrents and possible suspects amidst a group of characters so secretive, that I formed ideas throughout but was never certain I landed on the correct one. 

🛶 Keep reading for a few spoiler-free reflections, in no particular order.

• The magpie references were snuck in by Ware to great effect!

• Ware wrote her with such palpable malice toward the family and Hal, that I was a bit let down that she didn’t do more with her. 

• Hal is immediately a sympathetic character even though she is setting out to deceive. We don’t know much about her, but life has clearly stacked up against her so it’s easy to root for her.

• In horror movies, you always cringe when the victims run up into the attic or down into the basement. I couldn’t understand why Hal didn’t insist on taking a vacated room after the Hardings’ kids left, or insist on the sofa.

• I had a hard time accepting Hal’s belief that one of the strangers at Trepassen House was trying to warn her. On what basis?! 

• The climax was chaotic and stretched on unnecessarily once the truth was out.