The Death of Mrs. Westaway

 

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes the marketing gets in the way of the novel. All the blurbs I read compared this to du Maurier's Rebecca, which I optimistically presumed would include all of the beautiful atmospheric descriptions in du Maurier's work, with the suspense nearly jumping off the page in those descriptions of whirling leaves and dark, locked passages. So this is probably a better novel than I give it credit for, because it is not that. It is a mystery using the same building blocks as Rebecca , in new formations and a different ending. It is modernized and unique and has a few unexpected twists and turns. So if you go into it with the right mindset, it would be an entertaining read--I just couldn't help feeling a little hoodwinked.

View all my reviews

in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy--that's when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back.

When they gave themselves over to superstition, they were giving up on shaping their own destiny.