The Death of Mrs. Westaway Ch 1 - 7 by Ruth Ware

Okay, so I didn't get a lot of reading time this week. Even though the chapters in this book are super short, I didn't make it very far. But that's why we have the new rules!

Anyway.

I'm guessing that this is a thing that Ruth Ware likes to do, where she starts the book with a scene that clearly comes from later in the book.

So, the first seven chapters seem to be a lot of set up.

We meet Hal, who is barely scratching out a living as a psychic on the boardwalk? Is it a boardwalk if it's in England? She's living in the worlds shittiest apartment, which may or may not have heat depending on the moment, and she's barely eating. She's getting threatening notes from a loan shark and wow, you find out later that his rates are super not reasonable.

But I guess that's why they're loan sharks.

So she borrowed $500 from Mr. Smith back months ago and the interest rate is just insane, so even with having paid him back what she estimates to be something like $1500 she still owes him over $3000 according to his math.

She's got no money to pay him, no money to pay her rent, no money to pay the lease on the booth that she uses to make her living, such as it is, and no idea what she's going to do. She's a 'psychic' in the cold read, let people answer their own questions kind of way - she does tarot out of preference, and I get the impression that her mother held the same trade, though she did palm reading and the other usual psychic tricks as well. Hal will do them if she has to, but she prefers the cards.

Hal's mother has passed away, back when Hal was still in British high school (listen, all I know about British schools comes from Harry Potter and I'm going to assume Hal did not go to Hogwarts) and Hal has been on her own since. She's got no other family, not really any friends.

She is alone and she is progressively getting more and more in debt and she sees no way out.

And then, in the midst of a pile of bills that she cannot pay, she receives a letter telling her that she is an heir to some fortune, according to the Will of one Mrs. Hester Mary Westaway. Which would be great, except that she is 100% sure that she is not related to this dead woman, who is ostensibly her grandmother.

And Hal is arguing with herself, trying to tell herself that there has been a mistake and they got the wrong Hal. After all, she dug through her mothers papers and her grandparents are definitely not Mrs. Westaway. At least, on her mothers side. She knows nothing about her father, but given that Hal's name is Harriet Westaway and that Westaway was her mothers maiden name (we assume) it seems unlikely that this would be from her fathers side.

However, the loan shark is sending people around and Hal is getting very desperate.

And after all, if anyone could pull this off, it would be someone who makes their living cold reading strangers and telling them what they want to hear.

I do find it interesting that the first reading that we see in detail is where Hal is reluctantly doing a tarot reading for an older woman who sort of forces her way in after Hal has closed shop. The woman is trying to decide what to do about her son who is a drug addict. And Hal, who tries very hard to not tell people things that aren't true - she doesn't tell them about messages from long dead relatives, etc. reads the cards and basically tells her that she needs to go with her instincts - that she knows what she needs to do.

And the woman pays her with apparently way too much money, but is gone before Hal can give her the excess back. And when Hal chases after her, she's long gone off the promenade. So Hal donates the excess money to the charity of the month on the boardwalk, which just happens to be one for addiction recovery.

I mean I think we're meant to understand that Hal is a generally nice person who has found herself in an impossible situation.

But that's as far as I've gotten, so I guess we'll find out.