That in itself makes it a risk worth taking. Yes, there’s a risk she could go to jail for fraud, but if she can pull it off, it’s the answer to all of her prayers. That said, however, she can’t help but wonder if her ability to read people – so finely honed by years of reading tarot cards and telling fortunes – is sharp enough for her to fool people so that she really can claim the aforementioned inheritance. Westaway who has just passed away, Hal knows it can’t possibly be her, as she has no family.

When a letter from an attorney’s office arrives in the mail telling Hal she has been named as a beneficiary in the will of a Mrs. When we meet Hal, she is up to her neck in trouble, having borrowed some money from a sleazy loan shark who keeps changing the terms of her repayment and has sent his goons to deliver a message to her, that message being threat of bodily harm or even worse if she doesn’t cough up 3,000 pounds, which she clearly doesn’t have.Īlthough Hal is a sympathetic character, she’s still pretty savvy and street smart, which is another thing I liked about her, as well as the fact that she also has a bit of a morally gray element that adds even more interesting layers to her personality. There’s no father and no other family in the picture so Hal is all alone in the world and is struggling to make ends meet. The driver was never caught and so Hal was forced to drop out of school and take up her mother’s work in order to keep a roof over her head and food on the table. Hal fell into this line of work a few years earlier when her mother, also a tarot card reader, was struck and killed in a hit-and-run accident. She is a 21-year-old tarot card reader who works on a pier in Brighton, England. Sympathetic Protagonist: Harriet Westaway (or Hal as she is more often referred to) is a character that tugged on my heartstrings from the first pages of the novel.

While I might not go so far as to call her the Agatha Christie of our day, Ruth Ware is a superb mystery author in her own right.

How did it work out? I’d say the fact that I’ve ordered copies of all of Ware’s novels since finishing this one is a pretty good indicator of how it went. Westaway captivated me, however, and I decided it was past time for me to try my first Ruth Ware novel. I don’t really have any real excuse other than I sometimes tend to shy away from hyped books and this was one of those cases, especially since I’ve seen Ware referred to as the Agatha Christie of our time and that seems like a pretty tall order for any author to try to live up to. MY REVIEW:Įven though I’m typically a huge fan of suspenseful thrillers, for some reason I had not gotten around to trying one of Ruth Ware’s popular novels yet. Published by Gallery/Scout Press on May 29, 2018įTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.

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