Mrs England by Stacey Halls
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Thank you to the publisher, MIRA, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of Mrs. England in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
The Gist
Have you ever been so disappointed by a book that you didn’t even want to write the review, because you really did not want to think of it any longer?
Yup, that’s me right now. I can’t be bothered. On top of that, the majority of the reviews for Mrs. England are rather positive. So, what’s going on?
Do I just happen to be one of the few, who feel unimpressed by Mrs. England? Or did I miss something?
I don’t know. But I can tell you why I wasn’t the greatest fan of this story.
The Details
The protagonist, Ruby, is very inconsistent throughout Mrs. England. I wasn’t sure if she is just one of the moody sort, has some type of depression, or suffers from a split personality. She just keeps flopping back and forth, which makes for an unsatisfactory read.
The rest of the characters are pretty basic minor characters. Relatively one-dimensional, very predictable and for the most part not well developed or thought through.
The plot feels heavily inspired by Brontë’s Jane Eyre and I could feel a sort of The Yellow Wallpaper by Gilman vibe. Something about the premise and delivery of the story lack passion.
The entire story is built on the anticipation of something happening, which never occurs. With every page I read I had the impression that the next page would bring some sort of action, conflict, something that would make reading this book worth while. But that never happened.
There are a number of tangents, red herrings and twists that are supposed to keep the anticipation steady. None of them really lead any where and feel more like false promises.
It is deceiving.
The only other reason why I kept reading is because the writing was excellent. I could picture every scene, every room, and every character visually. Unfortunately, this does not make up for the lack in story.
While the writing is good, the amount of detail that is dumped on the reader for roughly 400 pages with very little to no action is very disappointing. Also, Mrs. England wraps up so quickly and on such a random note that I feel robbed of my time reading it.
The Verdict
Overall, I have to say the reason why I’m giving Mrs. England three stars is because of the author’s writing skill. If the quality of the writing had been a little worse, I would have stopped reading this story a long time ago.
Ultimately, I’m sitting here shrugging my shoulders, kind of happy that now I’m done with Mrs. England.
About the Author
Stacey Halls grew up in Rossendale, Lancashire. She studied journalism at the University of Central Lancashire and has written for publications including the Guardian, Stylist, Psychologies, the Independent, the Sun and Fabulous. Both of her first two novels, The Familiars and The Lost Orphan, were Sunday Times bestsellers, Mrs England is her third novel.
