Minnie Price married late in life. Now she is widowed. And starving.

No one suspects this respectable church-goer can barely keep body and soul together. Why would they, while she resides in the magnificent home she shared with Peter?

Her friends and neighbors are oblivious to her plight and her adult stepchildren have their own reasons to make things worse rather than better. But she is thrown a lifeline when an associate of her late husband arrives with news of an investment about which her step-children know nothing.
Can she release the funds before she finds herself homeless and destitute?

Fans of ‘The Hoarder’s Widow’ will enjoy this sequel, but it reads equally well as a standalone.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

… her mind was still on the ashes. She imagined some flunkey heaving them out of a bucket on to the ground, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, his shirt not tucked in. Perhaps they’d be mixed with someone else’s. She didn’t like to think of Peter being part of a medley of other dead people. She had never visited the garden of remembrance. It might be a desolate, litter-strewn corner; unkempt, unvisited.

… she had a dry sense of humour, an ability to make everyday things amusing. Today she spoke of a new volunteer at the charity shop who had already jammed the till twice and rubbed a donor up the wrong way by suggesting the paperback books he had brought in were ‘filth.’

Truth be told, the project Maisie suggests appalls him, (an image assaults him, fleeting though vivid, of his mother laundering the rags of hoboes and asylum-seekers, and combing the lice from the matted beards of down-and-outs,) but he would rather die than say so. Dilemma turns him thin-lipped and rheumy-eyed; his thinning hair reveals a scaly flair-up of psoriasis on the narrow dome of his head.

She leafed through the brochures. ‘I’ve never been to Morocco,’ she mused, ‘I expect it’s similar to Egypt, though. The young men are beautiful – there’s no other word to describe them – but by the time they’re forty over-exposure to the sun and inadequate dentistry turns them all into goblins

Jessica perches on the end of Amy’s lounger and eats the olives which have been put there for Amy to enjoy. She does not think she has ever seen such an elderly person before but in her experience the older a person is the more likely they are to have both the time and the wisdom to answer her questions. ‘Tell me about the olden days,’ she says to Amy, ‘when you were alive.’

My Review:

I adored this well-crafted and entertaining tale, it was cleverly written with frequent sneaky slices of delightfully wry humor deftly tucked in which often found me rereading them twice or more while giggle-snorting or smirking with each perusal. This was my first exposure to Ms. Cresswell’s writing and I was quickly impressed by her fluid style. The story flowed with a smooth and seamless quality with writing that was often emotive, highly insightful, and perceptively observant.   Her character development was top shelf with each cast member being enticingly quirked and uniquely flawed yet curiously interesting and accessible, regardless of their different walks of life and mannerisms.

I picked up two new items for my Brit List with trews for trousers, and three-line whip – a political term for a strict edict to attend and vote the party line or suffer the consequences. The character referenced was certainly at the mastery level of those – both the decrees and the consequences.