Review: Mrs England

Mrs England by Stacey Halls
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.
I am not quite sure how to rate or review this book. It was well-written and drew me into the story. But it was also very slow-paced and I don't think it's going to stay with me for very long. Once I got to the very end, I wasn't sure what the point of everything was. It just kind of left me shrugging my shoulders, but not really invested enough to spend much more time thinking about it.
This book, despite its title, focuses on Ruby, the newly employed nurse to the England family. Ruby moves to their isolated house and does her best to take care of what turns out to be slightly neglected children. Their mother, Mrs. England, seems to be forgetful at best and completely out of touch with reality at worst. She doesn't seem to have or want much of a relationship with her children, and much of the running of the household falls to her husband, Mr. England. Ruby is able to get the nursery back into tip-top shape and creates a wonderful routine for her charges, but begins to wonder if something isn't very wrong in the England home when things go missing, she intercepts enigmatic glances, and various disasters are narrowly averted. Is there something truly wrong with Mrs. England? Is Mr. England hiding secrets?
The author did a wonderful job of creating a setting and drawing the reader into an upper-class home at the turn of the 20th century. The world of Ruby May was described in great detail--almost too much detail. A great portion of the book was spent on describing washing nappies or combing out hair or making sure the pram was ready to be taken out. It got a bit repetitive and slightly boring. There were so many obscure mentions of little "clues" in the story that got lost by the wayside of the "daily life in an early 1900s nursery" that I got frustrated and needed a bit more meat and a lot less filler. This really threw off the pacing of the book. The real "story" of the book became more and more ephemeral as it went on and I wasn't sure where I should be grasping at it and what was a red herring or just a detail mentioned in passing. There were also quite a few weird interactions between the characters that I wasn't sure what was supposed to be important and what was just strange.
This wasn't a bad book, it was just slow and felt slightly disjointed. I liked Ruby and I was rooting for her, even if I didn't always agree with her decisions. I will say that I wasn't quite sure what to make of the last three sentences in the book.
If you like VERY slow-burning gothic mysteries, maybe this is the book for you. I don't think it was the book for me, though.

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