Short, exquisite, while it stands in its own right, it is also the moving finale to a trilogy that began with the phenomenal bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and continued with The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy.

For example, I loved The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, but did not care for The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. When Maureen sets out on her journey, she doesn't realise that she's going to find her true self, but ultimately that is what she does.But if you loved those books and those characters as I did, don’t miss this one, a story focused on Harold’s wife bringing the reader full circle around the lives of these characters. I hope to introduce new features during 2022 and join the Bookstagram community on Instagram properly, so come and follow me there too! Maureen Fry and the angel of the north by Rachel Joyce is the third book in the Harold Fry series and I can’t believe it is ten years from the first book. They had been living in the same home, but fairly estranged prior to his walk-and she didn’t come across as the warmest person, BUT-was she really okay with it, when it all began? I read mainly Mysteries and Thrillers, with over half of my reads being Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) directly from the publisher/author.

Thus this journey is not an easy one for her – neither the drive nor the memories but it is a journey that will affect change in the way she views the world, the people around her and most importantly herself. We all have some Maureen inside us, and so the journey we take with her across England and into her own personal tumult is a satisfying, visceral one. Slipping out of home and on to the moor behind, she is watched by her neighbour and missed by her teenage son. A few years have passed since Harold’s trek to see Queenie at the hospice, and since we heard Queenie’s story before she passed.There has been too much hurt and embarrassment from her childhood belief that she was the center of the world and that she would be the one to conquer it every step of the way. Now, ten years later, an unexpected message from the North disturbs her equilibrium again, and this time it is Maureen’s turn to make her own journey.

Reading her prose is like listening to great music - sometimes soft and sweet, sometimes heart-rending, always beguiling. And so she decides it is her turn to take a journey, a journey that ends up being fraught with frustrations, fear and pain, but also a sense of gratitude for the opportunity to say goodbye. I enjoyed this every bit as much as The Love Songs of Queenie Hennessy, and rather more than The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

Maureen has never been a very likeable character and most of the time I wonder how Harold puts up with her. As it is this final epitaph held middling interest with me- only providing a burst or two of emotional nirvana towards the end.