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Ursula’s Secret by Mairi Wilson reviewed by Jennifer Joyce
Lexy Shaw is grieving the death of her mother when she learns about the sudden death of her mother’s guardian, Ursula. Though Lexy hasn’t seen Ursula since she was a child, Ursula has left everything to her in her will. While at Ursula’s flat, Lexy discovers a file of papers that could change everything she ever knew about herself and her mother and sends her on a journey to Africa to discover the secrets that have been kept hidden for decades.
Ursula’s Secret sounded like such an intriguing read with lots of skeletons waiting in closets to be discovered by Lexy. I had a couple of vague ideas of what the secrets may have been but none of them matched what Lexy actually discovers as she travels to Africa to delve into Ursula’s – and her mother’s – past. The book did turn out to be intriguing and I did enjoy it on the whole but I had a few niggles throughout. The file that Lexy finds in Ursula’s flat contains a lot of the story we find out but instead of reading it straight away, Lexy lugs it all the way to Africa and drip-feeds it to herself in between conversations with locals who knew either her mother or Ursula. I understand that if she’d read it all in one go, it wouldn’t have made for a very long novel, but it didn’t make sense that she would do this if she was so eager to find out the truth. I found a lot of the book overly drawn out, which could be frustrating.
Another niggle for me was Lexy herself. I didn’t warm to her at all as she is quite a bad-tempered and demanding character, especially when it comes to her ex-boyfriend, Danny. She’s snappy and easily irritable so I lacked the sympathy I usually have with a main character who is thrust into a situation such as Lexy is. There were times when I just wanted to tell her to back off or shut up – or both. I didn’t find her to be a likeable character at all.
There is quite a good story in there but it took a lot of effort to plough through to it.
7/10
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