Niki’s Review: The Spinster’s Fortune by Mary Kendall

Let me start off by saying I’m a sucker for things that are based on true stories when they are done right. Oh boy, is this one done right.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and, in fact, I read over half of it in one sitting and only stopped because I didn’t want to finish it in a day. I highly recommend this book. It’s wonderfully written and absolutely captivating.

It's written from two perspectives: Margaret and Blanche.

Margaret has never been particularly close to her family. It seems to be a universal trait in her relatives, actually. Blanche, her elderly aunt, is taken to a home for indigent folks when some truths start to come to light. First, there is some confusion about her aunt’s identity. Once that’s straightened out, they have to deal with the money. It turns out her aunt may not be as indigent as it seems. The run-down ruin she’d lived in her whole life has been targeted by treasure-seekers who are finding handfuls of cash hidden inside the walls.

Margaret, as next of kin, is called in to help. At first, her motives are pretty selfish: find the money and use it to save the family business that’s failing. However, as the recovery is underway, she bonds with Blanche and learns a lot about her family. She uncovers the skeleton in the closet (or, the underground tunnel as it were).

Margaret’s journey isn’t easy, but she comes out the other side with a better understanding of who she is and what she wants from life.

I just don’t have enough nice things to say about the novel. Kendall did an amazing job and I absolutely love it and I think you should go grab your copy now!

***Spoilers Below***

We open with a prologue from Balance. She’s at Blue Plains (the indigent old folks home, or ‘poor house’ as Blanche calls it) and having a bit of memory issues. She can’t remember if she’s hidden all the money. I know some people are whatever about prologues, but when done well, I really like them. And I really liked this one.

Then we jump to Margaret. She gets a telegram (it’s 1929) about vandals at Emily Magruder’s home and Margaret is listed as the closest relative. Margaret is stressed about this new burden. Taking care of her aunt, that she’s hardly met and was never particularly close to, is just another thing she doesn’t want to deal with. You see, she runs a horse barn and the business isn’t doing great at the moment. Her husband Keith comes home and they discuss the issue of the sisters (Blanche and Emily. Blanche died some time ago and Emily is the one who let the house fall into its current state).

To be fair though, the house was quite the disaster long before. Margaret and Keith had gone to visit some ten years before only to find the house cluttered with trash and other messes, and the only way in was the back door. The tea set they used was filthy and the yard was littered with debris.

Later, Keith drops Margaret off at the lawyer’s office to discuss the home. They inform her that the vandals ransacking the house are finding loads of cash. So far, four thousand has been recovered. They also inform her that though everyone thought Blanche had died, it had really been Emily and Blanch had, for reasons unknown, assumed Emily’s identity.

We switch back to Blanche. She’s in her own home, before going to Blue plains. She’s on a mission to hide a stash of money her family had kept in a teak box. $40,000 (keeping in mind the time of this taking place - that's a lot of cash). She seems in a hurry to do so. She starts tucking rolls of cash behind all the paintings and is happy, thinking Emily would be proud of her. She flashes back to when Emily died and remembers even farther back to when her fiancé, Blackwell, died in the war.

Meanwhile, another time jump to the present, Margaret is on her way to blue plains to figure out of the whole name mix-up happened. They need to determine if there was some legal, fraudulent reason, or if Blanche is just ‘confused’. During the competency hearing, Blanche is asked if she recognizes her niece and she say’s “Lilli Lamb is not in this room.” We will get to know Lilli. They reveal Blanche was taken to Blue Plains after going outside and collapsing in the street.

Lilli gets ahold of Margaret and they meet for lunch. The truth comes out. Lilli knows about the money and since she dropped in on the sisters more often than Margaret did, she thinks she is due the cash. Margaret, with the legal documentation showing her as next of kin, rebuffs Lilli and heads to Blanche’s house to help find all the ‘hidden treasure’. The recovery efforts aren’t going well, but Margaret suggests looking behind the paintings, and low-and-behold, they find a good chunk of cash. Margaret, in the future, will be very good at finding Blanche’s hiding spots. She finds cash in coffee cans, stuffed into coffee cans, and stashed away in books.

We go back to Blanche hiding the money. She remembers how much she disliked Lilli and really didn’t look forward to her unexpected visits. On one visit, Lilli admitted she knew about the money and the box it was hidden in. Blanche and Emily play dumb and pretend they know nothing about it.

Meanwhile, trouble is brewing with Margaret and her husband Keith. Turns out he’s an alcoholic and has a few other annoying issues and he really doesn’t like the lawyer helping with Blanche's case, Mr. Brady one bit. He seems a bit jelly, or possibly it’s that whole ‘cheaters think you’re cheating thing’ here. I don’t know, call me crazy, but I don’t like Keith. He always seems so smarmy and even when he’s charming, it feels sleezy to me. This is from Margaret’s perspective though, so maybe this is just how she’s feeling about him at the moment. There are also some very serious sparks between Margaret and Mr. Brady, so Keith isn’t totally an idiot for picking up on it. Margaret and Mr. Brady though keep it all very professional.

Lilli Lamb rears her head again. She wants half the money they find, and she mentions the teak box. No one has found such a thing (because Blanche threw it down the well when she was done stashing the money). Family legend stated there was ‘treasure’ in the well (I think they are referring to Blanche’s wedding ring which she’d tossed in after hearing of Blackwell’s death). Margaret and Lilli make a deal, they will search the well and anything in there that turns up will be Lilli’s. Everything else will be for taking care of Blanche and then for Margaret.

They check the well and find the box. Of course, it’s empty. Margaret knew nothing of the box, but Lilli knew enough to know that it ‘held a fortune’ at some point. She had no way to know that the fortune had been hidden around the house. This made me smile. Margaret took a gamble that we, the reader, knew would pay off, but she didn’t know that it would. Lilli irritates me so I like when she loses. Nothing else of value is found in the well. Makes sense. An engagement ring is tiny and at this point would have been in there for like 60 years.

Blanche breaks out of the home and sneaks through the tunnels to her old house. She’s dismayed by the state of it since so much is missing. Instead of taking her back to Blue Plains, they take her to a much nicer place where she will have her own room.

I can’t go much farther without giving away Blanche’s secrets (I’d figured part of it out before but there was more to it than I thought and it was worth being surprised!), as well as Margaret’s arc. She’s a really great character.

What I will say is that I like Keith even less by the end. Lilli loses again. Margaret finally gets to know someone in her family and starts to make amends with her sister who’d drifted away. It’s a great ending and this book is absolutely worth reading.

This is one of those books that is hard to put down. I could have read it all in one sitting if I hadn’t stopped myself for things like food. I’m really glad I found it and read it. It’s just excellent and Kendall did an amazing job writing it.

If you’re interested in checking out Mary Kendall, she’s got a website and is on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.