Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into a beloved classic The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, which was originally published in 1978 and had a strong following from all age groups. To this day it’s still held to a high standard and I was excited to get to check it out for the first time.
My Review
I usually do a character description to start off my reviews but I won’t be doing one for The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin because there are a lot of characters in this book and I am not sure I was fully able to wrap my head around each one. There is definitely the main set of characters that pop up the most throughout the book but I feel like if I expose who they are I kind of expose the secrets of the book and I wanted to avoid that. For such a short book I wasn’t expecting there to be so many characters, it makes sense why there are, so it didn’t make it too complicated to keep up, I just have a funky brain so I got a little confused here and there and mixed up a few characters.
When I saw the blurb for The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin it gave me The Most Dangerous Game vibes which drew me to it. I always enjoy checking out classic twisty novels because I feel like you can see through them how the popularity of the genre continued. Correct me if I am wrong but I believe The Westing Game is labelled for all ages and I would agree that while there are exciting more violent parts to the plot it’s a very tame book with low gore or scary things. If you enjoy softer mysteries I would definitely recommend checking this one out.
I gave The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin a 7.5/10 rating overall. I really enjoyed the plot and following along the game with the characters, but as mentioned before there were some elements to the book that personally tripped me up. A lot of my dislike of the book is for definitely more personal reasons and just things I struggled to follow in the book.
In The Westing Game, a chain of events is set off when Samuel Westing heir to the Westing estate is found dead in his home. Samuel Westing was no average man and in his life enjoyed playing elaborate games and pulling tricks on the people around him. So why wouldn’t he continue after death? Upon his death 6 home units, 2 restaurants, and one office, were filled with people who didn’t realize that they all just didn’t receive a random invite to come check out the new and exclusive Sunset Towers, they were brought here for a reason. 16 people with seemingly no connection, all living in the same building, are told that all are Samuel’s relatives, and all will compete in a game to see who will win his inheritance. Just one will win, but further on the 16 ended Samuel Westing’s life, and it’s up to the rest to sniff them out and not let them win the inheritance. The different parts of the game will potentially expose the killer, but will the killer figure it all out first and beat everyone to it? And who is the killer and how did they know they were related to Samuel Westing when most others had no clue? Even from the grave Samuel Westing is playing his games and making people squirm.
I really enjoyed how the story was spun. I could perfectly imagine Sunset Towers in my head, and I just enjoyed imagining all these unsuspecting people living together only to be thrown into this elaborate game to win all of this money. It was interesting to see how the characters were before they started the game to after it started and how the idea of money threw a lot of people’s morals out the window. It also allowed people the opportunity to explore their darker sides in a way that was presented as appropriate because there was an inheritance on the line. I also really enjoyed as well that an element to the game is that everyone is paired up with someone from a different household. It was interesting to see how other characters valued or devalued their partners, the disabled people for example being seen as bad partners to have, and the local doctor a good one to have. One character for example has a severe stutter and he is seen as inapt mentally when really it’s just that his mouth can’t always present what’s going on in his head.
As said before one issue I had was all the different characters in this book. I will say with how many there are I felt like I actually did a pretty decent job keeping everyone together but I definitely got things mixed up from time to time. There definitely are differing factors to each character to help you keep them different from each other but for me personally, it just wasn’t enough and there were just too many people. As things continue in the book the characters do lessen and we kind of get left with a cast of main characters of sorts but it is still a lot. For such a short book I think if the characters were cut down just by a few it would have been a bit more digestible for me.
Going into this book I was aware that it could be read by all ages but it was maybe a bit too young for my personal liking. When I’ve read classics in the past that all age ranges can read I didn’t find them to be as childish as this one was. I don’t say childish as an insult at all there is nothing wrong with that, but it just felt like to me that this book may suit younger audiences a bit more. I would love to hear what other adults who have checked it out before thought about the content and whether you found it to be a bit more on the younger side as well. I think if maybe a few things had been adjusted in the book I wouldn’t have figured out the ending early on but I felt like it was pretty clear in the first half what the ending was going to be, but that’s just me. Seeing what was coming didn’t make me want to stop reading at all and if anything I was a bit more curious to see if I was right.
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin is a cozy mystery for all to enjoy. With twisty elements of the classic whodunnit, and the riveting aspect of a wealthy inheritance to be won by a normal person, or a killer, brings in many surprises. I would definitely recommend checking this one out if you enjoy the classics, but also enjoy elements of mystery and thrill. I am surprised this book never came my way until the last few years but it definitely got me thinking about other classics I want to check out.
Has anyone else checked out The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin before? What did you think?
Thank you for checking out this review, I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review!
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