The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett by Annie Lyons
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks
Publication date: September 8, 2020
Genres: Book Clubs, Fiction, Vacation Reading
Bookshop
I’m moving away from terror today with The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett. Eudora is 85 years old, has never married, and lives quietly in her London rowhouse. She’s in reasonable health, but is tired of the idiocy of the modern world and afraid that because she has no family she’s going to spend her last days in a government facility with doctors trying to prolong her life. To prevent that, she contacts a clinic in Switzerland that offers death with dignity services and begins undergoing the application process.
In the midst of this she gets new neighbors who have an exuberant 10-year-old daughter named Rose. Because it’s summertime and Eudora has a cat, Rose starts showing up regularly at her house. Eudora is annoyed, but she’s also a quintessential British woman of a certain age and so remains polite at all times. Soon Rose has roped in another elderly neighbor, Stanley, for all her ‘fun’ activities and Eudora’s life gets much busier—even when she doesn’t want it to.
I don’t read a lot of cozy novels, but these days I have no idea what’s going to click for me and what’s not so I gave Eudora Honeysett a try. At the 60% point I was ready to DNF it because several of the elements felt like things I’d already read. Instead, I kept going and by the novel’s end I almost teared up. Not for the freshness or uniqueness of what was happening on the page but for the pure, simple emotion. Each of the characters is well written and relatable and if they’re a little bit formulaic, it’s all right. The same is true of the message and the theme, they’re uncomplicated and straightforward. The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett may teeter on the edge of too sweet, but it never falls into silliness and I’m happy I read it.
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