Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North: From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, 3)

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I read A LOT of books, so a few weeks after I finish one, I am often forgetting the details of story. This is the beautifully written and endlessly touching third book of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry trilogy. Unlike her husband Harold who made friends along the way in his journey, Maureen finds it difficult to be kind to people and bristles at interactions with others.

It may only have the physical heft of a novella but Rachel Joyce’s angry-sad latest packs the weight of a long marriage into the space of several well-ironed handkerchiefs.When Harold gets a note from one of the new friends he made along his way which says she read that Queenie had made a garden with “a monument to your son”, Maureen knows she wants to see it. 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. I love that THIS book, is helping Harold Fry and Queenie Hennessy find a whole new audience with its release!

Harold's walk and Queenie's death was 10 years ago, and Maureen decides to make her own pilgrimage to Queenie's seaside garden, hoping to find the monument to her son David that she's heard about. Am I going to find out next that the gentle, kind neighbor Rex has to go through some terrible, health threatening trial before he can be happy, when I have innocently thought he was content all along. Rex, their neighbor remains a friend and agrees to look out for Harold when Maureen embarks on a short trip up north for a purpose close to her heart. Captive in her disability, she connects with sweet little Maple, Kate’s granddaughter, and eventually, finally, Maureen comes to terms with her grief over David.Maureen is interested in visiting it to see a driftwood marker dedicated to David, Maureen and Harold's son. Thank You to Random House for the invitation to read an early copy of this book, provided through NetGalley! I had read both The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessyand really enjoyed it, so I was happy to pick up this third book in the Harold Fry series.

A beautiful and poignant novel although I must admit to being a bit bemused by the choice of title - the 'Angel of the North' only gets a passing reference during Maureen's journey north and I thought perhaps 'Maureen Fry and the Garden of Relics' would have been a better reflection of the content. For example, I loved The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, but did not care for The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. By the story's end, Maureen had thawed somewhat and grew a bit more understanding of other people and herself.

As we are given a window into her thoughts and feelings, you can feel Maureen’s pain, confusion, guilt and grief. As we have seen her through the previous two books, ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ and “The Love Song of Queenie Hennessy’ she begins as quite an unlikeable character. While I can’t say I would be overly happy to be staying in such a place either, it provided a very humble backdrop for a lot of her journey.