Maureen by Rachel Joyce: Book Review

Maureen is the third and final book in the Harold Fry trilogy by Rachel Joyce. With an anticipated release date of February 7, readers are able to learn Maureen’s side of the tale and how she has coped with her own grief.

I want to thank Random House, Dial Press Trade Paperback, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of Maureen. All opinions presented here are solely mine.

CW/TW: grief, mental health, COVID-19

Synopsis from Goodreads

Maureen Fry has settled into the quiet life she shares with her husband after his iconic walk across England ten years ago. When an unexpected message from the North disturbs her equilibrium again, it is now her turn to make a journey. But Maureen is not like Harold. By turns outspoken, then vulnerable, she struggles to form bonds with the people she meets, and the landscape she crosses has radically changed. And Maureen has no sense of what she will find at the end of the road. All she knows is that she has to get there.

Maureen is a deeply felt, lyrical, and powerful novel, full of warmth and kindness, about love, loss, and how we come to terms with the past in order to understand ourselves and our lives a little better. While it stands alone, it is also the extraordinarily moving finale to a trilogy that began with the phenomenal bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and continued in The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. What was started by Harold, only Maureen can complete.

My Thoughts

I was first introduced to Harold Fry in 2016 and truly enjoyed his story. I quickly followed that up with Queenie’s story a few months later. Maureen was a person who I wished to know more about, but I didn’t know I needed her story too until I saw it announced that she was getting her own tale. Where Harold’s is a tale of forgiveness and Queenie’s is about understanding, Maureen’s is about letting go.

Maureen is a mother without a child, even 30 years after his death. She has tried to move on and enjoy life, but she can’t without her son. She feels the world has lost its glow and that happiness shouldn’t be allowed. As someone who has lost someone very close to me recently, I can completely understand Maureen’s feelings. On her journey, she learns more about herself, who she was, and who she can be.

Written as a pandemic project, there are references to the pandemic and the restrictions throughout. My only wish for the book is that it could have been longer than the 192 pages. Why? So I could see more of Maureen’s growth and acceptance of the world as it is now.

If you have read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, you can’t miss out on reading Maureen. Each book in the series is more of a companion novel than a true series. But, there are events in the previous books referenced in Maureen.

Are you looking for a short read that has some major character development? Look no further than Maureen by Rachel Joyce.

Looking for some more books to read? Check out my bookish lists, book reviews, and monthly reading wrap-ups.