Before I get into Bellweather Rhapsody, let’s conduct a quick poll amongst the viewing audience. Hands up everyone here who loves The Westing Game.
Okay, yes, that is what I assumed. Well, your luck’s in because Bellweather Rhapsody is pretty much The Westing Game for grown-ups, except instead of a murder, they’re trying to solve a suicide; and instead of a block of rental flats, it’s a hotel people are staying at during a statewide musical convention for musically talented youths; and instead of an inheritance they’re all competing for, it’s the potential for a full and happy life.
Twenty years ago, flower girl Minnie Graves and concierge Harold Hastings each witnessed a murder-suicide in the Bellweather Hotel. Now Minnie is returning to the scene of the crime in a bid to quiet her unbearable anxiety and nearly nonstop fear. Teenage twins Rabbit and Alice Hatmaker1 are trying to sort out who they are as people, separately and together and in the music world and in high school and in college. And chaperone Natalie Wink Wilson is stunned to come face to face with an abusive music teacher from her childhood.
So the impetus to read this book was that Margaret H. Willison mentioned it on Pop Culture Happy Hour as a readalike to Fangirl, which just goes to show you that people can read the same book and take away completely different things from it. (She explained her reasoning to me on Twitter, and it’s super solid; it’s just not what I cared about when I was reading Fangirl.)2 Once I let go of the expectation that Bellweather Rhapsody would be like Fangirl and accepted that it was going to be like The Westing Game, I had a highly joyous reading experience.
The best thing, and I’ll do my best to describe this without the use of spoilers, is that although there’s a dramatic climax after which the many mysteries and crises and emotional arcs in the book (and there are many) are quickly resolved — and that dramatic climax is a pleasing one — the actual resolutions to those mysteries and crises and arcs are all feelings stuff. Your response is (and is intended to be) more “oh of course” than “GASP GUN MURDER!”, which is a type of resolution that draws me more and more as I get older and more cynicaler.
There are other small delights to the ending of this book, but I’ll leave them for you to discover. Feel free to stop by the comments and ask me how I felt about Rabbit and the boy he gets a crush on. I HAVE THOUGHTS. Also, please tell me who your favorite Westing Game character is. There are no wrong answers.