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A review by paulabrandon
The Rumour by Lesley Kara
2.0
Predictable and mostly boring "psychological thriller".
The set-up is good: Joanna Critchley finds herself telling friends at book club about the rumour that a a 10-year-old girl who killed a five-year-old boy 50 years ago is now living in their small town under an assumed identity. In an effort to befriend other mums at her son's school, she tells the rumour to them as well. Soon, the story has made its way across town, to the point where a town resident has been singled out as the child killer and is being harassed. However, the story will have further impact on Joanna's own life as well.
Unfortunately, the book doesn't really do much with the concept. A lot of the book felt like filler, with Joanna being all insecure over her relationship with her son's father, a freelance journalist who wants to do a book on Sally McGowan, the aforementioned child killer. He's suddenly come back into her life, wanting to make a real go at being a couple and blah blah blah zzz zzz zzz. Joanna is a real estate agent, so we get a description of every room of every house that Joanna visits throughout the book. B-O-R-I-N-G.
Too many characters are fluttering about through the pages of the book. There are women from Joanna's book club. There are women who are other mothers at the school. There's a woman selling a house and a woman who wants to buy it. A lot of these women are in their late 50s, just to make sure we have as many red herrings and suspects as possible. But aside from Twitter threats and another mild threat at the school, suspense is thin on the ground. The only mystery really lying at the heart of this is the identity of Sally McGowan.
I twigged most of the plot twists before they happened. The climax was reasonably decent, so I enjoyed that events capped off with some actual suspense and dread. But getting there was sometimes quite the hard slog.
The final twist was obvious, insulting and lazy.
The set-up is good: Joanna Critchley finds herself telling friends at book club about the rumour that a a 10-year-old girl who killed a five-year-old boy 50 years ago is now living in their small town under an assumed identity. In an effort to befriend other mums at her son's school, she tells the rumour to them as well. Soon, the story has made its way across town, to the point where a town resident has been singled out as the child killer and is being harassed. However, the story will have further impact on Joanna's own life as well.
Unfortunately, the book doesn't really do much with the concept. A lot of the book felt like filler, with Joanna being all insecure over her relationship with her son's father, a freelance journalist who wants to do a book on Sally McGowan, the aforementioned child killer. He's suddenly come back into her life, wanting to make a real go at being a couple and blah blah blah zzz zzz zzz. Joanna is a real estate agent, so we get a description of every room of every house that Joanna visits throughout the book. B-O-R-I-N-G.
Too many characters are fluttering about through the pages of the book. There are women from Joanna's book club. There are women who are other mothers at the school. There's a woman selling a house and a woman who wants to buy it. A lot of these women are in their late 50s, just to make sure we have as many red herrings and suspects as possible. But aside from Twitter threats and another mild threat at the school, suspense is thin on the ground. The only mystery really lying at the heart of this is the identity of Sally McGowan.
I twigged most of the plot twists before they happened. The climax was reasonably decent, so I enjoyed that events capped off with some actual suspense and dread. But getting there was sometimes quite the hard slog.
The final twist