I love me a good chick-lit. I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of The Rumour by Elin Hilderbrand last month and it’s safe to say that this book epitomises the chick-lit genre and everything it stands for.
The story principally follows the friendship between two women and their families – Madeline, an author and her husband and son, and Grace, her best friend and her husband and their twin daughters. The story is set in Nantucket, an island off the coast of Cape Cod and follows the two families over the course of a single summer. The setting is pretty apt if I’m honest with you as it’s a very fabulous beach read. As is probably the case with most small-knit communities, the rumours and the gossip of the island spreads like wildfire and the two friends find themselves caught up in a feud after Grace discovers that Madeline, struggling to write the novel she’s promised to her publishers, has based the plot of her newest tale around the scandalous affair that she has found herself in. There are a number of different twists and turns throughout the book and different scandals make themselves apparent, and chaos seems to be everywhere Madeline turns.
The character relationships in this book were very well formed and I particularly loved the fact that the book had multiple narrators. I feel like this really allowed the audience the opportunity to get to know all of the characters and it definitely added to the overall flow of the novel. I loved that there was more than just one rumour circulating around the island and how everything ended up being interrelated and every character had a purpose in the overall plot of the novel. I really enjoyed reading about the relationship between Grace and Benton, although I must say I don’t condone infidelity in the slightest, as well the blossoming friendship between the twins, Allegra, and Hope.
The book was a very easy read and I got through it incredibly quickly. It was something that allowed me to get back into reading quickly and easily and wasn’t the predictable ending that I expected. The characters, for the most part, were very likeable although I found myself a tad irritated by Grace and the way her character developed. I loved Madeline entirely, on the other hand, and was a bit put out by her decision not to publish the book she deserved to have written.
As always, thanks to the team at Hodder for my copy of the book. I’ll be passing it on to my mother to see whether she enjoys it as much as I did!
4/5
