Books For The Road - The Rumor by Elin Hilderbrand

Ever play Jenga? It's that tower of 54 blocks that starts out solidly stacked and one by one you pull out a piece and place it on top of the tower. Eventually the tower gets very unstable and collapses. I felt like that was a good analogy for The Rumor by Elin Hilderbrand. Let me explain.

I picked the book for no particular reason other than is was on some list at the library and I thought the title intriguing. Once I got into the story it became like that game of Jenga. The story takes place on the small island of Nantucket which already lends itself to a perfect petri dish for growing rumors and gossip.

Once introduced to the characters, good friends Grace and Madeline, and their families, you get the first hint of a rumor. It's quite an innocent moment but taken out of context and scrambled like another children's game of telephone where a phrase is whispered around a circle and usually ends up being totally unrecognizable by the end of the line it becomes a festering pot of gossip.

There are things that could be gossiped about that are truly happening, like an affair between Grace and her gardener but the untrue rumor of Madeline and Grace's husband, Eddie, seems to take center stage.

Read on and on and the Jenga tower gets more unstable and you are just waiting for it to crash. And it does. Perhaps not in all the ways you might have thought but the conclusion is satisfying and the reading easy. A good book for a summer vacation if you haven't had one yet. I wouldn't suggest it if you're going to an island though. You might look suspiciously at all those residents and wonder just what's going on there.