Ruby Falls by Deborah Goodrich Royce
☆☆☆1/2
.PDF, 227 pages
Expected Publication: May 4th 2021 by Post Hill Press
About the Book:
On a brilliantly sunny July day, six-year-old Ruby is abandoned by her father in the suffocating dark of a Tennessee cave. Twenty years later, transformed into soap opera star Eleanor Russell, she is fired under dubious circumstances. Fleeing to Europe, she marries a glamorous stranger named Orlando Montague and keeps her past closely hidden. Together, Eleanor and Orlando start afresh in LA. Setting up house in a storybook cottage in the Hollywood Hills, Eleanor is cast in a dream role—the lead in a remake of Rebecca. As she immerses herself in that eerie gothic tale, Orlando’s personality changes, ghosts of her past re-emerge, and Eleanor fears she is not the only person in her marriage with a secret.
My Review:
Expected Publication: May 4th 2021 by Post Hill Press
About the Book:
On a brilliantly sunny July day, six-year-old Ruby is abandoned by her father in the suffocating dark of a Tennessee cave. Twenty years later, transformed into soap opera star Eleanor Russell, she is fired under dubious circumstances. Fleeing to Europe, she marries a glamorous stranger named Orlando Montague and keeps her past closely hidden. Together, Eleanor and Orlando start afresh in LA. Setting up house in a storybook cottage in the Hollywood Hills, Eleanor is cast in a dream role—the lead in a remake of Rebecca. As she immerses herself in that eerie gothic tale, Orlando’s personality changes, ghosts of her past re-emerge, and Eleanor fears she is not the only person in her marriage with a secret.
My Review:
Whatever fate awaits me inside the walls of this cottage, I am in its possession.
It can have me now. I can no longer resist it.
This was a very quick read for me, one sitting. Not only because it is a fairly short book but an absorbing one too. I liked the way it introduces various gothic elements - menacing visions, female paranoia, a slight supernatural edge - without them ever taking over.
My one criticism (and, hence, the dropping of half a star) is the incredibly clichéd final reveal. That aside, this is an absorbing homage to the classic du Maurier Rebecca. If you like domestic thrillers with a gothic edge this is likely to be a good choice. Deborah Goodrich Royce writes eloquently yet in an unobtrusive way and I was soon gripped by this book and reluctant to put it down.
Disclosure:
Thank you NetGalley, Deborah Goodrich Royce and Post Hill Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an impartial review; all opinions are my own.
#NetGalley
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