Book Review: The Rule of Three by E.G. Scott

About the Book

Once a week, three women get together for book club in Kingsland, a private, gated community full of neighbors looking to do their business away from prying eyes. On the same night, their husbands meet up to play poker, where much more is being planned than anyone could guess.

But on this particular night, something goes terribly wrong. When all three men end up dead or hospitalized, and the entire town is being questioned, no one seems to be able to answer the only question that really needs asking: What the hell happened?

This is a riveting story, not just of powerful women or vengeful men, but of secrets, neighbors, blackmail, business gone wrong, and the most intimate of desires spilling into full view.

The Review

I think I’m just over domestic thrillers… This one was fine. There was nothing objectionable – beyond three protagonists who were difficult to keep straight as they alternated as the pointnarrative voice in the chapters. It made things somewhat confusing – although in hindsight may have been intentional, given the subject at hand. Regardless, it meant I had to keep flipping back to chapter headers to see who was talking and to earlier references to remind myself which husband went with which wife.

I saw the big reveal coming within the first few pages frankly, but that’s okay – that doesn’t always ruin a story. When you read as many books as I. do eventually it gets difficult to throw together twists that are truly and completely unanticipated. Clever plotting and pacing means that even if you see where things are going, the journey to get there can still be a fully enjoyable one. There was some cleverness here certainly, but I must confess that on the whole the characters and concepts felt like things I had read before numerous times.

Add to that the incredibly similar three main characters and a pair of detectives who seemed truly clueless and not all that interesting, and the result was a book that I didn’t mind reading but that didn’t really leave much of a mark on me. Every book doesn’t have to – I don’t expect everything to be a life changing experience. Sometimes it’s nice to just be entertained for a while. And I was entertained – but I think I may be done with this genre for a while because the entertainment was neither as engaging nor as effective as I wanted it to be…

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my obligation-free review copy.