Audible Review: Elin Hilderbrand's The Rumor

One of the biggest challenges about traveling for work is the obscenely long amounts of time I spend in the car alone. I don't mind being by myself at all, but spending upwards of six hours alone in a rental car every day gets old. Quick.

When I first started, I would go to our local library and check out books on CD so I would have something to hold my attention while I navigated the back roads of America. For some reason I fell out of the habit and relied solely on the radio. I don't care what anyone says, there's only so long before listening to the radio gets repetitive. I am convinced satellite radio only has three CDs to pull from.

Over four days on my last trip I spent 17 hours in the car alone. I was dying. My husband, in one of his more annoying habits, is addicted to listening to books on tape through Audible. I swear the man never not has his earbuds plugged in. During what seemed like my third desperate call of the day to get him, someone, anyone, to talk to me, he suggested I download Audible and listen to a book.

I really liked being able to have a book through my speakers without having to remember to go to the library, or be at the mercy of their selections. Since I was searching for a title while I was pumping gas, I saw Elin Hilderbrand's The Rumor, and went for it pretty quickly.

I wish I hadn't.

This is the second of Hilderbrand's books I've read, and while I did enjoy parts of The Rumor. It was seemingly a little repetitive of the first I'd read, Nantucket Nights.

Both books are set on Nantucket, are focused on a group of extremely close girlfriends, and are propelled by a scandal. Granted, the scandals in each are different, but both stories felt very similar.

I don't know if I would have drawn the parallel, and been as disappointed in the writing as I was, if I hadn't read them back to back.

I have a third Hilderbrand book, The Blue Bistro, that a friend passed to me, and I will admit I buried it a little on my shelf to give myself a Nantucket summer scandal break.

All in all, I would give The Rumor three stars, if only because it seems like Hilderbrand is just writing what she knows, as a Nantucket resident herself. The story was filled with trite suspense and lots and lots of sex.