The Rule Of Three by Sam Ripley
Sep. 6th, 2023 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Don’t forget the Rule of Three
It’s coming for you
Like it came for me.
That’s the one.
That’s the girl who’s going to die.
I didn’t believe in the Rule of Three. Not at first. It was just one of those urban myths you hear about all the time. A story my boyfriend told me about a girl cursed by the number three.
I don’t like urban myths and ghost stories. I don’t get stoned, and I seldom drink, so I’m not going to believe some weird story without seeing the evidence to back it up. As far as it was first tole to me, there was some girl whose parents had killed themselves after her sibling had died in an accident. Which means the girl was doomed to die too because that’s the Rule of Three. Bad things always happen in threes, they say, and they are right.
Because it’s happening again. But this time the curse is coming for me.
And the worst of all?
It’s coming for you, too.
It’s the 1980s.
20-year-old Amy is a college student, but she doesn’t do a lot of studying. She has battled with depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts due to two tragedies that struck when she was a teenager - the death of her older sister Maya in a car accident, and later the suicide of her parents on the night that Amy goes to her first ever party. For the last 6 years (ever since her first suicide attempt), Amy has been seeing a therapist called Llewellyn to try and manage her mental health but she still makes suicide attempts. Her only friend is Lizzy, a fellow student at the college who knows about her past and with whom she spends time drinking and getting high.
When Lizzy makes the off-hand comment that bad things happen in threes, Amy begins to rethink the tragedies that have blighted her life and begins to wonder if something - or someone - is out to get her. Despite herself, she forces herself to look into what happened on the night she went to the party and her parents committed suicide, desperately looking for a way in which she can try to avoid their fate and as she does so, she keeps a journal setting out her findings …
Around 10 years later, Ila is a college student who hears an urban legend about a girl at her college who died thanks to the rule of three. According to the legend, she died because three bad things happened to her - her parents died and her sister - and although Ila knows that this is rubbish, part of her is also intrigued because she too has suffered the loss of both her parents and her brother. When she later hears a story that the girl died three years after her parents who in turn died three years after her sister, her intrigue turns to fear because her brother died three years after her parents and it will soon be the third anniversary of his death.
A hard-working student with a bright future ahead of her, Ila decides to look into the source of this legend and discover if it’s real and as she does, she discovers the blur between fact and fiction and about a real girl called Amy, and how there are those still around the college who knows her story. But strange things are also happening to Ila, things that she can only confide within the journal she keeps of her investigations and what she discovers …
Around another 10 years later, Eve tries to convince a police detective called Lestrange that there is a serial killer on the loose who targets three members of the same family, killing them every three years. She thinks that he has killed 11 people so far, including Ila, Amy and their families and her own parents and sister. She’s done her research and produced a profile and she knows she’s not alone in her theory - everyone on the internet also believes that a serial killer is on the loose. But Lestrange doesn’t believe her, even when she tells him that in a few weeks, she too may well be a body on the killer’s list.
But Eve is determined not to be a victim. She has been researching this killer who she calls Three, digging into how he finds and kills his victims and she makes sure to keep an eye on anyone who tries to get close to her, including newcomers to the group therapy she attends each week - even getting samples of their DNA to her friend, Yoshi, to test. Because Eve is determined not to be Three’s next victim and she will do whatever it takes to bring him down …
Sam Ripley’s thriller blurs the line between urban legend horror and a straight-up serial killer tale but the execution is lacking. The three main characters are difficult to empathise with (each is so messed up that none rung emotionally true) and their stories are heavily contrived (which, is to tie in with the urban legend aspect to make you question them) such that I found it hard to maintain interest. Ultimately, this just wasn’t for me.
I think I get what Ripley (a pseudonym for Andrew Wilson) is trying to do with this book. He’s trying to combine the uncertainty and supernatural mythology of urban legends to tell a serial killer tale. The problem is that the serial killer element of it is completely undeveloped and doesn’t really make sense. I think this is partly intention - to leave the reader wondering if there is a serial killer working or whether each woman authored their own fate - but it left me deeply underwhelmed, especially in Eve’s story where many of the different strands pull together because when you look at it, there are more holes than answers. I did enjoy some of the common characters and how Ripley makes changes to aspects of their character or histories to tie in with the uncertainties of urban legends - particularly the one character who is common to all the sections.
I found it difficult to relate to any of the main characters. Each of them is messed up in their own way but the fact that they are all saddled with the backstory of having dead parents and dead siblings made it seem very artificial. Ripley does have some fun with this in Eve’s plot line (and one of my favourite bits in the book are when Eve’s theories about what happened to Ila and Amy are taken apart by two other members of her therapy group).
The biggest problem I had with the book though is that I guessed the potential serial killer ridiculously early on and even then, the pay off at the end is muted and very low key. As said, earlier a big problem with this is that when you try and work out how the killer did it, it just doesn’t make sense because there are too many holes, precisely because of the urban legend elements.
Ultimately, this just didn’t gel for me and as such, I don’t think I’d rush to read Ripley’s next book.
The Verdict:
Sam Ripley’s thriller blurs the line between urban legend horror and a straight-up serial killer tale but the execution is lacking. The three main characters are difficult to empathise with (each is so messed up that none rung emotionally true) and their stories are heavily contrived (which, is to tie in with the urban legend aspect to make you question them) such that I found it hard to maintain interest. Ultimately, this just wasn’t for me.
THE RULE OF THREE was released in the United Kingdom on 22nd June 2023. Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy of this book.
It’s coming for you
Like it came for me.
That’s the one.
That’s the girl who’s going to die.
I didn’t believe in the Rule of Three. Not at first. It was just one of those urban myths you hear about all the time. A story my boyfriend told me about a girl cursed by the number three.
I don’t like urban myths and ghost stories. I don’t get stoned, and I seldom drink, so I’m not going to believe some weird story without seeing the evidence to back it up. As far as it was first tole to me, there was some girl whose parents had killed themselves after her sibling had died in an accident. Which means the girl was doomed to die too because that’s the Rule of Three. Bad things always happen in threes, they say, and they are right.
Because it’s happening again. But this time the curse is coming for me.
It’s coming for you, too.
It’s the 1980s.
20-year-old Amy is a college student, but she doesn’t do a lot of studying. She has battled with depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts due to two tragedies that struck when she was a teenager - the death of her older sister Maya in a car accident, and later the suicide of her parents on the night that Amy goes to her first ever party. For the last 6 years (ever since her first suicide attempt), Amy has been seeing a therapist called Llewellyn to try and manage her mental health but she still makes suicide attempts. Her only friend is Lizzy, a fellow student at the college who knows about her past and with whom she spends time drinking and getting high.
When Lizzy makes the off-hand comment that bad things happen in threes, Amy begins to rethink the tragedies that have blighted her life and begins to wonder if something - or someone - is out to get her. Despite herself, she forces herself to look into what happened on the night she went to the party and her parents committed suicide, desperately looking for a way in which she can try to avoid their fate and as she does so, she keeps a journal setting out her findings …
Around 10 years later, Ila is a college student who hears an urban legend about a girl at her college who died thanks to the rule of three. According to the legend, she died because three bad things happened to her - her parents died and her sister - and although Ila knows that this is rubbish, part of her is also intrigued because she too has suffered the loss of both her parents and her brother. When she later hears a story that the girl died three years after her parents who in turn died three years after her sister, her intrigue turns to fear because her brother died three years after her parents and it will soon be the third anniversary of his death.
A hard-working student with a bright future ahead of her, Ila decides to look into the source of this legend and discover if it’s real and as she does, she discovers the blur between fact and fiction and about a real girl called Amy, and how there are those still around the college who knows her story. But strange things are also happening to Ila, things that she can only confide within the journal she keeps of her investigations and what she discovers …
Around another 10 years later, Eve tries to convince a police detective called Lestrange that there is a serial killer on the loose who targets three members of the same family, killing them every three years. She thinks that he has killed 11 people so far, including Ila, Amy and their families and her own parents and sister. She’s done her research and produced a profile and she knows she’s not alone in her theory - everyone on the internet also believes that a serial killer is on the loose. But Lestrange doesn’t believe her, even when she tells him that in a few weeks, she too may well be a body on the killer’s list.
But Eve is determined not to be a victim. She has been researching this killer who she calls Three, digging into how he finds and kills his victims and she makes sure to keep an eye on anyone who tries to get close to her, including newcomers to the group therapy she attends each week - even getting samples of their DNA to her friend, Yoshi, to test. Because Eve is determined not to be Three’s next victim and she will do whatever it takes to bring him down …
Sam Ripley’s thriller blurs the line between urban legend horror and a straight-up serial killer tale but the execution is lacking. The three main characters are difficult to empathise with (each is so messed up that none rung emotionally true) and their stories are heavily contrived (which, is to tie in with the urban legend aspect to make you question them) such that I found it hard to maintain interest. Ultimately, this just wasn’t for me.
I think I get what Ripley (a pseudonym for Andrew Wilson) is trying to do with this book. He’s trying to combine the uncertainty and supernatural mythology of urban legends to tell a serial killer tale. The problem is that the serial killer element of it is completely undeveloped and doesn’t really make sense. I think this is partly intention - to leave the reader wondering if there is a serial killer working or whether each woman authored their own fate - but it left me deeply underwhelmed, especially in Eve’s story where many of the different strands pull together because when you look at it, there are more holes than answers. I did enjoy some of the common characters and how Ripley makes changes to aspects of their character or histories to tie in with the uncertainties of urban legends - particularly the one character who is common to all the sections.
I found it difficult to relate to any of the main characters. Each of them is messed up in their own way but the fact that they are all saddled with the backstory of having dead parents and dead siblings made it seem very artificial. Ripley does have some fun with this in Eve’s plot line (and one of my favourite bits in the book are when Eve’s theories about what happened to Ila and Amy are taken apart by two other members of her therapy group).
The biggest problem I had with the book though is that I guessed the potential serial killer ridiculously early on and even then, the pay off at the end is muted and very low key. As said, earlier a big problem with this is that when you try and work out how the killer did it, it just doesn’t make sense because there are too many holes, precisely because of the urban legend elements.
Ultimately, this just didn’t gel for me and as such, I don’t think I’d rush to read Ripley’s next book.
The Verdict:
Sam Ripley’s thriller blurs the line between urban legend horror and a straight-up serial killer tale but the execution is lacking. The three main characters are difficult to empathise with (each is so messed up that none rung emotionally true) and their stories are heavily contrived (which, is to tie in with the urban legend aspect to make you question them) such that I found it hard to maintain interest. Ultimately, this just wasn’t for me.
THE RULE OF THREE was released in the United Kingdom on 22nd June 2023. Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy of this book.
