Book review - The Rich by Rachel Lynch

 Detailed...

My review does not contain spoilers…

I’ve not read a novel by Rachel Lynch before but having spotted this standalone (her others are linked ones) I thought I would give it a go – especially with ‘murder’ being on the menu!

From the off it was clear that this novel was of a high standard of English – which works well to reflect the ‘rich’ people that a lot of the book is about. Confession – some words I hadn’t ever heard of, but I was able to read them in context so not to interrupt the flow of my reading whilst feeling my intelligence levels rising!

There are many characters to remember here and there were a couple of occasions early on when I found myself getting a tad confused – the same happened with a few early events as well. Once I got going further though, I was fine. The getting going though was an interesting one as I seemed to take ages to clear the 30% mark on Kindle! I was enjoying the book, reading for sustained periods so it wasn’t that…it’s just a longer read (confirmed by the estimated time on Kindle) so my 99p was definitely good value!

In terms of characters, there were only a couple that I was rooting for…most were not to my taste (in terms of how I would feel about them in real life) and the main character, Alex – the only perspective to be shown in first person – was one of them. I just couldn’t take to her! I won’t go into why (no spoilers here), but my opinion changed as I read on…

Whilst the other characters are generally shown by third person narrative, there’s an occasional foray into omniscient. Plus, you often have to work out WHO each chapter is based on due to the lack of headings. Again, once I got going, and knew who each character was, I didn’t find this an issue and really liked this concept.

I did find there to be a couple of ‘voices’ that I wondered why they were included at the time, however, I can see that for all the events to come together, they were needed to show the story as happening rather than it being revealed another way as ‘on the nose’ exposition. I genuinely think it’s the MOST character ‘voices’ I have ever read, and I think the use of third person works well to keep it to a narrative rather than trying to have each as first person and their own, individual, way of being presented. That said, each character IS unique with what happens in the story and their own backstory. Lynch has clearly meticulously plotted this and done her research throughout for several factors.

It would be dishonest to say that I kept going with this until finished because I didn’t…I paused to read another book (that I zoomed through in a few days) and then resumed this…why I am putting this in my review? Well, because my pause WAS A GOOD THING… I think it’s a bit like a TV show that you can’t stream and have to wait for the next episode…pausing this book made me want to get back to it. I knew where I had left it, and it gave me thinking time to ponder over the detailed plot. Besides, I needed to read the other book for other reasons!

When I resumed The Rich, I took a couple of days to finish it. Overall, it took me just over a week with different lengths of reading time each time. When I neared the end, there was no way I was stopping, and I read and read until done.

Caught out by who I thought was guilty and marvelling in Lynch’s hidden gem of a reveal…that had been there to see if I had wondered hard enough (at one point I HAD meekly wondered, then dismissed the thought and gone back to my main suspect). Therefore, this is a book that – at the end – I now love even more than when reading!

It would be most unlike me to not mention the cover so I will simply say: I didn’t get drawn to this by the pool (shock, horror) but rather the words all over it! However, having finished the book I am now smiling at the choice of cover…but you will have to read it yourself to see why!

So, who will enjoy this? Anyone who loves some humour (as there are some splashes of this amongst the champagne) alongside a detailed story where lives are interwoven, and a murder occurs coupled with a sub plot and the two other words on the cover – Sex and Lies!