For me, The Rumor was a waste of time - glad I’m not the only reader who had a similar take. The fact that this book has so many good reviews is baffling. If you’re considering The Rumor, do yourself a favor and listen to the sample. The narrators did okay - but annoyingly valley-girly. Given all that is The Rumor, that’s hilarious - but, the book isn’t a comedy - it’s a Peyton Place or soap opera. Based on the silly content of this book, I actually laughed out loud when a character suggested some sophisticated book titles to a teenager. A beach read you’ll probably leave at the beach. If you’re a teenager, especially the air-head type, go for it. If you’ve any level of intelligence beyond say … oh … 10th grade, take a pass at high speed.

The rest are stay-at-home moms with nothing to do other than tend gardens, worry about their teenagers, have juvenile conversation with each other, and gossip.

This is definitely a young adult book, as most of the characters are teenagers. Rumors of affairs, most of which are true, and annoying female gossip traverse the pages - which, I guess, was the point. Released by Hachette Audio in mid-2015, The Rumor is written by Elin Hilderbrand, narrated by Kathleen Mcinnerney, and the unabridged audiobook is just about eleven hours of listening. It felt to me like the author was in a hurry to finish the book and just tossed a grenade into the plot. Had they been left out, the Affair storyline could have been further developed, the tension would have had more time to build up and I would have liked more meat for how they got caught and how it all ends, I would have liked to know if they ended up together in the end and does it work out and how does that impact the family etc etc … Really, I think I wanted a totally different book! As it was, the husband gets involved in some shady dealings that eventually blow up in his face and that sucked all the energy out of the Affair storyline. Stuffing the book with what were in my opinion superfluous storylines, took time away from the good ones. The heart of the story: “A woman with writer’s block secretly uses her best friend’s extra marital affair as fodder for a new blockbuster novel”, was a good one… why did the rest of the book need to be cluttered up with other storylines? OK, the husband’s storyline was not so bad, and it did relate back to the wife who was cheating on him, but I would have left out all the kid’s stuff and the “we live in such a gossipy town” parts… although then the book could not have been called “The Rumor”, I guess it could have been called “The Affair”.

Elin hilderbrand the rumor review