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A review by marilynsaul
The Album by Mary Roberts Rinehart
2.0
My favorite review of this book starts "At least I think I read it. I had no idea what was going on half the time." I first read it back in 2019 and had given it two stars. I pulled it from the shelf again, and said "that can't be right - I'd better re-read it; afterall, it's Mary Roberts Rinehart!!" Well, it was worse than I thought and I, without hesitation, demote it to one star.
The plot was passable, though even the author had to explain a couple of times what had happened. The writing was, IMO, unforgiveable for a MRR book. Although I liked the tiny bit of wisdom of the hazards of living in a "gated" closely-knit and rather incestuous community, that only took up two paragraphs of this tedious book. There was a lot of to-and-fro ing, along with "if I'd only known[s]...". The rampant speculation by the narrator was irritating and not helpful. Then there were the "Talbots" and the "Daltons", two names so similar that I had to keep checking the "cute" portraiture at the beginning to try to place them. THEN, Lizzie isn't even mentioned (I don't think - I'm not about to scour 300+ pages trying to find her) until the last forty pages. Another irritating writing flaw was mentioned two or three characters in one paragraph, followed by "Then she...." She? To which character are you referring??? I spent way too much time re-reading the previous pages to try to figure out where I was and who was speaking.
So, "At least I think I read it. I had no idea what was going on half the time."
The plot was passable, though even the author had to explain a couple of times what had happened. The writing was, IMO, unforgiveable for a MRR book. Although I liked the tiny bit of wisdom of the hazards of living in a "gated" closely-knit and rather incestuous community, that only took up two paragraphs of this tedious book. There was a lot of to-and-fro ing, along with "if I'd only known[s]...". The rampant speculation by the narrator was irritating and not helpful. Then there were the "Talbots" and the "Daltons", two names so similar that I had to keep checking the "cute" portraiture at the beginning to try to place them. THEN, Lizzie isn't even mentioned (I don't think - I'm not about to scour 300+ pages trying to find her) until the last forty pages. Another irritating writing flaw was mentioned two or three characters in one paragraph, followed by "Then she...." She? To which character are you referring??? I spent way too much time re-reading the previous pages to try to figure out where I was and who was speaking.
So, "At least I think I read it. I had no idea what was going on half the time."