Book Reviews - Rumour Has It by Jill Mansell

Tilly Cole is happy working in London, but realises that life isn't going to plan when her latest boyfriend moves out while she's at work. She decides she's had enough and moves to the small town of Roxborough where her best friend Erin lives.

She gets a job working for a gay Interior designer and his daughter, basically as their dogsbody but soon begins to love village life. But when Max's best friend Jack comes onto the scene, Tilly is knocked for six as she wasn't expecting to be attracted to anyone so soon.

Tilly is soon caught up in the lives and loves of all of Roxborough, but is she going to find love even when she doesn't want it?

Rating: 5/5

The premise of the story didn't sound too exciting when I initially read it on the back of the book, but I knew it wouldn't be a straight-forward story like you might expect from other authors. Jill Mansell has a way of creating stories and characters that the reader actually begins to care about and that is what drew me back to her book, and will make me read her older novels too. The story is actually relatively similar to 'An Offer You Can't Refuse' but again the twists and turns along the way makes it totally readable and a brilliant book. Also, I did feel that it was a tad predictable, especially regarding the ending but that didn't detract at all from my enjoyment of the book as a whole.

Mansell has chosen a female lead for this book, and as I always say, the lead character has to be likeable and hold the whole story together for me to want to continue the book. Luckily for me, I liked the character of Tilly straight away, mainly due to the way Mansell has written her. She is very unlucky in love and I felt sorry for her but as the story unravelled my opinion of her changed (not in a bad way!) but still I enjoyed the journey that she took along the way. However, for me it wasn't Tilly's story that gripped me the most, but that of her best friend Erin. To be honest, this is what I really loved about this book - it wasn't just the main story that I loved but even the minor storylines are fantastic too.

Erin is happy in her relationship but there is someone in Roxborough who isn't too happy. However, there is a shocking twist in here that took me completely by surprise but Mansell has tackled this perfectly and made such a wonderful story out of it, it really struck a chord with me. The characters involved all worked well in the context of this storyline and I loved it. There was a bit of a mystery about Jack that went on through the book, the relationship between Tilly and her employer Max and his daughter Lou was well explored, and Max's ex-wife Kaye pops up for her own good storyline too. All in all, you can see there is a lot going on in the book, but its not hard at all to follow along and that's because of Mansell's writing talent.

Mansell has chosen to write the book in the third person, and I do love this way of writing. To me, third person is like proper story-telling because you having it told to you, rather than the first person where you almost have to imagine the lead character talking to you. The third person factor also works well when you have a few storylines going on at once because it allows it to be easy to follow, and just feels like a classic story. Mansell really delves into the relationships of her characters from the word go, and doesn't shy away from the more tough times in friendships too. The relationships with the characters change throughout, and it just makes the book that bit more realistic and consequently enjoyable for me.

You can probably tell from the tone of my review that I really did love this book, and I wouldn't hesitate in recommending it not only for Jill Mansell fans, but also for people who just love a good story. It is a great book to settle down with in the evening because it is easy to read and very enjoyable, the characters are all likeable and the stories all interweave nicely and come together for a predictable but still satisfying end. It's a nice enough length for the stories to develop thoroughly, but not so long that you're bored by the end and Mansell seems to judge this perfectly. It's a brilliant review, and I really enjoyed reading this book, and felt a tad sad when it ended! I'll have to look out for her older stuff now to keep myself happy until her next book! Highly recommended!