The Fallout by Rebecca Thornton
Genre: Domestic drama
Read: 24th January 2020
Purchase: Amazon
(publication date: 5th December 2019)
★★ 2 stars
I came across THE FALLOUT through reading a friend's review on Goodreads and thought it sounded interesting. I was wrong.
This domestic drama (I wouldn't go so far as to call it a thriller) revolves around the friendship between Sarah and Liza and their group of affluent yummy mummies. All are members of a posh club in West London called The Vale Club, which is where the story begins...
Sarah and Liza had been at The Vale Club enjoying a coffee and a catch-up. When Sarah offered to go to the cafe for another, Liza asked her to check on Jack who was in the outdoor play area. However, on her way back she was distracted by a woman from their past - another parent - and therefore failed to check on Jack properly. By the time Sarah arrived back at their table with Ella now in tow the women heard screams coming from the play area. It was Jack. He had fallen from the pole Sarah had seen him climbing, and now Sarah is scared to tell her best friend the truth. So when Ella tells Liza that Sarah had checked on him, Sarah just went along with the lie.
Tell the truth, lose a friend. Tell a lie, keep her close.
What ensues is Sarah's growing guilt over the lie. She had seen Jack climbing the pole, had waved to him. But had he seen her? She should have called him down. But then seeing Ella had distracted her, and the juicy gossip that would surely follow in her path.
Whilst Liza is at the hospital with Jack, Sarah goes around to her friend's house, tidies up, does a shop and organises a meal for them. But then Ella swoops in and takes over with her high-paid nanny (maternity nurse), leaving Sarah's efforts redundant. Added to that, when Liza and Ella seem be getting on even better than they do, Sarah begins to feel jealous. What is Ella doing? What is she up to?
But that's not the only area in which Ella appears to be taking over. Liza had been heading up the Christmas Fair for the local primary school but in the wake of Jack's accident Sarah thought it was the least she could do for her friend. But then she hears that Ella has taken over that role as well, securing the entire amount of funds needed from out of think air. Ella seems to be everybody's new best friend - except Sarah's - so when she types out a furious WhatsApp message to send to her friend Camilla to let off steam and make her laugh, Sarah mistakenly sends it to Ella instead. And before long, the entire school is privy to the message and Sarah is ostracised.
Honestly, these yummy mummies and their little brats were anything but my cup of tea. Jealous bitchfights, snide remarks, whispers on WhatsApp...it felt like a million dollar playground. I really just wanted to get to the end to find out the many "secrets" that weren't all that exciting after all...so I kind of felt robbed by the end.
I didn't like Sarah much. I could understand her predicament but why wouldn't she just admit it from the start? Things would have been far better had she done and certainly not gone as far as they did. I didn't like Ella. She came across as aloof, and looking down her nose at people as if her s*** don't stink. I did like Liza, but even she was screwed up. I couldn't stand the other yummy mummies. They had no respect for their so-called friends, gossiping about them at the drop of a hat.
THE FALLOUT is filled with plenty of guilt, secrets, lies, angst and a load of drama. The premise sounded intriguing but the actual playout was not. I found it long and drawn out and half of it could have been editted down. I did shed a few tears at the end when the full impact of the bigger picture is clear. It was sad it had come to that and ended the way it did...but really, how else could it have gone?
Filled with characters who were annoying, childish and way too materialistic, THE FALLOUT really wasn't my thing.
I would like to thank #RebeccaThornton, #NetGalley and #HarperCollinsUK for an ARC of #TheFallout in exchange for an honest review.
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