If you're after a thriller that'll keep you up at night - you've got it.
Chilling - cleverly written, and utterly compelling

This had a great blurb and I had high hopes, sadly it didn’t deliver and I didn’t. Thanks for the chance to review it.

I ate this one up! As per the title, there are of course 3 different voices telling this story. The first character immediately caught my attention and felt very relatable. I was thrown off a bit though when it switched to the second character, who felt much more dull. Obviously every character can't have the same personality but I wasn't ready to depart from the first one. SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT... I was a bit bummed that the ending was not quite supernatural, as implied by the synopsis. I love horror and am always sad when the story turns into just another crime plot. Would have gotten 5 stars from me if it had stayed horror.

Thank you for the ARC!

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve started to read this and put it down, each time a couple of pages further into it. I was intrigued enough by the description to want to read it, but my goodness, it’s a struggle, and not one Im going to win.

Briefly – Amy obviously has mental health issues, and extremely protective parents. I don’t know if this is as a result of Amy’s suicide attempt as I haven’t read that far. Amy returns home one day to find both parents – whom she refers to by their first names – dead in the garage, having hanged themselves. Obviously this doesn’t do her much good and so she swallows enough pills to kill herself, but doesn’t quite achieve the desired effect….

And on this sad, depressing tale goes, but it will have to continue without me as I just can’t take any more. I’ve probably read only about 10% of this kindle download, but it will now be deleted, sent back into the ether where it belongs.

Apparently Sam Ripley is the pseudonym of a bestselling British thriller writer.. I hope his other books are better than this!

My thanks to Netgalley without whose ARC I wouldn;t have know how awful this is.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this arc.

I sadly had to dnf this book as I just couldn’t get into the story. The characters weren’t interesting and I just couldn’t get pulled in.

I thought I was going to love this but I ended up getting so bored and frustrated with the main character, and so sick of reading about drug use that I found myself switching off and sadly not enjoying it! Good concept, but huge posts about drug taking could have been taken out for the better!

I didn't know if it was going to be a horror or a psychological thriller. It was a bit of each and I found the blurb intriguing.
It starts strong and then becomes a bit repetitive and slow.
There's a lot of potential and I think this author will write excellent books.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

We've all heard the old adage that bad things always happen in threes. and that is what this twisty mystery is all about.  But is it just down to awfully bad luck and coincidence is is it all by some design?  
I really enjoyed this book.  It gets a tiny bit repetitive at times and a lot of the characters are somewhat unlikable, but it is an engrossing read, quite disturbing at times, and it was a clever and pretty original story.

The cover and the premise really drew me in. Part thriller and part urban legend but for me it was mediocre. I put this book down several times as nothing was happening. As for the main characters they were unlikable and very annoying. I did persevere and finish this book and it Dr get better. The Last 25% was what I was hoping for. This could have been a really good read. So disappointed.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the Arc in return for an honest review.

"Bad things always happen in threes"

I have always believed this. Whether it be an item breaking, bad luck or hearing of a death. It always comes in threes. So, obviously I was going to read this book. My lucky number is 3, I was born on the 3rd, 3 is my number.

Amy is in a bad place. Her sister was killed in a car accident, her parents then committed suicide almost 3 years later. Is she next? This book has a way of building you right up then dropping you back down only to do it all over again! I really liked it.

Absolutely brilliant! I loved the format of following the story from person to person, to see how it all unfolded. It certainly had me gripped from page one, and I just *had* to find out what happened.

I've tried multiple times to finish this book. Unfortunately it did not work at all for me. The story lacked everything, the characters were quite annoying and not relatable whatsoever. The story is so extremely slow it's extremely difficult to keep the attention on the book. I stopped after a third of the book.

This is a fascinating debut to review!
If you like the number three, check out this book! There are themes of three everywhere in this one, and I loved that, it was a very cute touch from the author! I wonder if that will run into Sam Ripley's later books? It keeps you on your toes, that's for certain. It felt a little jarring at times, but when you look at the 'rule of three', I didn't mind it! It's for the needs of the book.
There is sinister goings on, and some readers may need to pay attention to the trigger warnings.
This is a promising start to Sam Ripley's writing career.

I was really impressed with this book. I agree with some other reviewers that the book was slow to start but once it gets going, it really grabs you and doesn't let you go

This was a dark thriller indeed, but perhaps a bit too slow paced. I only really got into it from the last third of the book onwards, but overall it was a pleasant read.
Thanks to NetGalley, the editor and the author for the opportunity to access this ARC.

It’s one of the most common sayings –everyone knows that bad things happen in threes. This is a dark and sinister story that will leave you wondering…

Amy has issues. It’s not in the least surprising that she does. Her sister died in a car accident and her parents killed themselves not long after. Amy knows that bad things happen in threes and that means she’s next. She’s doing a lot of drugs to help her forget, but she’s also completely sure that hers is not drug induced paranoia. She knows for sure she will be next and everyone she meets she looks at with suspicion. So she starts to keep a record of what she does, who she meets and what happens to her.

As unreliable narrators go, it’s fair to say Amy is a classic case. Sam Ripley builds up a compelling portrait of an Amy living on the edge – weird but with cause. She delves into the idea of the rule of three, investigating what it is, how it came about and why it has gained the status of urban legend.

It is quite hard to work out where this story is going and you may find it doesn’t feel all that much of a thriller. But stick with it, because this is actually a very cleverly put together story and the theme of three comes through in many ways.

We hear not just from Amy, but also from Eve and Ila who have also kept diaries in very similar circumstances. As Amy reads she can see similarities between her life and that of these other young women. Is she seeing things that aren’t there? Or has she uncovered a terrifying pattern?

That idea of pursuing an urban legend and looking at through different eyes is a really good one, but this is a bit like one of those rings that link concentric circles. You can see that they are joined together, but prising them apart to see how they are put together is much more difficult.

The Rule of Three is very creepy with horror elements and will worrit its way into your brain. Sam Ripley has a very engaging writing style which carries you with it and encourages you to stay the course, even when you’re not entirely sure what’s going on. He builds the tension through his characters and makes you care that they each feel the weight of death on their shoulders. His storytelling is innovative, his dialogue sings and he takes you right inside the dark psyche of his characters.

Verdict: The Rule of Three is a sinister, creepy story that will keep you wondering. A psychological thriller, it is cleverly written and is a really compelling and propulsive read.

#TheRuleOfThree #NetGalley
Awesome.
That’s the one.
That’s the girl who’s going to die.
I didn’t believe in the Rule of Three. Not at first.
It was just one of those urban myths you hear about all the time.
A story my boyfriend told me about a girl cursed by the number three.
A girl whose parents had killed themselves after her sibling had died in an accident.
Which meant that she was doomed to die too because that’s the Rule of Three.
Bad things always happen in threes, they say, and they are right.
Because it’s happening again.
But this time the curse is coming for me.
And worst of all?
It’s coming for you, too.
Thanks to NetGalley and Simon Schuster for giving me an advance copy.

The Rule of Three
Thriller, Mystery
Sam Ripley
⭐️⭐️⭐️

The start of this book was very slow for me and I found it hard to keep reading to be honest. The pacing only picked up at around the 60-70% mark.

I liked the multiple POVs, some more than others, but there was something about the writing style that I just didn't click with.

The premise itself though was very interesting and I was curious about what really happened and why.

Overall I was left a little disappointed. I do think other readers would enjoy this book but unfortunately it just wasn't for me.

*Thank you to @Netgalley and the publishers for providing this ARC. This is my own opinion and an honest review, which I am leaving voluntarily*

Sinister, Compelling..
Bad things happen in threes - or so we have all been led to believe. Is it a myth? An old wives tale? Perhaps so. Do you believe? With such an age old basis a unique premise is formed for this chilling, dark and menacing suspense. Three narratives, three perhaps unreliable narrators and that rule of three. Told with a confident pen, tackling often difficult themes and maintaining a vein of creeping claustrophobia comes an unpredictable plot populated with credible and well defined characters. Sinister and compelling.