Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
The Short Review: Great atmosphere and a compelling story, but requires patience…it’s a very slow burn.
The Long Review: I read this for the Love It or Loathe It podcast—I’ll post the link below—and when I say read, I mean listen. Yep, that’s right folks, I listened to an entire audiobook for the first time. So, here’s a review of both the book AND the audiobook.
I thought the writing of the book was gorgeous. I mean, if I’d known how elegant and graceful Du Maurier’s language was, I would have grabbed one of her books sooner. It’s striking and musical in the best way. The only thing that annoyed me was how often she used the words Manderlay and Rebecca…hearing it whispered into my ear over and over again was not the most pleasant experience.
The story takes a good bit of time before it picks up the pace. I wasn’t sure if I cared to keep going until about a hundred pages in. This is considered a romance-thriller, and because I never read anything about a book going in, I just assumed that it was a thriller-thriller. The romance does take up a good heft of the book, but i’m not too sure if it sits well in today’s climate. I won’t spoil anything, but I definitely wasn’t personally taken with the romance. I will say, however, that people call this a feminist book all the time, so i’m sure I was just missing something. If you know more about it, feel free to leave a comment below with explanation. I want to understand, but not badly enough to scan through a dozen half-baked high school papers on it.
The characters, while sometimes frustrating, do feel real. They’re very flawed, but in the ways that make them more compelling than frustrating.
All in all, I found the story worth the read. The audiobook was a bit frustrating for me, but I don’t think it was horrible. If you can work past the repetition of the language, you’ll enjoy her performance. I think I gave this three and a half out of five stars.
I definitely had way more thoughts, but all of those were discussed in great detail on the podcast with host Annie B. Jones. Give it a listen, and if you liked it, you can search through their site for more from the Love It or Loathe It series (I am in all of them, and for that I do apologize)
Hope you enjoyed my own half baked review of Rebecca and for a much better review of some other books, look at pretty much any other review on this site. Have a good one!
Podcast Link: https://www.fromthefrontporchpodcast.com/listen/2018/10/11/episode-192-love-it-or-loathe-it-vol-15