Book Review: The Rule of Three by Sam Ripley

 

Goodreads Summary: 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.

Goodreads Rating: 3.28 stars with over 700 ratings

Genre Listing: Horror, Thriller, Mystery, Adult, Fiction

Goodreads/StoryGraph Challenge: 11/30

2025 Reading Challenge: #2 Read a book under 350 pages (Read the full here)

Book Review:

Hello, Readers! I hope everyone is doing well as we jump into March. I feel a little bit like I'm cheating by listing this book as the book for under 350 pages, considering I listened to the audiobook version. Whatever, I'm going with it. I'm absolutely exhausted, so I will jump into the review.

The premise for The Rule of Three by Sam Ripley is exciting, and it grabbed my attention when I was looking for something new to listen to. Initially, I found myself really engaged in the story from Amy's perspective. I didn't necessarily agree with her choices, but I understood why she made them. She was easy to feel sorry for, which made it easy to stay interested in her story. Ila's story was spookier, but I don't know if I felt as engaged with her background as Amy's. When it got to Eve's part of the story, I was somewhat checked out but wanted to finish it. I think a lot of it was just the amount of discussion about death. Amy's story was hard on me mentally, just the way she described her feelings about her parents' deaths. I've been in a really melancholy mood the last few days, and I'm wondering if the book has anything to do with it. Either way, I was disconnected from Ila's story and even more disconnected from Eve's.

Despite that, I wanted to finish the story and figure out what was happening. I had my guesses; some were correct, and some were not. There's a nice little twist at the end that really caught me off guard. It saved the book for me. The book wasn't bad by any means; it was just a lot of details about things that felt completely irrelevant. I feel like there were at least 3 chapters on how the old microfiche machines worked in a library. I get it. The book was published in 2024, and it's cool and vintage. But as someone who has used them (oof. That hurts my pride a bit. I'm OLD), they seriously aren't that interesting to need detailed information on how to twist the dials. It was probably just setting the scene, but it was too much.

I really enjoyed the narrators of this audiobook. There are 5 of them. They all had different voices for the characters they were reading. I also appreciated the aspect of investigating urban legends in the story. Having listened to True Crime Podcasts, I know how passionate people can get about mysteries they want to solve. It was a fun inclusion to the story.

Overall, I can't really say if I enjoyed it. I didn't hate it, but so much took me out of the story. I liked the premise and thought some of the mystery aspects were surprising, but I wasn't as engaged with it as I would have liked to have been. I'm giving it a 3-star rating.