Lead Review (The Escape)

• Book: The Escape
• Location: France
• Author: Ruth Kelly

Review Author: tripfiction

Adele is an influencer, earning just about enough to live on. Then her thoughts turn to relocation and she espies wonderful Château Bellay, situated in the Côte Chalonnaise in southern Burgundy, ripe for renovation and on the market. The nearest village is fictional Rémy-Vienne. Her partner Jake is trundling through life and she is clear they need a change. Their relationship is proving a little unsteady. Besides which, her Mum is very poorly with breast cancer and one of her ideas is to enable her to spend some time in the beautiful surroundings of the French countryside.

Doing up a château would be a perfect project for her Social Media channels, propelling her into the real influencer league and big money.

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Her finance strategy initially is to create a GoFundMe account, which she does and it utterly bombs; given it looks like she wants something for nothing, it garners a terrific level of opprobrium. That clearly is a non-starter but then a mysterious investor makes themselves known to her, through the means of their persuasive solicitor, who pays the couple a visit. A contract is proffered with some very odd clauses, but Adele is so enamoured with the idea that she convinces herself the stipulations are merely ‘guidelines’. One such clause states that “No guests are permitted” (which, in theory, rules out a visit from her Mum), another that the couple is to only bring the essentials with them when they move to France. Time is of the essence, the offer is on the table for the duration of the solicitor’s visit. ALL the red flags are there but Adele and Jake sign on the various dotted lines…. As a reader you are WILLING them to exercise caution and carry out due diligence before they sign their lives away, but of course they don’t.

Adele now has a more lucrative blogging/vlogging project and the author offers insight into her account and followers, some of whom laud her enterprise and others – as per usual – do a takedown of what she is doing. It all seems to be going swimmingly until the prospect of how to mark New Year approaches.

The story evolves and her sister Erin arrives, concerned about the health of their mother and worried that Adele’s live stream seems to have ceased. Their relationship has been fractured, so in some ways the breakdown in communication is not altogether alarming but even so…. The storyline becomes darker and is engaging until the last quarter or so, when it hops over the fine line of credibility and becomes absurd, the action frantic. The writing is very good and the storytelling good, so that will keep readers hooked in.

BUT. Where is the editing / proofreading team on this one? I have a finished copy and if you are going to use French to add a local feel, then phrases like “Obtenir son téléphone” would indicate too much reliance on Google Translate. It’s really not hard to find a proper French speaker and check, is it!. At base, château has to have a a circumflex on the first “a” but the word appears throughout as chateau  (I mean, they have managed it for châtelaine, so why not château? Even ARRÊTEZ gets a circumflex when it doesn’t even really need one in capital form). There is also a notable level of missing letters in words and one of the funny ones is this: there is a secret filming/streaming of a sexual encounter and a character elucidates “The steaming is for those who can’t make it to the party” (did someone put this in for fun or was it a real Freudian slip – it should of course have ben “streaming”?).

Overall, this works as a pool side read but really needs finessing. Also I am adding a warning on the content of the story, which will not be suitable for some readers.

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