TELL ME MY NAME

3 stars out of 5

This is a book that should have been great; to be sure, the

premise is enticing: A husband and wife are kidnapped by someone who claims not only to have known the wife years ago, but is her soulmate. The challenge? She has three tries to come up with his name - and with each incorrect guess, her husband will pay a heavy price (put another way, it's three strikes and he's out - permanently).

Needless to say, I was on the edge of my seat at that point - especially as the wife, Ellie Patterson, digs through her memories in an effort to come up with the correct ID. I can't reveal that outcome because it sets the stage for the rest of the book. What I can say is that from that point on, the writing started heading downhill - trite emotings from all the characters, not the least of which came from the female detective who's investigating. Besides that, character perspectives often switch in the middle of chapters (and at least twice, smack in the middle of a single paragraph). As a result, by midpoint, I almost called it quits.

But I've always vowed to finish the advance copies I get from publishers if at all possible (and only twice in literally hundreds of books have I pulled the plug before the end). So it was that I kept plugging away. I can't reveal details, but it's safe to say that no one - not Ellie, not her husband Neil and not the kidnapper - are who they seem to be. There is perhaps one exception in the kidnapper who was surgically altered to make him resemble George Clooney - which somehow makes him more acceptable to Ellie despite his evil acts. But he's not alone in his duplicity; each and every character has at least one secret that impinges on the life of one or more of the others. How their pasts are intertwined takes up the rest of the book, leading up to an ending that to me was neither satisfying nor even close to believability (if it were really true, for sure I'd want nothing to do with Ellie, her husband or the rest of her family).

Actually, despite my misgivings I'll call this a decent beach read. But as is, I'd be surprised if it makes it anywhere near the big leagues without a major overhaul. Truth is, I hope that happens; as I said at the beginning, the potential for greatness is in there. Somewhere.

Reviewer's note: Not that it matters all that much, but I'm not sure what the true release date is on this book. According to Amazon, it's Oct. 3; NetGalley says Oct. 27. Luckily, I started reading early and will make the Amazon release if, in fact, it's the accurate one.

Tell Me My Name by Erin Ruddy (Dundurn, October 2020); 344 pp.