THE TRUTH ABOUT RUBY COOPER

The fallout from a rape accusation upends a tightknit family, but the passing of decades creates more questions than answers.

It’s the late 1990s in the Boston suburbs, and the Cooper family seems to have it all. Doug is a pastor and investment banker—the family wants for neither funds nor faith—and his wife, Maureen, though homesick for her native Ireland, is a loving mother. Eighteen-year-old Erin is pretty and smart, with the perfect boyfriend, Milo Kelly. So when 16-year-old Ruby Cooper accuses Milo of rape, the family is torn apart. Maureen moves Ruby to Dublin to escape the gossip and trauma, leaving Doug and Erin to deal with the aftershock—and splitting the family in two. Alternating among first-person perspectives—primarily Ruby’s and Erin’s—the novel charts the family’s diverging paths in the years following what they call “the incident.” Ruby abuses alcohol and drugs, ending up in rehab; the parents, with an ocean between them, eventually split up; and Erin begins a successful career, but can’t move past her guilt over putting Ruby in Milo’s path. But after a few years, it becomes clear that Ruby’s story doesn’t quite match reality. We follow Ruby through rehab and recovery, having a child of her own, and a gradual estrangement from her entire family, as she works to keep secret the details of what really happened that day. Though solidly plotted, much of the exposition-heavy novel reads like a mere cataloguing of events; the twists don’t feel truly surprising, and occasional flourishes of sensory description and lively detail sing—but stand out for how rare they are. Similarly, despite the first-person perspectives, the characters betray a bewildering lack of interiority.

A well-woven plot can’t make up for the lifeless prose that makes this thriller fall flat.