Review: THE RUSH, Michelle Prak

• 
  This edition made available as an e-book on Libby by my local library
  
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia (May 3, 2023)
• Length: 320 pages
• ISBN13: 9781761108204

Synopsis (publisher) 

The first drops start to fall when Quinn spies the body. With no reception and nothing but an empty road for miles, does she stop to help or keep driving to safety?

Back at the iconic country pub where Quinn works, Andrea is sandbagging the place in preparation for heavy rains. Alone with her sleeping son in the back room, she reluctantly lets a biker in to wait out the storm.

Out on the wet roads, tensions arise among four backpackers on their way to Darwin. They haven’t prepared for this kind of weather and the flooding isn’t the only threat on the horizon …

Chilling, tense and twisted, this compulsive thriller will send adrenaline coursing through your veins. 

My Take

This story brings together some elements of recent news stories about outback Australia - unexpected flooding, backpackers disappearing or being murdered, an outback pub struggling to survive.

Hayley and Scott are accountancy students in Adelaide, embarking on a holiday trip to Darwin by road. They plan to take a week or two, and to defray expenses they borrow Scott's grandfather's four wheel drive and decide to offer seats in the car to two backpackers who will contribute to the expenses kitty. It is surprisingly easy to find a couple of people to join them. Hayley makes detailed plans of their route, where they will go sightseeing, and where they will camp overnight. They appear to have given little thought to the return journey.

Hayley and Scott have been together for a couple of years, but she is beginning to think he is tiring of her. Hayley is young and she doesn't realise that she is literally being "taken for a ride".

Further north, the rains start, the flooding begins, and then the two main elements of the story come together, with a scenario that is guaranteed to leave the reader gobsmacked.

There are some structural elements which ask the reader to take extra notice - a number of narrative voices, a disjointed time frame (each chapter tells you the name of the main narrator and the date and time, but they are not sequential). There are little backstories which add to your knowledge of each character.

I have some reservations about the title - I am not really sure how it relates to the story.

My rating: 4.5

About the author
Michelle Prak is a professional communicator with a thirty-year career in corporate communication, social media, politics and journalism. Writing has been the backbone of much of her work and she has written several short stories and self-published commercial women's fiction titles. She lives in Adelaide and lectures in public relations and social media at the University of South Australia. The Rush is her first thriller.