Run Time

By Catherine Ryan Howard,

What it’s about?

Movie-making can be murder.

The project
Final Draft, a psychological horror. Promising Young Thing Steve Dade will direct.

The tagline
‘Based on a terrifying true story. That hasn’t happened – yet.’

The location
A cottage deep in a forest, miles from anywhere in the wintry wilds of West Cork.

The lead
Former soap-star Adele Rafferty has stepped in to replace the original actress at the very last minute. She can’t help but hope that this will be her big break.

The problem
Something isn’t quite right on the set of Final Draft.
Adele is about to discover that the real horror lies off the page…

What I think:

This was a gripping thriller.

I really liked Adele’s character from the beginning. She is a realist and sarcastic. She takes responsibility for her actions and fully accepts how her own decisions have impacted her career as an actor.

She jumps at the opportunity to film in Ireland, on a closed and secretive set away from the prying eyes of the media. This could be her chance to kick start her career, get out of her dingy apartment in LA and out of the hospitality industry.

Everything about the situation is creepy! Adele is playing a character who is on a ‘romantic’ break in an isolated cottage. While her character Kate reads a book about a couple on a romantic break where sinister and dark things start happening.

The lines between fiction  and reality become increasingly blurred as Adele is immersed in Kate’s story. The nighttime shoots and jet lag and to the sense of instability as most of the book takes place at night during story weather. The crew is small and Adele is the only woman so she feels even more isolated. With no phone signal and only intermittent contact with her friends outside of the set her paranoia soon sets in.

This is twisty and clever. I was never sure which of the characters I could trust; even Adele is not always the most reliable  narrator. There is clearly something more to the abrupt end of her film career and the details slowly begin to emerge.

I won’t give any spoilers! But this book definitely kept me guessing right until the very twisty end.

Thank you Netgalley for my gifted digital copy of Run Time.