24.09.25
I've read all of Liane Moriarty's books but luckily her sister writes in a very similar, entertaining style. It uses the same formula of bubbling domestic and social resentments, leading to an unlikely but somehow satisfying conclusion. The Moriartys make suburban Australia sound much more interesting that it probably is.
24.10.24
Moriarty's tenth novel is about to come out so finding the only other one I hadn't read in the library was serendipitous. This was a fun yet surprisingly complex read - a woman forgetting the last ten years was almost like time travel but it cleverly stopped short of 'young her undoes the mistakes of older her', examining all the implications. Talking of mistakes, I enjoyed it all the way up to the ending(s), which were hugely disappointing, considering what had gone before.
62%
18.05.23I've now read most of Moriarty's novels and it's clear she sticks to the formula that works for her - various narrators from white, middle-class Australian families experiencing low-to-medium level trauma. She will tease you with what might have happened for most of the book, and then throw in a few twists that have been hinted at earlier on, and then continue with the story for rather longer than is necessary. In this one, I liked the portrayal of different marriage dynamics and the realistic sense of obligation that people have to each other over time. I doubt I'll remember much about it in a year, though.
01.03.23
I can read all sorts of fantasy, but books about triplets set in the real world seem a bit too far-fetched to me. Indeed, it was hard to relate to the three main characters and, despite them supposedly having different personalities, I couldn't really tell them apart (so that was realistic, I suppose). As usual, I liked the insight into middle-class Australian life but there was nothing memorable here.
23.12.22
Some Moriarty novels are pretty good. Others are less so. This was, generally, less so - a lot of fuss about not very much.
63%
The first third or so of this was pitch-perfect - a balance of humour and pathos, with quirky characters to carry you through. But then it started to meander a bit, some points of view fell flat, the multiple story lines got slightly wearisome, many of the topics were a little problematic - but to its credit, not all the ends were tied by the last page.
31.08.22
The strong, engaging (female) characters made this one of the better Moriarty novels, even if (spoiler!) it had the same formula as The Guest List, i.e. 'identity of murdered person will only be revealed at the end but clearly the man who abuses women will get his just desserts'. I also like the Australian-ness of it all: it's disappointing to note it was adapted for TV with an American setting.
10.01.22
This was the Moriarty book I should have been reading (for book club) over Christmas. As much as I resented having to pay £9.99 for the Kindle ebook, it was infinitely better than Nine Perfect Strangers. The characters were vividly drawn, and every detail of the story became satisfyingly relevant in some way - until it was spoiled by the silly pandemic chapters at the end, which not only made the book 50 pages too long but also read as if the publisher had asked the author to shoehorn them in at the last minute to make the story 'current'. It was a shame as, until then, the delicious unlikeliness of almost everything in the novel had been what made it so enjoyable.
Side note: I plan to avoid the current pile of pandemic-set stories. I understand publishers like current affairs, and authors like the challenge of deciding how their characters might react to lockdown, but I read novels to experience other worlds - if I wanted contemporary realism, I'd read the news. Still, I've started a new pandemic label, in case I can't avoid it.
Billed as a thriller but more of a character study. I was expecting something interesting to happen - a murder, a plot twist - but no, it was just an ultimately rather inconsequential story, which is interestingly how I described the previous Moriarty I read.
