Author: Liane Moriarty

Review Round Up | Nine Perfect Strangers, The Last Best Story, and Those Other Women

Posted January 23, 2019 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 1 Comment

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! I was trying to explain Liane Moriarty’s books to my boyfriend as I was racing through the pages of this one. I love that her stories are contemporary fiction at the heart, but always have some kind of suspenseful, mysterious, or thriller-y aspect to them. They always keep me reading and guessing as I go. This latest was no exception! However… it was definitely not what I expected; it got weirder and weirder as it went on, but I ended up liking it quite a bit. It’s reminiscent of her other works, but quite different at the same time. Getting to know the “nine strangers” was a lot of fun and I liked the multiple POVs throughout the story. Frances was the “main character” if I had to pick; she was mostly hilarious. I liked reading everyone’s unique circumstances for why they ended up there and what their goals/lives were. The second half of the book was unexpected but kind of fascinating, once I got over the initial shock of it haha. I enjoyed the ending of the story so much! This is one of the more interesting stories by Moriarty lately, as many of the other recent works have been somewhat predictable and disappointing by the […]

Review: Truly Madly Guilty

Posted August 22, 2016 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

Initial Excitement Liane Moriarty is definitely one of my favorites. I’ve enjoyed all of her books so far and love them even more in audiobook form. When I saw that the same narrator was reading this one, I preordered the audio right away. I had just finished up an audio-binge-listen of a trilogy and definitely was ready to move on to something different. In other words… I started this book within the first week it was released, which never happens to me with audiobooks. Summary in a Second Six adults and three kids went to a random BBQ and clearly something happened to alter their lives forever. Much like BIG LITTLE LIES, this book went back and forth between the day of the barbecue and present day. The reader slowly learns about what happened that day and why everyone is in a tizzy. The book goes in between characters and hears their perspectives before and after the events of that day. Storytelling & Setting I love the Australian setting for Moriarty’s books (and especially because “Aussie author” is a square on this season’s Bookish Bingo card! Totally forgot!). My favorite thing about her books is her ability to go back and forth in time to create tension and suspense. I’m always wondering what the hell happened and can feel my curiosity and nervousness growing with each change in time or chapter. She’s a masterful storyteller, even if sometimes the end result doesn’t meet my expectations. Unfortunately, that was the case here. […]

Book Buddies Review: What Alice Forgot

Posted February 24, 2016 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 7 Comments

Book Buddies is a discussion-style review that takes place with one of my two buddies. (Learn more and see past reviews here) We both read the book and then have a private discussion about it. We post our discussion as a review on the last Wednesday of each month. You’ll be able to see our similar/different opinions on the overall book, characters, writing style, etc. – just like a regular review. The first half our discussion will take place right here, and the second half will be on Cristina’s blog! (Link at the bottom) View Cristina’s part of the discussion here. If something similar happened to you, what do you think ten-years-younger-you would think about present-day-you? Cristina: It’s crazy to contemplate how different nearly everything in my life would be so drastically different, I think mostly due to how big of a jump there is between being in your teens and being in your twenties. I wouldn’t know my boyfriend yet, would literally have a completely different friend set, and have very different overall goals and aspirations. However, I think 10 years younger me would be pretty happy with where I’m at. The teen years are pretty angsty, and I was definitely caught up in the small details of life back then. Yet 10 years later nearly everything in the big picture of my life is going very right in the grand scheme of things. I think younger me would be proud and impressed that I now have a great job, an awesome boyfriend, a college degree, and an […]

Review: Big Little Lies

Posted October 10, 2014 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

I generally don’t read adult books because I relate better to young adult books. (By the way, you can expect a discussion post on this exact topic within the next few weeks!) This book was certainly a perfect example of that. The main characters in this book are all parents of kids in kindergarten, who were dealing with domestic abuse, ex-spouses, being a single parent, and schoolyard politics. It was difficult for me to completely relate to the characters but I did find it pretty interesting. Frankly books with such a grim outlook on adulthood are not normally fun for me. At least with young adult books dealing with heavier topics I can be happy I’m through with that point in my life. I’m not married yet, I don’t have kids, and I certainly don’t want to think about the potential of divorce or domestic abuse in my life! REGARDLESS, this book was overall an enjoyable read for me. The story follows Madeline, Jane, and Celeste as they deal with all of the aforementioned issues. The book is written in chapters from each of their perspectives with little police interviews intermixed (more on the writing style later). The book begins with the understanding that a parent dies at the school’s upcoming trivia night, and then backtracks through the months leading up to the trivia night. The story itself was surprisingly funny, considering it dealt with some pretty heavy issues. I loved each of the characters, flaws and all. Liane Moriarty’s […]

Review: The Husband’s Secret

Posted July 28, 2014 / Book Reviews / 6 Comments

Review: I was surprised at how suspenseful a non-mystery/suspense book could be. I got wrapped up in this book so quickly that I spent most of my work day sneakily reading it on my computer’s Kindle app. I could absolutely not stop. The beginning was the most suspenseful part of the book. It kept building and building until I said JESUS what did this dude write in the letter?!?! Once you finally find out, the novel slowly starts falling together. I’ll say it for the hundredth time: I LOVE books with multiple perspectives/characters whose lives are somehow intertwined. I knew that the different characters in the book would end up coming together somehow but it took some time to get going. I think that helped though; you were able to learn about each character/family without getting caught up in the holy-shit part. The story follows multiple characters and switches between them for each chapter. It takes a good author to pull this off without being confusing (I’m looking at you, Jennifer Close. Ugh). Cecilia is the woman whose husband wrote the lifechanging letter. Tess is a woman who comes home to her mother’s house after her husband has betrayed her in the worst possible way. Rachel is an older woman whose daughter died at a young age. I’ll admit that I had sort of figured out what the letter was going to say before reading it, but that totally didn’t impact the novel for me. I was so happy to follow […]