CBR Bingo – Oceania
Australian literary phenomenon Liane Moriarty has done it again!! Or I guess, she did it again a while back because this isn’t her newest book, but it’s gripped me just like all the rest. Hold my calls. Feed my dog. I’m stuck in a book.
Moriarty has a slick formula that relies on foreshadowing to hook you from the beginning. Much like in “Big Little Lies” we know at the start of the book that something awful happened to tear these friends and neighbors apart. In this book, the something happened “The Day of the Barbeque.” You don’t know until past the freaking HALFWAY mark of the novel what exactly transpired “The Day of the Barbecue” and getting there is an exercise in furious page-turning. What happened? Well I’M not going to tell you. As the reveal gets closer, you might get hints or an inkling, but I didn’t really know until it was laid out before me.
If you like her other books, you’ll like this one. If you don’t like her other books, this probably isn’t for you. She has a formula and sticks to it, while still keeping it fresh. This novel was written in 2016, right after Big Little Lies, but before Nine Perfect Strangers. (Which I haven’t read yet. Excited hand clapping!)
Sidebar, confession time, it took me entirely too long (i.e., reading three of her books, and thinking about them and talking to people about them excitedly and repeatedly) to catch Moriarty’s hook for handy three-word titles. Clever girl.
If she keeps writing them I’ll keep reading them, and by reading them, I mean greedily devouring them in 2-3 sittings. More, pleeeeeease.