Liane MoriartyRessenyes

I read this based on a friend's recommendation. While the writing isn't as bad as, say, Dan Brown or EL James, it's not spectacular either.

The plotting and pacing are pretty good, I found myself drawn into the story and interested in the characters. But by the end, I'd stopped caring about them. I felt like an outsider. I think that's because I'm not a mother, and this book deals with a lot of themes relating to motherhood.

So, if you're a white, middle class mother, you'll probably enjoy this book more than I did.

This story started as a 2 or 3 for me and i am glad that I did not DNF this story. Eventually, the pace picked up and I was able to connect with the characters.
The further I got into this book, the more enjoyable the story became. I will definitely look for more of Liane Moriarty's work in the future.

A very cleverly written, character-based story involving a recently retired mother who goes missing after sending incomprehensible text messages to her four adult children.

The storyline moves between the current investigation, which becomes more and more concerning, and a few months earlier when we learn about events leading up to the disappearance. The author leaves us guessing until the last moment.

I found this compulsive reading and could barely put it down. Highly recommended.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2024/04/apples-never-fall-liane-moriarty.ht...

Joy Delaney, many years married, mother of four adult children, and previous owner of a well-know tennis academy, has disappeared. Her children are unsure what to do. Call the police? Wait it out? Meanwhile, her husband Stan does not seem overly concerned. Suspicion mounts, not only on Stan, but on a mysterious woman who spent several months in the Delaney home the previous year. Did Joy disappear of her own free will, or was something more sinister at work?

I would consider this classical Liane Moriarty. There's an alternate past & present time line, a somewhat dysfunctional family, and some mysterious past incident that the reader is gradually clued into as the story progresses. While portions of the story seem unrealistic, the dysfunctional family and character flaws seem jarringly realistic and tend to hit close to home. I tend to go back and forth with my opinions of Moriarty's novels as I'm reading, but I generally like them in the long run and this one falls into that category as well. I've just started watching the series adaptation -- only 2 episodes in, so I can't share my full opinion on it. I'm not sure I like the casting, and so at this point I'd say (as is often the case), the book is better.

It was SLOW, and once the big question "WHO IS GINA??" was answered, the ending was pretty predictable...

The Delany Family, tennis coaches and players meet their match when a mysterious stranger unexpectedly appears at their door. Could she be involved in their mother's disappearance?

She certainly knows how to write a page-turner. The characters are well-written too; I found myself thinking about them when I wasn't reading the book. Just a richly detailed story all around.

I love this author’s books. This is a sweet, often hilarious story of triplets and the different complications in their lives. Nothing really profound or new but I thoroughly enjoyed it all the same. It’s hard not to like a book that makes you laugh out loud regularly. Only complaint: the title doesn’t really mesh with the book.

Not normally the type of book I read, but two friends were praising it highly and loaned it to me. Quite an enjoyable read

Liane Moriarty has had a lot of success recently with her spiky barbed female-led thrillers but this was her debut novel, with an altogether different theme. The story is about the three Kettle triplets – flighty, dreamy Gemma, organized and meticulous Lynne and moody Kat (although she has a lot to be moody about!)

In the opening scene, various unnamed characters are describing a scene in a restaurant where the three woman are celebrating their birthday – we know that at least one is heavily pregnant – and a huge argument breaks out. The story then goes back about a year and describes the events that led up to the birthday incident.

I listened to this as an audiobook, and thought Caroline Lee did an excellent job of the narration. Both she and Moriarty gave each Kettle sister their own distinctive character and voice and it was a pleasure to listen to.

This is not a psychological thriller, which Moriarty writes much more of these days; it’s a drama about life, love, relationships, jobs and the whole messy shebang. As the story goes on, the sisters are each fleshed out and we learn more about their motivations, their lives and their secrets. I didn’t warm to Cat but I did feel sorry for what she went through. I also found Lynne hard to like initially, but as the story went on I did warm to her, with her fears of being anything less than perfect. However, I adored Gemma. For all her love of impermanence, all of her refusal to settle down to one man, or one job, or even one home, she was kind and lovely, and her backstory was slowly revealed which explained a lot.

There’s tragedy and heartbreak, and there’s lots of love too and some amusing scenes. (Especially with the girls’ grandmother and their parents). It’s deeper that the cover might lead anyone to expect and very enjoyable. If you like fiction about women, written predominantly FOR women, then you might like to give this a try.½

There's a little mystery, a thought provoking, romance and very good read.

This book hit me at exactly the right time as I'm currently in the lead up to my youngest daughter beginning pre primary. The year that was Kindy is fresh in my mind and I felt I could connect with many of the characters in some way.

The beginning of the book tells us there has been a murder and as the story progresses I was splitting the characters in to "Please Don't Die" and "You Can Die" categories and then found myself 'saving' characters after horribly misjudging them.

This book is the right amount of suspenseful, emotional, political, enlightening and funny to keep me interested the whole way through without being too much of anything.

I would consider this a light read but with the extra elements making it memorable.½

Nine people gather together at a resort for ten days for various reasons. They are required to give up all connections to outside life - cell phone, no TV, no newspapers - and fully immerse themselves into the resort's ways. At one point during the ten days, there is absolutely no talking. They all have specific foods that they are eating but it's not all the same foods.

Masha is the owner/director of the resort and she works with Yao and Delilah. Masha was formerly an executive who suffered a heart attack and Yao was one of the paramedics who saved her.

It's not long into the ten-day retreat when everyone is wondering if the retreat is really helping them. The story was good and then kind of went "off the rails" towards the end but everything was pretty neatly wrapped up.

I've always enjoyed Liane Moriarty's book but wasn't as thrilled with this one as I would have hoped.

This book centers around a group of 6 friends/neighbors in Australia. They all attend a barbecue at one of the neighbor's homes. There is an "accident" that occurs at the barbecue, but you do not find out what happens until about 3/4 of the way through the book. The chapters alternate between the day of the barbecue and weeks afterward but also provides the background on some of the characters.

The relationship between Erika and Clementine is difficult. When guilt gets thrown into the mix, it slowly fractures their friendship. Pack some patience when reading this book....it takes a while for the characters to develop and to get to the barbecue.

I love this author, but this was not one was not one of my favorites. Kept me hooked, but very weird!

Couldn't put it down! Great story! Love this author!

3.5/5 - easy to read but dragged on for too long. the reveal of what Alice forgot was somehow rushed and anticlimactic. “young” alice was also more like 19, not 29.

Suspense

Humour

Comedy

Romance

“Oh calamity.” - Overused phrase

This works much better as a tv series. I’m glad I had already seen it to help me keep everyone straight. There are so many characters with few variances. About on par with Truly Madly Guilty, but better than Nine Perfect Strangers. I’m probably not a Liane Moriarty fan tho so I doubt I’ll seek out more works.

This is a very well-written, cleverly plotted novel. It is something of a psychological thriller without being too tense; I certainly didn't see any of the twists or surprises coming. It raises some interesting ethical questions, as well as covering some quite traumatic incidents.

However I found the number of characters a bit overwhelming in the first few chapters. Then, even when I had managed to sort them out in my mind, none of them really got under my skin. Having said that, I did very much like the zany headmistress, and the middle, possibly autistic eight-year-old.

But the three main characters all feel too similar. One is obsessive about her house, one is rather immature and feels younger than she is; she's only just started seeing how much she has been living in the shadow of her cousin. The third main character is still suffering from a terrible, tragic loss twenty-seven years earlier, but I couldn't really grasp her as a person at all. Nor could I figure out how old she was meant to be - descriptions suggest that she's about eighty, but from the chronology she shouldn't have been more than mid-to-late sixties.

Still, it's a very readable book which I found hard to put down. So if you like women's fiction with a well-crafted plot and don't mind a large cast of somewhat indistinguishable characters, I would definitely recommend this.

Longer review: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-husbands-secret-by-liane-moriar...

Interesting story. Good twists. No loose ends.

First book I've read by this author. Kept my interest. Looking for more!