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- Verified Buyer
ENGAGING, CAPTIVATING AND HEARTFELT A great book about lies and its consequences. An author that makes an approach that goes way beyond that, portraying the dynamics of human actions and conflicts with no Manichaeism.My first and pleasant experience with Liane Moriarty was through “The Husband’s Secret”, which drew my attention to the release of her new book “Big Little Lies”, and I can tell now that the latter gave me an even more delightful experience than the first. I was captivated from the very beginning and was gently involved in the story of the three main characters and their individual dramas.Madeline is a generous, unreserved 40 year-old-woman in her second marriage, always ready to fight against any injustice and having to deal with her teenage daughter who looks up to her new stepmother.Jane, who holds a big secret, is in her early twenties and a single mother of a 5-year-old boy who is accused of bullying and thus is seen as an outcast at school.Celeste is the astonishingly beautiful woman married with a rich handsome man whose marriage is far from perfect although being regarded as such by everybody around her.The main setting is the kindergarten attended by their children where most situations take place.We can say that this is a mystery book in which we receive, at the end of each chapter, clues about a tragedy that will happen in the near future in an school event called Trivia Night. The chapters are named as a countdown to this event once their titles tell us how long it takes for it to happen. Along with this central line towards the event, every chapter reveals something important that feeds the subplots and whets our appetite for more. All that stoked my curiosity and kept me interested in reading to know what was going to happen and who was going to be struck by the mysterious blow. In my opinion, the enigma was built and solved in a completely unpredictable way. I caught myself many times thinking I had figured it out and was surprised in the end. I can say that I am an admirer of thrillers and am used to seeing mysteries being solved, but the way she does it in this book is special and I liked very much. She has a special way of making the revelations because they always come out as a natural consequence of what was being said or done, and she also provides wow moments of connections that couldn’t have been foreseen up to then. She skillfully masters the suspenseful style.However, as contradictory as it may seem, what makes this book a page-turner for me is not the mystery, masterfully held throughout it, or the excellent thrilling aspect of it, but the story itself and the author’s ability to create real deep characters and to address serious topics, such as insidious domestic violence and bullying, with the seriousness they deserve, without becoming boring, self-righteous or cliché. What I liked in this is that the social issues are not there as a sort of moral lesson but as part of their lives, and that is why we end up thinking them over and learning from them. At the same time that I could not wait to know the end, I savored and relished each and every moment of the story and, the balance between these two aspects amazed me. I did not feel like rushing because I was as much interested in knowing who did what to whom as I was in enjoying all the process in the character’s mind and life.The plot talks about friendship, betrayals, loyalty, marriage, second-marriage, parenting, self-esteem, along with abuse in domestic violence and bullying, all of them perfectly intertwined in the characters’ daily life. The story is told mainly through the distinct voices of the three women in such a well written style that everything is flawlessly integrated since the very beginning. Past and present, facts and emotions of each one of them are merged in a unique story that flows wonderfully. The author manages to be gentle and yet straightforward in building the depth of each character through clever and sensitive dialogues, unfolding what lies underneath the appearance or the lie they create to survive, pleasing us with genuine brilliant insights of human nature. The author really has a way to create complex and rich characters and yet make them so real that they look like someone who lives next door. She sets an exciting pace while ushering us between the hidden and the social lives of each character, displaying a special skill at unearthing the secrets.In spite of having a great number of characters and many issues dealt with in the subplots, everything is very well tied together making it easy for the reader to get hooked to the story throughout it without getting lost. Besides, she provides us with a broad range of emotional responses: moments of loud hearty laugh, moments of complete shock and moments of teary sadness.Liane Moriarty has a great style of writing, which is articulate, fluent and chatty, steering the reader into a close and intimate relationship with the characters and the story. Besides, she has a special talent to put humor while addressing serious issues in a story that flows round.I loved reading this book. I had far many reasons not to put my kindle down and a lot more to love about it. It was an easy reading yet rich and with many nuances of the human being. I think it is even better than “The husband’s secret” and I will certainly read more books from her. Maybe “What Alice Forgot” is next in line, as it seems to be regarded as her best of all.
