I received Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty as an e-book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
“Despite their differences, Erika and Clementine have been best friends since they were children. So when Erika needs help, Clementine should be the obvious person to turn to. Or so you’d think. For Clementine, as a mother of a two desperately trying to practise for the audition of a lifetime, the last thing she needs is Erika asking for something, again. But the barbecue should be the perfect way to forget their problems for a while. Especially when their hosts, Vid and Tiffany, are only too happy to distract them. Which is how it all spirals out of control…”
I’d heard a lot of good things about Moriarty although I never did get around to reading The Husband’s Secret I was quite eager about reading this book. I can honestly say I was completely disappointed. Truly Madly Guilty should be renamed to Truly Madly Boring due to unending slowness of the story or the lacklustre characters.
I forced myself to read this book, and the only thing that pulled me in (although only just) was the question of ‘what happened at the barbeque?’ After this question was answered about half way through the book, I was forcing myself to read just to get it over with so I could move onto another book.
The book was too long, Moriarty seems to have written a 200 page book and realised she wanted 400 pages and then filled in the blanks with mind-numbingly boring situations and conversations. Whole chapters where the POV character would think back to the barbeque but not think about the accident were unnecessary and didn’t entice me as they should have. Plus the often dislikeable characters just seemed to irritate me as I was reading apart from during the infrequent times where they seemed almost like a normal person.
I couldn’t recommend this book to anyone, mainly as I can’t think of anyone who would find it particularly interesting. If you do want to see for yourself what this book is like then you can purchase on Amazon.
