I’m shooting for a double cannonball this go-round, so yay to the halfway point! Only slightly off-target, but there’ll be time to catch up, two trips coming up in the next six weeks. This is also my “Summer Read” square for cannonball bingo, specifically purchased for sunbathing and relaxing, as Liane Moriarty writes the literary equivalent of frappucinos. Frothy, sweet, perfect for the heat, but with a little espresso darkness to give it body and make you feel both fancy and like you’re not having something completely devoid of substance.
That being said, let’s torture the analogy and call this an iced mocha instead. It’s still fancy, it’s still sweet, but it’s not quite as frothy enough to be a summer staple. I think that there’s just not enough drama for this to be a true beach read; everyone gets along entirely too well and the only truly bad behavior occurs in flashback decades prior to our hero’s entrance. She (sophie) inherits a house on a tourist island famous for a being home to the Munro baby, abandoned by parents mysteriously vanished from their home. The biggest drama in the present day comes from the house being bequeathed to Sophie by her ex’s aunt Connie, one of the women who adopted said Munro baby, and his sister’s subsequent hissy fit.
There’s interesting enough plot threads to twist in who Aunt Connie suspects Sophie is destined to be with, a post partum depression sufferer, what exactly transpired with the lost Monro family, but the stakes just aren’t high enough nor tawdry enough to be what I want to get sunburned while reading. I don’t think there’s a such thing as a bad Moriarty book, and this certainly isn’t bad. Like all her books, this one makes a nice web, where the characters and their stories are so fleshed out and interwoven that the plot twists feel earned. It’s just not as summery as I expected.