Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
You know a murder happens, but you don’t know who does it, who’s the victim, or how they die….until the end. It’s written very creatively! The story begins before the incident, but it does these witness flashbacks throughout the book from people recollecting what happened. Truthfully, it took me a few chapters to get hooked, but when I was hooked I was hooked. I turned into one of those bookworms you see that walks down a hallway with their nose in a book because “they just can’t put it down.” If you know me well, then you know I just typed that in my nerd voice (Kari Corbin and Trisha Collier are laughing at this, and Katie Mahany is cringing…Katie, why can’t you embrace my funny nerd voice? You know it’s not going anywhere!) haha
Another point you should know about this book is that the author is Australian…they have different seasons than we do. They apparently have the start of school year after Christmas, and their summer break is different than ours. This is totally fine, but if you are American, you can get confused quickly on the timeline and time of year if you aren’t considering this information ahead of time.
If you end up reading this book, then you may also like her book What Alice Forgot. I read this in my sorority sister book club, and it’s a great book. By the way, when I say “my sorority sister book club” that consisted of a GroupMe chat on what we wanted to read, we all read it, then we all talked about it. It was nothing formal, but it was fun for all of us to get to do something “together.” The premise of this book is a gal hits her head falling off of a bike in spin class and ends up forgetting the past 10 years of her life. Can you imagine?! This means that I wouldn’t remember my proposal, wedding, having 2 children, winning 3 state championships…I mean, the list goes on. A lot happens in 10 years! Could you imagine not knowing your children?! Crazy to think about.
Both of these books have short chapters (one of my requirements), is easy to read, and doesn’t take a ton of brain power. If I get a chance to sit down and read, I don’t want to waste precious brain power that could be used to watch an episode of Real Housewives (Orange County starts in 2 days, and New Jersey is back in July. Yessssss!). I want books to be fun and take me to a happy place. I tried to read The Lovely Bones and got to the part where the poor girl remembers her terrible attack…and I was done. Nope. Can’t do it. Reading is my happy place; can’t read about sad things. So, if you want a happy place book about a scandalous murder (what?!) then pick up Big Little Lies; I don’t think you’ll regret this good read!