“Big Little Lies” by Liane Moriarty

During our most recent foray into Half Price Books, Sam discovered two more Liane Moriarty books for me. (I really enjoyed watching her Nine Perfect Strangers TV series, and I had fun reading Apples Never Fall. Both stories were suspenseful and engaging and tightly plotted and peopled with interesting characters and maybe a little bit fluffy but so much fun that the fluffiness was entirely palatable.) So Sam was right in suspecting that I would like more Moriarty books. 

And Big Little Lies was just as fun! I’m not sure what sets Moriarty’s stories apart from the women’s fiction or Chick Lit or beach reads that I typically scorn (maybe nothing?) but somehow they go down easy and don’t leave me feeling ill and remorseful. 

BLL has a huge cast of characters, most of whom have a kindergartner starting at Pirriwee Public. There’s a lot of drama going on, both among the kids and their parents, and from the very beginning we know that someone is going to die on Trivia Night, but we don’t know who or how or why. 

Moriarty really manages to balance the lighthearted and the serious in a way that the novel I read just before this one, which I can now see was heavy-handed, did not. As I read BLL I became interested in the characters; in the previous book I felt like I was being forced to care, which did not work. 

We just started watching the BLL TV series last night. So far it's not as good as the book, but it's good enough that I plan to keep watching.