“Truly Madly Guilty” by Liane Moriarty
Published: 2016 by Flatiron Books
Genres: Novel, Fiction
Imagine you experience a traumatic event with a group of people, does that event bring you closer together or push you apart? Liane Moriarty explores the relationship of 3 couples after an event that rocked all of their worlds. We not only look into how it affected their friendships, but also their marriages.
In “Truly Madly Guilty” we follow 6 adults and 3 children back and forth in time. We learn early on that something horrible happened that put a strain on the relationship between best friends Clementine and Erika, but we don’t know what. The day of the BBQ, two months later, the day of the BBQ, two months later, and so on and so forth. Each time we flash back we get a little closer to learning what the traumatic event was. When we jump ahead in time we learn how the traumatic event has affected each of the people involved and their relationships with each other.
Tiffany and Vid and their tween daughter, Dakota, are Erika and Oliver’s neighbors and invite Erika and Oliver over for a BBQ. The boisterous and outgoing, Vid, insists Erika invite Clementine and Sam and their two young daughters, Holly and Ruby, to the BBQ as well.
We are pulled through the book with much anticipation of discovering the horrible thing that happened, but all the while we are learning about all the other trauma that these people are dealing with. Is the damage post BBQ really because of what happened at the BBQ or was that just the trigger exposing all of these other things?
The people most damaged specifically from the events the night of the BBQ were the ones we don’t read as much about, Dakota, Holly and Harry, the rotten neighbor. Though I do feel like the adults that were there all feel a level of guilt for allowing the accident to happen or not reacting sooner. That I understand, but I don’t feel like that’s the real story in this book.
As much as Moriarty leads you to believe that there is something absolutely horrible in the coming pages in both the writing style and the title of this book, I feel as if that is a bit misleading. As the event is bad it isn’t nearly as bad as what I had imagined. It also is not at all what the book is about. It’s about relationships of friends and family and overcoming obstacles.
All in all I think that the book, like all of her books is well written and the characters are relatable and real. However, I don’t feel like it is her best work and perhaps it is because I do feel like the title is misleading. I have to say that I’d give this a 3 1/2 out of 5.
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