I
should probably start out this review by mentioning that Truly Madly Guilty is the first book by Liane Moriarty that I’ve
ever read. Admittedly, I was somewhat hesitant to have Truly Madly Guilty be the first book by Liane Moriarty that I ever
read since it has gotten a lot of mixed reviews. I had always planned on
starting with her book Big Little Lies,
but I ultimately decided to read Truly
Madly Guilty first since it’s her most recent book. Because I’m very aware
of the fact that this book has gotten a lot of mixed reviews, I went into
reading Truly Madly Guilty telling
myself that I shouldn’t necessarily view this book as being the sole
determining factor when it comes deciding to how I feel about Moriarty’s
writing in general; that being said, here are my thoughts on Truly Madly Guilty.
When
I initially started reading Truly Madly
Guilty, I was really enjoying it, and I honestly thought that I might end
up being one of the people who loved the book. The overall premise of the book
basically being about a barbecue gone wrong and how it affected the friendship
between the two main characters, Clementine and Erika, really intrigued me and
is what drew me to this book more than anything else. I also found the idea of
what exactly happened at the barbecue being the mystery aspect of the book
pretty cool. However, after a while, I definitely started to get very
frustrated with how Moriarty really seemed to beat around the bush way too much
when it came to a lot of the writing for the book; both when it came to how she
would vaguely reference the incident at the barbecue in the chapters that took
place after the barbecue and how she handled writing the chapters that took
place on the day of the barbecue, but took place before the incident occurred
at the barbecue. After a while, whenever a chapter would begin by indicating
that it took place on the day of the barbecue, I found myself thinking, “Good
lord, this sure is one long-ass day.” especially when none of the events that
took place in some of those chapters was stuff that happened at the actual
barbecue. The overall pacing of the plot really seemed to move at the same
speed as storylines on soap operas move, which I found extremely frustrating at
times.
None
of the characters in Truly Madly Guilty
are truly likable people, but that ultimately wasn’t the biggest complaint that
I had about the book in the grand scheme of things. I’m not a person who’s
necessarily completely turned off by characters in a story being unlikable, as
long as the characters are intentionally being written as unlikable people, and
the writing for the characters and the story overall is really good. After all,
when it comes to what my favorite TV shows are, my #1 favorite comedy is It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and
I’m also a huge fan of the show Seinfeld.
However, I’ll admit that when it comes to Truly
Madly Guilty, I did have somewhat of a hard time getting truly attached to
the characters in the book. I liked Clementine and Erika as a characters, but I
definitely didn’t love them, and sometimes they did kind of get on my nerves; which
I think is one of the reasons why I ultimately thought that this book was good,
but not great.
However,
I have to admit that with the exception of Clementine and Erika, I definitely
had a hard time keeping track of all of the characters in this book, which
definitely isn’t a good thing since there aren’t really too many characters in
the book, as far as I’m concerned. Usually, I don’t really have a hard time
keeping track of various characters when I’m reading a book, but that was a big
problem for me with this book. I had an especially hard time keeping track of
who Clementine and Erika’s husbands were. (Sam was Clementine’s husband, and
Oliver was Erika’s husband.) The worst example that I can give in regards to my
having a hard time keeping track of all the characters in the book would be the
fact that I was constantly forgetting that there was even a character named
Tiffany in the book.
I
think that’s pretty bad, considering the fact that whenever Tiffany was
featured in the book, I thought that she was a really interesting character.
The other reason why I think that it’s definitely a bad thing that I was
constantly completely forgetting about Tiffany is because my favorite character
in the book is definitely Tiffany’s husband, Vid. I thought that Vid was the
most interesting and entertaining character throughout the entire book. The
thing that really fascinated me about Vid, aside from his colorful personality,
is the fact that he was kind of obsessed with Clementine and was trying to
strike up a friendship with her, even though Clementine was repeatedly blowing
him off throughout the book. There were quite a few times throughout the book
where I thought that Vid and his obsession with Clementine was going to come
into play in some way when it came to what happened at the barbecue before the
details regarding what the incident at the barbecue actually was were revealed.
If
I had to say what this book’s biggest flaw is, it would be the pacing, and how Moriarty
handled the build up towards the reveal of what exactly happened at the barbecue.
As I said earlier, after a while, I honestly just started to feel like Moriarty
was beating around the bush way too much when it came to building up to the
reveal of what happened at the barbecue, or even hinting at it. That
unfortunately caused me to get bored and kind of lose interest in the mystery
aspect of the book at times. I’m really glad that Moriarty didn’t wait until
the end of the book to reveal what happened at the barbecue, and instead, she revealed
what happened at the barbecue pretty much at the halfway point of the book,
with the rest of the book dealing with the aftermath of the barbecue. If this book
were a straightforward mystery, I don’t think doing that would have worked very
well. Fortunately, revealing what the incident that took place at the barbecue
was at the halfway point of the book definitely brought somewhat of a new
energy to the plot, in my opinion.
Revealing
what happened at the barbecue at about the halfway point of the book definitely
helped reignite my interest in the book to a certain degree. That being said, I
ultimately found the whole mystery surrounding what happened at the barbecue to
be rather disappointing. Sure, what happened was definitely terrible and some
of the characters were traumatized by the incident as they dealt with the
aftermath of it, but at the risk of giving away too much, nobody who was
directly involved in the incident died. For the most part, the actual incident
at the barbecue didn’t exactly have irrevocable consequences for any of the
characters. The closest this book came to the incident having irrevocable
consequences for any of the characters would be that it was revealed that
Clementine and Sam’s neighbor, Harry, had seen what had happened, and had ended
up falling down the stairs and dying as he was attempting to get the
characters’ attention, since they were all enjoying the barbecue and didn’t
immediately realize what had happened. Other than that, nothing truly permanent
happened to the characters as a result of what happened at the barbecue.
The
other thing that helped get me interested in the book again after what the
incident at the barbecue had been was revealed is the fact that in chapter
eighty-eight, one of the kids admitted to their grandma that they had been
directly responsible for what had happened. Sadly, that whole reveal went
absolutely nowhere. That “twist” was revealed, and then it was completely
dropped and never mentioned again within a matter of pages. I’ll admit that
that particular reveal literally made me gasp and exclaim, “What?!” out loud
when I got to that part of the book. Sadly, I thought it was a big mistake on
Moriarty’s part, and just plain bad writing that the grandma acted like what
her granddaughter had done was no big deal. While everybody involved in the
incident was okay in the end, I really think she still should have told her
granddaughter that what she did was wrong, and I also think that the grandma
should have told the adults about what her granddaughter had done, given the
circumstances.
Personally,
there are definitely some pros and cons to Truly
Madly Guilty not being a true, straightforward mystery novel. Since I
ultimately found the actual mystery of what the incident at the barbecue had
been rather disappointing, it’s definitely a good thing that the book featured
a variety of subplots to help make the rest of the book more interesting; such
as Clementine being a cellist who was preparing for a big audition to be a part
of a prestigious orchestra; Clementine and Sam dealing with the fact that their
neighbor, Harry, had died, and nobody realized that he was dead until several
days later when they went to visit him, and they found his dead body in his
house; Erika and Oliver had been trying to have a baby for a long time and were
hoping that Clementine would donate some of her eggs for them to have a baby;
Erika dealing with her mother being a hoarder; Vid trying to strike up a
friendship with Clementine after he became a fan of orchestra music, and Vid
and Tiffany’s daughter acting strangely throughout the book after the events
that took place at the barbecue.
The
downside to having all those subplots going on throughout the book is that they
constantly had me wondering how they were relevant to the incident that had
happened at the barbecue, or if they were even relevant to what had happened at
the barbecue at all. Ultimately, I’d say that essentially only two of the subplots
that I mentioned were actually relevant in some way to what happened at the
barbecue. I probably wouldn’t have had such a big problem with that if Moriarty
had been better about slowly giving the reader some solid clues or hints about
what exactly the incident at the barbecue was throughout the book; and if she had
slowly narrowed down the list of what subplots were actually relevant to the
barbecue before she finally revealed what had happened. Sadly, she didn’t really
do that. Personally, the fact that Truly
Madly Guilty isn’t what I would consider to be a true mystery novel, and the
fact that the mystery of what happened at the barbecue was just one of the many
subplots that took place throughout the book; along with the fact that the characters
were dealing with some very realistic and relatable problems made it so that
this book reminded me of Desperate
Housewives in that regard. I really liked that about this book since Desperate Housewives is one of my
favorite TV shows.
All
things considered, Truly Madly Guilty is
a book that I really wanted to love, but unfortunately, I ended up having very
mixed feelings about it. It’s a good book in some ways, but it’s definitely not
a great book in a lot of ways. This book’s biggest weakness is sadly the
mystery; both in terms of the build up to the reveal of what exactly happened
at the barbecue, and in terms of what the actual incident at the barbecue was. The
actual incident at the barbecue was rather disappointing. It just wasn’t big
enough to make a big mystery out of it for a book, in my opinion.
While
I definitely think it’s a good thing that the mystery wasn’t extremely
predictable and easy to figure out early on in the book, I really feel like
Moriarty could have done a better job of providing solid clues throughout the
book as to what exactly happened at the barbecue in order to keep the reader interested
and engaged in both the mystery, and the book as a whole. Personally, I felt
like the hints that Moriarty gave were way too vague, to the point where I felt
like the plot kind of lacked a true sense of direction due to the fact that the
book consisted of quite a few subplots. It was difficult to know what was truly
important to the overall plot of the book and the mystery, since there were so
many subplots throughout the book. To be fair, I really do think that some of
the subplots outside of the mystery did kind of save the book to a certain
degree. I just wish that Moriarty had done a better job of tying all of the
subplots together in the end.
As
I said earlier, the fact that the characters weren’t necessarily genuinely
likable people definitely made it somewhat challenging for me to get truly
attached to them. However, Vid was definitely my favorite character in the
book. I just felt like he had a rather colorful and interesting personality for
somebody who views himself as a simple electrician, and Vid really contributed
a lot to my enjoyment of the book. Despite the fact that Truly Madly Guilty didn’t leave me with the best first impression
of Liane Moriarty’s writing, I still really want to read Big Little Lies at some point in the future.
That
being said, my final score for Truly
Madly Guilty is 6 out of 10.
