This book is one of those impulse picks from my library. I am currently slightly struggling with my TBR list – it’s amazing what a change of libraries can do to your reading. There are so many books I’ve been meaning to read from my old library in Bangalore, but aren’t stocked here in my local libraries here.
Here there are more UK published books, rather than American books and I have ended up reading a lot of books from authors not known to me earlier – not a bad thing, as most of my picks have ended up being pretty decent.
Elizabeth Noble turns out to be one of those unknown authors. I picked this up because it felt like a light read, but at the same time, the synopsis promised a little meat to the story.
About the Book
A group of close friends, their bonds forged at the nursery gates two decades ago, have celebrated, commiserated, and grown together: they thought they all knew each other so well.
Until the affair.
Now, a crack appears in everything.
Could one betrayal destroy it all?
~ Synopsis from goodreads
My Review
There were a lot of issues I ran into with this book.
- One too many characters – So many of them could have easily been removed without affecting the book in any way at all. I frequently found myself having to look up names and people with a list in the front of the book. Without that list, I would have been floundering trying to identify everyone.
- Unnecessarily long – For the length of this book (nearly 500 pages), I would have liked a bit more focus on the main plot. There was a lot of fluff in this book – well done fluff, but still huge sections of the book had very little to do with the main story.
- Some unlikeable characters – Of course, it’s understood that the characters are not likeable. They are people who are quite comfortable banging their friend’s spouse. Still, it’s remarkable how unlikeable these people were. The woman especially moaned a lot about the consequences of her actions – which honestly could have been a lot worse, considering how awful her actions were.
These issues aside, the book wasn’t too bad. I liked the angle the book took – how an affair doesn’t just impact the couple, but also their kids, social circle, and so on. There is also a fair bit of introspection by all the women as they consider whom to support, whom to discard. The friendship dynamics were all quite interesting!
That said, I found the ending very limp and by the time I finished the book, I found myself not caring very much what happened to all these very privileged (honestly, just reading about their endless parties and gatherings got to me) people.
This is one of those books that was very uneven throughout – a slow start, a completely engrossing middle and then just stopping in its tracks in the end. There was also an unnecessary sequel, that has nothing to add to the overall plot, and featured two of the blandest characters in the book. I’m not sure how anyone thought this was a good ending to a book!
Overall just about OK.
