Book Review: The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

Title: The Husband's Secret
Author: Liane Moriarty
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Library Copy
This book would be rated: I can't remember, but I know there was sex in it

Honestly, it's been a while since I finished The Husband's Secret. I took it out of the library because I really enjoyed Moriarty's previous novel, What Alice Forgot. The Husband's Secret has many of the same themes of What Alice Forgot (marriages of people about my age going south) and also takes place among the upper-middle class in modern-day Australia, and it's a perfectly fine book, but What Alice Forgot was such a fun book, with such an interesting and funky premise, that I felt this book lacked sparkle by comparison.

The Husband's Secret starts out with three separate stories. First we have Tess, who discovers that her husband is cheating on her with her (formerly fat, now smoking hot) best friend/cousin. Tess listens to the couple's confession, takes her son, and flies home to be with her mother. She enrolls the son at her former elementary school, where Cecilia is the PTO president (or the Aussie equivalent thereof). Cecilia has it all-- gorgeous daughters, a perfect home, a handsome husband, and a thriving Tupperware business (yes, don't laugh). The school secretary is Rachel, who is still mourning the loss of her daughter, who was murdered more than twenty years earlier. As the narrative unfolds, the lives of these three women converge.

This is a book I'm glad I read, and one I would recommend to others, especially as sort of escapist chick lit (if finding out your husband did something horrible in his past counts as escapist chick lit), but it's not as good at What Alice Forgot. Read that one instead if you can only commit to one.