Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I find novels like this manipulative: a big mystery is introduced, the narrative skips from the present action to the details of the fateful event, but the reveal happens SO slowly that it's irritating. Do what I did: start reading at page 190, read only the chapters titled "The day of the barbecue," stop reading at page 290, and then go back and read from the beginning. I'm also tired of the writing style that ends chapters with a cliffhanger that isn't resolved for a couple more chapters. For instance, a chapter ends with someone screaming someone's name, but the next chapter is about a totally different scene that you have to wade through before you get the resolution of the cliffhanger. I enjoy an author slowly building characters and relationships, but not when there are so many references to someone not being able to forget that barbecue without saying why, or someone who wishes they'd never gone to that barbecue, but not saying why. Moriarty lays the foreboding on thick, but teases her readers for over two hundred pages before letting us in on the secret! Two hundred pages is fine for a plot twist, but not for the central theme that motivates every character for the whole novel. Do you want to know what the tragedy is? Because I think the book reads better if you know it from the beginning. Three couples attend a barbecue at which one of their small children has a serious accident and they all blame themselves and each other. They go through various levels of self-recrimination and resentment for enjoying the party and not paying enough attention to the children. It's not such a tragedy that it really merits the 250-page build-up and I wonder if Moriarty's draft wasn't more linear and her publisher rearranged it to make it more tantalizing. Moriarty's an excellent writer. Her story doesn't need a gimmicky hook to keep us reading, but this novel is structured as if it does. Other books by this author have more integrity than this. Read those.