Crooked Little Lies

This was a good one. Essentially taking part in the unreliable narrator trend, this smart family drama had so many strands that tied together so neatly in the end. I imagine it'd be a great book club read since these characters were all hiding their own secrets and dealing with their own trouble in the best way they knew how.

In a single sentence, Crooked Little Lies is like a soap opera. You could make each chapter into a daily episode and you would have a month long story arc to work with. Thankfully despite the drama that occurs, it is paced well.
Lauren is an easy character to want to hate at first. She had what seemed to be the perfect life until a nasty accident and subsequent painkiller addiction created a mess of everything. However, we get a very distinct sense of how hard she is struggling to make things right again, even though she still suffers from memory loss. However, if it wasn't for her chance encounter with Bo Laughlin, she probably would have been worse off by the end of the book.

Annie is definitely the kind of person who just wants to take care of the ones she loves, including Bo, so I can see why she takes it so hard when he goes missing. She has had her share of heartaches and maybe that's why she has a problem with accepting help from others or even trusting them. Yet it does seem to help her in the end, even with facing another potential tragedy.

The plot itself can get pretty twisted, hence why I called it a soap opera. When Lauren suspects her husband is having an affair, you can't really blame her for wondering. I suspected the same thing. Jeff clearly had something to hide, but I didn't expect the eventual rabbit hole to go as deep as it went. No one is the same at the end of the book, and that's how it should be.