Nine Perfect Strangers

Compelling, funny, poignant, even occasionally meta, but at the end I wasn't sure if there was a point to the story. In fact, at several point the plot became so bizarre it felt like Moriarty had lost control of what is going on. With a romance novelist as (at least nominally) the main character, there are lots of opportunities to take digs at the state of contemporary publishing and reviewing, but ironically I felt like the one romance subplot was shoehorned into the flow of the book, and didn't really fit well. The narration alternates between the nine spa guests (and several key spa staff), so none of the characters are explored deeply, but although I missed Moriarty's more intimate novels such as [b:What Alice Forgot 6469165 What Alice Forgot Liane Moriarty https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1377159022s/6469165.jpg 6659752], she is skilled enough that we understand quite a bit about each individual by the end. I barely put the book down in the 24 hours it took me to read it, and I'm still thinking about it 24 hours after I finished. That's a good book to me, despite my caveats.