Rachel Reviews: Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty

Whenever I pick up a Liane Moriarty book, I know that I am in for a good read. It can sometimes be dark, it will have characters who infuriate but also those who delight, and it will be clearly written with a funny edge to it and a satisfying conclusion. That's all you really need to know.

Three Wishes is about triplets but it is mainly about family and relationships. Cat, Gemma and Lyn are the triplets and they are all very different, despite Cat and Lyn being identical twins, Gemma just being the product of a fertilised egg all of its own. The narrative describes the events leading up to their 34th birthday, and the book opens with a third party's report of a rather fiery encounter between the three of them in a restaurant which is dramatic for its confrontation and its violence.

Moriarty chooses to have these third party reflections throughout which provides us with an external (to the triplets) view of how they appear to others when they are all together. I quite liked this as it gives us a different perspective and contrasts with what we know of the relationships of the family members from Moriarty's third person narrative and the "real" life representation of them to the public eye. It was an interesting narratorial device.

Lyn is the sister who is the organiser, married with a toddler and a step-daughter, running her own business and is the most tense. Cat, her identical twin is married and happily so and trying for a baby. Her career is good and she is not as wound up as Lyn. Gemma is a little ditsy and living a life without any fixed direction as a housesitter.

All of their worlds are about to be picked up and shaken and the book concerns itself with the story of this happening. If I had to pick a central character about whom the book mainly concerns itself, it would be Cat but only marginally more than her sisters. Moriarty also takes us back into their pasts so that we are told about incidences in their childhood that have shaped them into the people they are at the point in time especially in terms of their parents, their conception and their parents' subsequent marriage.

Moriarty's skill lies in creating characters who are believeable and placing them in situations to which we can all relate, although we may not have personal experience of them. There is always a sense of the chaos of life and how her characters get carried along by this, alongside typical character flaws that hinder their progress like stubbornness or an inability to see things for what they are; but rather than irritate or restrict the progress of the narrative, they are complimented by humour and a sense of the ridiculous at times as well as the inevitabiity of aspects of life being out of their control. Her writing style is easy, fluid and her dialogue feels real

Her fiction never fails to deliver. Entertaining and funny, with love in all its forms, this is another great read from Moriarty.

Rachel Rating: 4/5 stars

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