Spouses and Seas

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty was another charity shop pick, but I didn't get very far with it. I've enjoyed a couple of other Liane Moriarty books in the past, but I couldn't get into this one. All the characters were really unlikeable, and I was so unengaged, I wasn't even interested enough in finding out what the 'terrible secret' in the letter was to keep reading...

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel, on the other hand, is excellent! I wasn't too sure to begin with, because it starts with several chapters following a very uninteresting character. But I trusted in Mandel (as I love her other work) and I wasn't disappointed. The book has a Cloud Atlas style structure - moving from the narrative set furthest in the past, through to the far future and back again, which works very well in terms of revealing the different layers of the complex story. There were a couple of aspects that didn't make much sense, but overall it worked brilliantly and I loved how it all came together at the end. It also has effortless, uncommented-upon queer representation, including a bi-sexual character, which is always good to see.