The story starts off quaintly with a straight-forward friendship and the novel builds towards a familiar if dull plot. All shifts as certain relationships start to emerge: not all is as it seems and the pace accelerates until it culminates into a ghastly denouement. The themes are not particularly unique, but Fielding definitely has the storytelling touch, stringing along her readers until the very end. ( )

I was really intrigued in the beginning, but I lost momentum 3/4 of the way through the book. A group of women meet when their children are young and share their lives. Kind of. There are tragedies that happen (as evidenced by statements in the beginning of the book), but are handled so unrealistically that I had a hard time with them. I found the abused woman's story line totally believable, but not the lawyers...just a meh from me. ( )

mystery, family, love
vg reading ( )

It's always the quiet ones, people say.
4 women who live on Grand Avenue become friends when their children were little. They met in the park in that neighborhood. They had parties together, chatted about everything and just enjoyed each other's company. Their husbands got along with each other. But, everyone had a secret. Yes, they chatted about almost everything but one woman had a secret she wouldn't tell anybody. So, when one of the husbands thought the other 3 women knew about the secret, he moved his family away. There were 2-3 years that they didn't see their friend. And then one day, she rang her best friend's doorbell & told her story.
The secret was out. Someone gets killed. Who got killed and who did the killing? The ending was very suspenseful & I would've never suspected the person who did it and/or why.
This is one of Fielding's earlier books and it was very good. I still she is still word-y and the book could've been shorter.

Trials and tribulations of 4 friends who go through divorce, raising children. One friend is an abused women who is afraid to leave her husband, another a wealthy successful lawyer. Same old stuff. ( )