Johnny works for and with Jessie, and is father to three with Jessie, and stepfather to two (who aren’t really big fans of his). Jessie is an only child who craved a big family, and shows her love by spending loads of money on fancy trips for the extended family (and might be overextended in her finances). Cara and Ed are each others’ first partners.It becomes clear quickly that everyone has issues. Nell is Liam’s second wife, and she is significantly - like, 15-ish years - younger than him. Johnny is Jessie’s second husband, after her first husband (and Johnny’s best friend) leaves her widowed at 34. The book focuses mostly on the women, though the men have their own point of view chapters at times. Also I mostly enjoyed the last book of hers I read.Review:Three brothers - Johnny, Liam, and Ed - are married to three women - Jessie, Nell, and Cara. We immediately go back six months in time to see what has led to this.Worth quoting:“As a skinny, knock-kneed eight-year-old, she knew that too much bread and butter would make her fat - and far was the worst thing any girl could be.”Why I chose it:Paperback sale. Read moreīest for: Fans of Liane Moriarty’s writing.In a nutshell:CN for book and review: Disordered EatingThe Casey family - three brothers and their wives and kids - are at a dinner party when it seems as though a few secrets are about to be spilled.

By the end I was skimming a little as I had had enough. Johnny turned out to have been carrying on a friendship the reader had not been privy to, and that felt like an odd concealment. Ed behaved in a manner that seemed totally out of character from his behaviour in the rest of the book. At one point the focus on Cara's problems got so depressing that I put the book down for a while, but otherwise it kept me reading, although I did wonder at the number of extravagant holidays and celebrations Jessie organized for entire family - how much was her business making? Who has this much time to devote to extended family? Who wants to? (Maybe only families in novels.)The ending was a bit off for me. I was glad the prologue was repeated once we had worked our way back to it in the 'present day' of the novel, as it was by then a very long time ago. It also had every instance of 'ff' entirely deleted, which served to highlight how very very frequently the author uses the word 'stuff'.Anyway, I enjoyed this for the most part, although it was longer than I felt it needed to be. I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.My ARC had the family tree completely scrambled, but presumably this will be fixed before publication.

Grown ups marian keyes summary