Evening Everyone,

Hope everyone’s week has started well and you’re enjoying early November. This is probably my favourite time of year. The nights have drawn in, the heating is on and I can get cosy at home every evening. It’s how I plan on spending every evening now in the run up to Christmas.

Book 📖

I’ve been taking a little break from reading freshly released books the last couple of weeks and have instead been diving into the depths of my to read list and picking some reads from there. I came across Those Other Women via Liane Moriarty (sisters with the author) quite some time ago and have now gotten around to giving it a go.

Description 🔖

Poppy’s life takes a drastic turn when she learns that her husband has been having an affair with her best friend and he’s leaving her. It’s a double whammy for Poppy; losing the two people she loves most, but she quite quickly makes a new friend in Annalise.

Both Poppy and Annalise do not want children and rather than being outcast from the popular local mommies group, they decide to start a Facebook group for other women who do not (not cannot) have kids.

What starts off as a safe place for the women to share their stories and frustrations quickly grows into something that was never intended. Members start to confront mom’s out in cafes and parks and a division between the moms and non-moms ends up turning quite nasty.

General Thoughts 🤔

Ok, so at first I thought this book was written for me. I am that 30-something-year-old without kids that always gets questioned about when it will happen or why I don’t want it to happen. Like the ladies in the non-moms group, I find it strange that nobody ever asks moms why they had kids. As soon as the group started to get mean, my mind was changed. Maybe these women weren’t my people after all.

My big take away from this book was how deeply having/not having children can divide women. It’s crazy to think that that happens when you don’t see the same thing happening nearly as often with men. It’s so easy to forget that everyone has their shit, it’s just different shit. As women and human beings we should be able to just support each other regardless.

Characters 👫👭👬

I did quite like Poppy but I think she let herself get dragged into something that wasn’t what she originally intended. By the time she had realised that things had gotten out of hand, I don’t think she knew how to reign it all back in. What I admired about her was that she stood firm in what she wanted from her own life.

Annalise was an interesting character to me. A lot of the book keeps her quite mysterious and I thought she was quite aggressive and forceful. As I learnt more about her and her life, I definitely started to sympathise with her and what she had been through. It was clear that the hard exterior she put up was the armour that she chose to wear for the world.

Writing Style ✍️

I expected this to be a fun chick lit book and it was that but had more depth than I expected. I liked that about the book. It may very well be that I found that because there was a lot in there that I could relate to, but if I could relate to it then I’m sure plenty of other women could too.

There’s no fancy plot writing in the book and I liked that. It’s a fairly linear plot line and is split into parts that focus on particular characters. I thought that this structure was perfect for the book and made it easy to follow.

Conclusion & Scoring 🏅

Overall this book delivered for me. It had hilarious parts, some saucy parts all coated with a bit of female drama. I found this to be an easy going read and I’d call it a perfect Sunday afternoon read. I’ll probably do a little research now into Nicola Moriarty’s other books and add some to my to read list for the next time I want to pluck out a fun read.

😍😍😍😩😩