Hi All,

Happy Friday! I am so happy to see the end of this week and I cannot wait to have three days to myself to do absolutely nothing. Of course there will be lots of reading done; that’s a given. I am by no means a Royalist and I have little interest in the coronation, but I am fully behind and appreciate of a bank holiday.

Book 📖

Thank you to @vikingbooksuk for this advanced copy of Dirty Laundry by @dishabossy in return for an honest review. Dirty Laundry was published on 24th March 2023 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

Ciara, Lauren and Mishti are three mothers, friends, wives. But, underneath the perfectly managed routines of their lives, they are not the women you expect – and neither are the secrets they keep. We all have our dirty laundry to air, but when their carefully curated world is threatened, the devastation goes beyond scandal – it leads to murder . . .

General Thoughts 🤔

I am a sucker for a cover and it was exactly that which drew me to this book. I saw the cover and immediately thought suburban drama, gossip and devious characters. I was looking forward to indulging in a fictional Real Housewives with some murder thrown in which was kind of what I ended up getting, but it did fall a little bit short. The story started off promising and I was hooked quite quickly. However after a while, it did start to feel like a lot of the same thing in each chapter and not much really happened.

That said, I did still enjoy this book. I was a passive reader for sure and just followed along without having to think very much. I think I would have preferred something more dramatic and gripping, but this was an enjoyable book nonetheless.

Characters 👫👭👬

There were three women that this story followed closely; Ciara, Mishti and Lauren. Each of the women were very different and had very different backgrounds but I wasn’t really able to connect deeply to any of them. This may be because I genuinely had little in common with any of them or because the characters weren’t deep enough for me to get close to them. In reality, I think it was a mixture of the two.

Ciara annoyed the life out of me, but she was very much written as a character that we weren’t supposed to like. She had fallen victim to social media and she cared more about what her followers thought than what her nearest and dearest did. I did sympathise with Mishti as I thought she was quite an unhappy woman. She was in an arranged marriage and I think that given the choice, she would have left in a heart beat. I was hoping that Mishti would find her courage and do what was right for her and her daughter. Lauren struck me as the most sane woman in the story, but even she came with some drama. If I had to pick one of them to go for a drink with, it would have likely been her.

Writing Style ✍️

I definitely found this author’s writing easy going and laid back. I was entertained and enjoyed letting the story unfold and carry me along with it. I really liked that it started by letting me know what was going to happen in the end and then going back in time to take me on the journey leading to that unfortunate ending. My disappointment was that I think the reveal could have been a little more exciting. I felt a bit deflated when I found out what had actually happened.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

Overall I found this book to be entertaining and easy to read. It started off with a bang and I was excited to see where the story was going to go, however I was left a little bit deflated by where the characters and the plot ended up. I think that there was potential for this plot to be super juicy and shocking, but it was a little bit more tame than I had expected. I did still enjoy the book and would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick and uncomplicated domestic thriller.

😍😍😍😐😐