When I flipped through the Perth Writers
Festival brochure I was shocked and excited to see one of my favourite author’s
names. Liane Moriarty, in PERTH?!?! my
mind exclaimed. I was in a year-long reading slump and decided I’d had enough.
A few of Liane’s pre-Husband’s Secret novels were sitting unread on my
bookshelf so I picked up the one I knew the least about (I had started reading
Three Wishes a while back but I wanted to dive into something completely
afresh). That book happened to be The Last Anniversary.
It all happened because of a mystery. The Munro
Baby Mystery, to be specific. A baby was found in its home, the parents nowhere
to be found. Alice and Jack Munro disappeared into thin air, leaving the kettle
boiling for tea and a freshly baked marble cake ready for frosting. The
neighbours, two teenage girls, Connie and Rose, came by to visit them and found
the baby.
This mystery is the basis of every plotline and
character in the novel. Connie and Rose took the baby home and looked after her
as their own. They called the baby Enigma, and Enigma went and had kids, and
then her two kids went and had three kids. All the kids are adults now, the
youngest is in their late thirties. Suffice to say, there are a lot of
characters in this book. It took me a little while to figure out who was whose
daughter, who were siblings, who were cousins, etc. But obviously it was worth
it to take the time to get to know the characters, because it’s Liane Moriarty
and duh, the book is gonna be awesome. And it was. Awesome characters, awesome
writing, awesome storyIine, awesome everything. I rated it 4.5 stars, so..
