Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty is about three sisters who are triplets. The story starts at a meal to celebrate their 34th birthdays at which there is an argument and one sister ends up in hospital after being stabbed by a fork wielded by one of her siblings. The book then backtracks through the period before that event and shows what led up to it and what happens afterwards. At the beginning of each section the author also includes an event from the sisters’ lives which also happened in public but told from the point of view of a bystander – the main narrative usually then describes the event again during the course of the story from the sisters’ point of view. This is clever and it really enhanced the book for me.
The story is about the three sisters and their various life problems but particularly focussing on their relationship with each other, and the men in their lives, and how that impacts on things. The sisters are intelligent and capable women but each has a life issue to be dealt with or overcome and the story also features their estranged parents and their grandmother.
Themes in this book include struggling with the demands of being a mother, a wife and running a business; dealing with the death of a fiancé over ten years ago; and a marriage breakdown leaving a sister on her own for the first time in her life. What happens to the sisters is not particularly unusual but the story is engaging and full of humour. The author also rewards the reader with a satisfying ending with all the loose ends nicely tied up.
Anne Is Reading 