Book Review: Three Wishes

Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty


Does being conventionally beautiful make up for being emotionally immature? I had a hard time getting into this book. Liane Moriarty is one of my go-to authors when I want something I know I’ll really like, but this book did not really measure up to the other ones I’ve read by her. In fact, I think it’s even weaker than Nine Perfect Strangers. Most of her books have a theme, often revolving around guilt/shame, and something serious like a drowning or a murder. The theme of this book felt a little harder to grasp. Eventually I think it was how people in relationships change, but for the first half of the book it seemed to be “wow, triplets, hey?”

Moriarty has a rather clever literary trope where she shows the three main characters from the point of view of strangers. This works very well because in the beginning scene, someone throws a fork at the pregnant belly of a second one and then faints, but you don’t know which one is which. By the time the scene happens again, you get the backstory of what the fight was about.

I had a hard time liking these characters. Lynn had an affair with (and later married) a married man. Kat drives drunk, steals, and throws epic tantrums. Gemma is a professional drifter. Moriarty continually comes back to these cutaway scenes showing the girls from outsiders’ perspectives to remind you that they are tall, thin, and pretty. It didn’t really make them likeable.

There are things Moriarty does in all of her books which I usually love, which just irritated me here. For example, the continual focus on family and children. Usually I adore that her characters’ children are fully fleshed-out human beings, but here they felt more like stereotypes. Usually I’m delighted by her characters’ complicated love lives, but here it just felt annoying. The men felt gross rather than sexy, and the triplets’ problems seemed too minor, their flaws too looming. Having divorced parents remarry felt less like a quirky and unexpected plot twist and more like subtly reinforcing religious mores. I didn’t care about their love lives. No matter how pretty, it’s harder to care about characters who are shallow and self-absorbed. The sisters constantly bully and manipulate one another, which was in keeping with the theme of “wow, triplets, hey?” but it made them even less likeable.

I’m not going to say this book wasn’t worth reading, as Moriarty is an incredibly skilled writer, but it definitely feels like the weakest of her novels.




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