Weekend Read: Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Anyone who knows me knows three things:

1) I love all things produced by Andy Cohen and Bravo, except Top Chef
2) a naked Samm is a happy Samm, and
3) I live for OPD (other people’s dirt)

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty has nothing to do with me being naked (unless you count the hours I spent naked in bed while reading it), but everything to do with OPD and Bravo. Naturally, it’s one of my favorite books.

Big Little Lies reads like a really, really good Housewives franchise. It has middle-aged women with too much money and too much time on their hands that love talking shit about each other, and it even has the young newcomer that Vicki Gunvalson a few of them are clearly threatened by. Everyone seems to hate each other, and the end of chapter flash forwards are read more as Real Housewives commentary/confessionals than anything else. There’s gossip (so much gossip), fights, cliques, and best of all, murder.

“She’d never really believed in it before. Then, as she hit her late thirties, her body said, OK, you don’t believe in PMS? I’ll show you PMS. Get a load of this, bitch. Now, for one day every month, she had to fake everything: her basic humanity, her love for her children, her love for Ed. She’d once been appalled to hear of women claiming PMS as a defense for murder. Now she understood. She could happily murder someone today! In fact, she felt like there should be some sort of recognition for her remarkable strength of character that she didn’t.”

The most thrilling part is that you as a reader have literally no idea what is going on with the murder. You have to hang out for all the late night gossip, casual slut shaming, husband bashing (rightfully so in most cases), and preschool drama before you can get to the great stuff. You know, or at least assume, someone has been killed… but you don’t know who, how, or why.

Big Little Lies is the second book I’ve read by Liane Moriarty. I first started reading her books while I was in Michigan working on a miserable race. Her bitchy writing drew me in like a warm blanket, and her cast of characters is seemingly never ending. Every once and a while you get an Eileen Davidson or a Camille Grammar, but for the most part you genuinely care about each and every one of them, and they all bring something to the table – even if you don’t realize it until the last page.

Imagine my delight when I found out Big Little Lies was coming to HBO as a mini-series on February 19. Seven episodes packed full of drama and some seriously big names, count me in. We’re talking Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Alexander Skarsgard, and Adam Scott big. (I’m salivating just thinking about this.) Once you’ve read the book, you’ll see that those actors are perfect for their characters.

HBO, please do not disappoint.