Three Little Truths follows the residents of Pine Road and the increasing tensions that follow a new family moving in. We mainly follow Edie, Robin and Martha, the mother of the new family. Edie is desperate to be a part of the community, Robin is desperate to make a better life, and Martha is just desperate for a new one. Between hidden pasts and uncertain futures the three women have to work through their troubles and try to keep up appearances in the meantime.
I had been dying to read this for ages and I'm so glad I took the plunge straight into it. My first attraction to it was the differing design to the narratives, with the standard prose for a majority of the story but then a WhatsApp style exchange between the other residents of the road. I'm a sucker for different ways of telling a story, integrating formats such as texts and social media posts always make me more interested in the story as the author has gone through the effort of adding these in for the benefit of the reader. Not only was the format pulling me in, the humour throughout the WhatsApp group was just as you'd except it and was brought through to the reader beautifully, I absolutely love the way Shortall brought laughter out of me.
Interlinking narratives are usually something I love in a story, chapters being told from different characters so we can see the entire picture instead of just a single character's viewpoint. This was no exception, I cannot begin to explain how much I loved how Shortall's way of bringing a story to life through our three main character's eyes. The story continued to slowly drop hints toward the tragedy Martha experienced and how Edie and Robin's lives were connected to it. Extraordinary circumstances brought all three of them together but the way it was written made most of it believable. Robin *spoiler* meeting and dating Martha's older son was understandable, Martha is close by and they had gone out to where we knew he lived, but Martha moving onto the exact road that one of the attackers had connections to was a little bit of a stretch for me. It was obviously the connection that was key to the twist ending but the level of coincidence was a little too high for me.
Despite the coincidence of this pulling me away from believing the story I still thoroughly enjoyed the story and would 100% read it again. I loved how integrated Shortall made me feel to the story, how the combined narrative of the three characters encircled the reader so we know everything that was going on in Pine Road.
I had been dying to read this for ages and I'm so glad I took the plunge straight into it. My first attraction to it was the differing design to the narratives, with the standard prose for a majority of the story but then a WhatsApp style exchange between the other residents of the road. I'm a sucker for different ways of telling a story, integrating formats such as texts and social media posts always make me more interested in the story as the author has gone through the effort of adding these in for the benefit of the reader. Not only was the format pulling me in, the humour throughout the WhatsApp group was just as you'd except it and was brought through to the reader beautifully, I absolutely love the way Shortall brought laughter out of me.
Interlinking narratives are usually something I love in a story, chapters being told from different characters so we can see the entire picture instead of just a single character's viewpoint. This was no exception, I cannot begin to explain how much I loved how Shortall's way of bringing a story to life through our three main character's eyes. The story continued to slowly drop hints toward the tragedy Martha experienced and how Edie and Robin's lives were connected to it. Extraordinary circumstances brought all three of them together but the way it was written made most of it believable. Robin *spoiler* meeting and dating Martha's older son was understandable, Martha is close by and they had gone out to where we knew he lived, but Martha moving onto the exact road that one of the attackers had connections to was a little bit of a stretch for me. It was obviously the connection that was key to the twist ending but the level of coincidence was a little too high for me.
Despite the coincidence of this pulling me away from believing the story I still thoroughly enjoyed the story and would 100% read it again. I loved how integrated Shortall made me feel to the story, how the combined narrative of the three characters encircled the reader so we know everything that was going on in Pine Road.