I enjoyed this insightful novel very much. The storyline flows at a great pace, and the characters are well fleshed out. Highly recommended! Marian Keyes never disappoints!

I haven't read a Marian Keyes book in years. She used to be an auto-buy author for me. I am not quite sure why I stopped reading her books, because she is still the same strong, story weaver that I remember. This book contains one insanely dysfunctional family that will make you laugh, cry, and swear. It's a story about 3 brothers and their families, who grew up with dictator like parents.

I wasn't sure how I would feel about it based on the blurp, but I am so glad I gave it a shot, because I loved it.

4.5/5 stars!

***Thanks to Penguin Random House for a copy of this book, all opinions are my own***

I love usually love Marian Keyes’ books but this one was an exception. This book was too long with too many characters and too many side stories. Still her characters were richly developed and her dialogue was as witty as ever. Sorry, I tried but couldn't even finish this because I got so tired of trying to figure out who everyone was. Now I know why there was a family tree on the inside of the cover!

goodness gracious this was a long one.
unfortunately it took me awhile to get into it, i struggled to connect to the characters. eventually it picks up and overall i did enjoy it, but the struggle in the beginning dampened my experience.

This was way too slow and way too long. There were too many characters (I read it in an ebook so I couldn’t see the family tree properly). The writing was well done but it moved at too slow a pace for me to really get into it. But if you love a story about dysfunctional families, this is your jam!

This book was so good. I didn't to put it down! The characters were well rounded, and the storyline sucked you into it and made you feel like you were really there. The author did an great job telling this story.

Marian Keyes presents another batshit crazy, complex, dysfunctional family drama. A humongous family and tons of characters made me feel like I’m watching German series “Dark”, trying to remember the names, their connections, back stories. A few times, I turned back and read some parts again not confuse a character with the other one.

This is a long, witty, dramatic, hilarious story about three charming brothers and their wives and their children…Casey Brothers: Johnny, Ed and Liam, victims of cold hearted and authoritative parents, trying to shape their lives by having their own big families.
Johnny married with grocery empire queen Jessie- my least favorite character likes to control people by over spending her money to earn their time and respect, looks like always gives you encouraging compliments: “Oh, you look fantastic this hippo costume!”, “Wow! What a fantastic bulldog! Wow, you said it’s not a dog! It’s your 3 year old son! Okay, I’m taking the bone back!” Yes! I want to skip her parts so bad! I confess right now!) He has problems with step child Ferdia who thinks he’s better than anyone and suffering from bad breakup!

Ed lives in the shadow of too charming but also pretentious brothers, sweetest guy and my favorite of the brothers. And his wife Cara is my favorite character. She is hard worker, problem solver, flexible, smart but she also deals with her eating disorders and secretly fights with her bulimia problem. I loved their children as well.
And Liam, famous runner and now biker, divorced from his wife who took the custody of her two children to move to the US. And he is remarried with Nell, twice younger than him. Nell is also carefree, adventurous, confident, artist with her thrift shop, baggy clothes with her pink hair (a little older version of Billie Eilish) But Liam’s secretive and over protective attitudes around his daughters slowly creates troubles in their sweet paradise.

So one day, Cara gets concussion and at a family dinner she starts to spill beans about the big family secrets. (Actually this is how the book starts and we move back to six months ago, an entire family vacation to understand the problems from the beginning)

We learn more about the family members’ background stories, resentments, dirty secrets, grudges, problematic obsessions, the things they hide behind the big family façade.

This is the first time, I changed my mind about how much stars a book deserved. When I read my favorite characters’ part like Cara and Nell and let’s not forget Bridey who is the REAL GROWN UP of this book because all of the parents have so many faults, buried their heads in sand, dealing with their own misery and acting immature when Bridey tries to push them gather their wits. ATTA GIRL! She seems like know-it-all, pretentious and annoying but I laughed so hard to her comments. Just for her, I was ready to give five full stars but… the problem is I got lost into millions of characters and not each of them is interesting. Some characters’ parts slowed down the pace and my positive thinking about the book slowly start to dissipate.

But thankfully the ending was satisfying, engaging. So I’m rounding up my 3.5 stars to 4. I’m reading Marian Keyes’ books for 15 years and she really writes a hell of amazing family portraits. Walsh Sisters’ books (especially “Anyone Out There” and “Rachel’s Holiday” are my “must reads”) are my favorites.
This book is also entertaining, powerful, laugh-out-loud, feel-good reading with tragic and tear jerking elements. The only thing I didn’t enjoy was the growing number of characters. But at least we have still memorable ones.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Penguen Random House Canada/Doubleday Canada for sharing one of my favorite author’s ARC with me in exchange my honest review.

Keyes finds a way to make loss, deception, grief and love entertaining in a very long book. I was afraid I would have a hard time finishing or trail off, but another winner in my column.

The Casey Family is flawed like every other. They are dysfunctional, dramatic, intriguing and they are real.