Unfortunately Dirty Laundry was not for me. I have tried three times to pick it up and try to power through but this will be the first DNF on NetGalley for me.

If the author was trying to make the characters unlikeable she did a superb job. Especially reading Ciara’s dialogue was like nails on a chalkboard in my brain. I just couldn’t take it anymore. Also, the writing was choppy and all over the place so I definitely feel like that is an excellent area for improvement. With these things combined, I was not interested in continuing to see how the story ended. The cover of the book is quite gorgeous though.

My profuse thanks to the author, NetGalley, and Random House for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Dirty Laundry is a domestic thriller full of complicated people and messy relationships. Bose plays with point of view and perspective to tell this tale, and overall, does a good job in the process. It is a bit difficult to care, however, when no one in the book is really worth rooting for. No one at any point makes a decision that makes sense or benefits anyone, even themselves. It gets a bit frustrating after a while. I did enjoy seeing how it would all play out in the end, though, which pushed it up to a 3.5 rating for me.

Ciara Dunphy appears to have a story book or Instagram perfect life with an attentive husband, Gerry and 2 kids. Behind her online persona is a troubled woman who drinks too wine to avoid dealing with the stress in her life. She holds it together for her videos and in her Irish neighborhood but falls apart behind closed doors. Her husband suggests she hire a nanny or someone to help her maintain the messy house. Ciara is embarrassed and would rather keep her drinking and problems a secret.

The neighbors are made up of unlikely characters. Mishti Guha has an arranged marriage to her husband Parth, and have a daughter Malva. She feels trapped in a marriage with a demanding husband. She often feels jealous of Ciara and uncomfortable trying to adjust since immigrating from Calcutta. Then, there's Lauren Doyle and Sean O’Grady who are parents to Freya, Harry and Willow but never married. Sean enjoys his freedom and not interested in marriage.

Life in the neighborhood gets messy when Ciara threatens to stir up trouble and is then found dead. Since Ciara had so many people on edge the list of suspects is long.

This one was a bit challenging... It was a well written story about tangled up relationships. I can't say that I really liked any of the characters at all, but I was still drawn in enough to want to see how it ended. And for that it was worth it!

Felt like I was read one of those drama TV shows like the wives of NY, which basically this book was because I didn't like any of the characters, but I did like the drama that played out.

Ciara Dunphy seems to have it all! A social media influencer, Ciara is adored by her fans and all the ladies in her neighborhood for her amazingly curated posts. Ciara is the popular “IT” girl everyone around her aspires to be like, well almost every one. What everyone doesn’t realize is that Ciara’s life is a lie. Ciara is miserable in her marriage, and the stress of trying to keep up images on social media is daunting. Mishti Guha is Ciara’s best friend, a transplant from India, Mishti is just trying to get her footing in a new environment. Living in an arranged marriage Mishti feels unseen, unloved and is miserable. All Mishti wants is to go back home and to see her family, and for her daughter to see peopel who look like her, but her husband doesn’t seem to ever want to go back to India. Lauren hates Ciara. From the moment Ciara moved in the neighborhood Lauren has not been able to connect with her, if anything Ciara treats Lauren as if she’s less than everyone else. As much as Lauren tries to connect with the other women in the neighborhood they are all under Ciara’s spell and she just becomes more of a pariah the more she tries. Lauren is suffering, with her kids always running wild, a partner who never wants to work or help with the kids she’s at her wits end. Lauren is originally from the neighborhood, now living in her grandmothers old house all she wants to do is sell the home and move somewhere else, as they’re financially drowning by the day.
When Ciara is found dead her pristine facade comes crumbling down, and suddenly all her “loyalist” have things to say about Ciara and they aren’t positive. The enemies now love the opportunity to bear all of Ciara’s dirty laundry , and everyone is pointing fingers about who the killer could be.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for this ARC

For some reason I just couldn’t connect with or get into this book. It was definitely more of a neighborhood drama than a thriller in my opinion. I typically love both, however for some reason I found these characters lack luster.

I wanted to like this book. I thought it sounded similar to a Liane Moriarty or Sally Hepworth book. Unfortunately, this book is extremely shallow. All of the characters are so one-dimensional and not realistic. The dialogue and writing are very amateur. I read to the end to find out what happened, but was happy it was over. The ending was not that interesting.

DNF @ 33%

This book seems like a great domestic thriller. I’m sure it will work for many people. I ended up not finishing because I couldn’t get into it.

This book was a mixed bag for me. It’s hard to read domestic thrillers. But I ended up loving it! The characters were intriguing and I found myself thinking about it a long time after I read it. Highly recommended for your next thriller

DNF unfortunately

I read about 25% of this book and realized I was so bored and did not care about any of these people and what was going to happen to them. Went to read spoilers in the reviews and found out that the husband's affair was found out through foot pics and the main character takes him back....glad I DNFed unfortunately.


Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was really predictable and a bit too much like other recently popular books. I think it will find great success, it just didn't resonate with me.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review. This is a book that reminds me of Big Little Lies: group of moms, everyone seems like they're hiding something, and everyone can benefit from a death.

I give this book a 2.5*. I guess it just wasn't my kind of book. The characters were not likeable at all.
Thanks to netgalley, the publisher and author for the chance to read this advanced copy.

Quick read with completely unreliable (and unlikeable) narrators told through the POV of Ciara (the Instagrammer), Mishti (the best friend) and Lauren (the enemy). In my opinion the role of social media influencer has been over played and I’m just over it. This story was easy to read but really left me rather confused for a majority of it. In the prologue we are told someone dies but then there’s not another single mention of this death until you are 85% of the way through the story. I actually had to go back and re-read the prologue and the synopsis because I was convinced I somehow ended up stumbling into a completely book, but I hadn’t.

I was very let down by the ending there was no build up to what happened and therefore no big mind bending moment of so this is how it happened. A reminder that we all have “dirty laundry” and you probably don’t want to be airing it around your neighborhood.

I love a good domestic/neighborhood thriller, and I did enjoy this one. I found the characters a bit too unlikable to truly get invested in the story, but because the story was well crafted and the book itself well written, I could forgive a little extra bitchiness from the leads. Adult female friendships are such a fascinating topic of discussion and research, so putting them at the center of a murder mystery gives authors a huge variety of ways it can play out. I enjoyed this one!

She was the perfect mean girl.
I had a hard time with Ciara. A mean girl to the fullest she expects everyone to love her and that may be because of her job as an influencer.

Ciara married for the things her husband could give her and not for love. She curates the perfect life online and dispenses advice with authority.

But Lauren is on to her picture-perfect life. The confrontations and shunning have only added to their contentious relationship. And it all comes to a head when her partner admits to having an affair with someone from their village.

Mishti was grateful when Ciara first took her under her wing. It made living in Ireland a little more bearable. Until Mishti begins to see Ciara for who she really is.

It all comes crashing down when Ciara is found dead in her pristine home.

Thanks so much to Random House/Balentine and the author for this ARC to review.

The characters and their stories were interesting. The plot developed kind of slowly but the news of the death helped move things along. We go backwards to learn the relationships between the families and mothers. But I was rather bored. And the end was anticlimactic. But I did enjoy that everyone was different- the men were all unique and had their own motivations and values. But in general it wasn’t a very memorable story.

Tame and overly repetitive, this novel really didn’t engage me in the slightest. The characters are stereotypical caricatures with little to no nuances and the “action” is too slow to make up for the flat characterization. The ending was the most interesting part so perhaps this would have been more successful as a succinct short story as opposed to a novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Ciara is a social media influencer with plenty of followers, who are always at the ready to tell her how great she is. Her children always appear well-dressed, polite, and happy to do whatever their mother tells them to do.

Mishti is the mother of Ciara's daughter's best friend. For reasons unknow, Ciara has taken Mishti under her wing. While Mishti expected to be a loner after her arranged marriage and move from India to Ireland, Ciara has made Mishti her closest confidante. Playing along makes Mishti's life seem great, but is it worth it?

Lauren is living with her partner and raising her three children in the home where she spent the happiest moments of her youth with her grandmother. She thought adulthood would temper some of the bullying she experienced as a child, but somehow she still isn't the one people want for a friend.

The story of the mothers in this neighborhood was interesting and hit the stereotypes of women and mothers around the world. The book was amusing, and the ending brought a unique culmination to the story and the relationships. I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars and would recommend it to those who like dramas and gossipy stories about women and mothers.