Our Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent
Genre: Domestic thriller, Domestic drama, Family drama
Read: 16th July 2020
Purchase: Amazon
(publication date: 26th March 2020)
★ 1 star
When I read the premise for OUR LITTLE CRUELTIES by Liz Nugent, I am not sure what I was expecting. A dark domestic thriller? Yes. Some family drama? For sure. Endless droning and enough timeline switches to make my head spin? Er, not exactly. But that is what I got.
The story centres around three brothers - Will, Brian and Luke Drumm. None of them like each other and all of them had plenty of angst towards one or the other or all of them that it made for tiring reading. Opening with a funeral of one of the brothers, we aren't privy as to which one it is until the end. It goes through the motions where we wonder if it will be this one or that one or the other one?
Honestly, there was nothing to like about any of them. They were horrible unlikeable and wickedly entitled. The three brothers did terribly nasty things to each other, I'm surprised they didn't end up killing each other!
Added to their dysfunctional world was a mother who us a self-obsessed fan of herself and her faded career. She has no idea who to be a mother or parent these three boys and basically shines in her own shadow. Their father is practically non-descript, I couldn't say much about him - he didn't appear to have a voice. And then there is the Catholic culture in which they grow up - Mass, communion, confession and the threat of fire and brimstone at the commission of any mortal sin. No wonder Luke had mental health issues! I can still see him screaming at his first communion - a key scene, I might add, that denotes the beginning of his mental health decline. The other two brothers are just nasty.
OUR LITTLE CRUELTIES is told, in turn, by each of the brothers as they are given a third of the book to tell their story. What I didn't like was the constant jumping around of the timeline. I mean, I love thrillers and stories that are told through different timelines, but this was on a whole other scale! We go from 1994 to 1985 to 1882 to 1978 to 1999 to 1983 and so forth until the present day. Honestly, it was enough to make my head spin and thoroughly confuse me.
I couldn't keep up and in the end, I didn't want to. I didn't care enough about the characters to care what happened to them in the end. I ended up skimming the rest of the story to get to the end and find out which brother died because I honestly didn't care about all the bollocks in between.
I will say that end the Epilogue was a nice touch though. It kind of gave it a spooky feel. Maybe in a supernatural way or maybe in a psychosomatic way. But it was enough to give the reader chills.
However, that clever little ending wasn't enough to save the book in my opinion. I just couldn't connect with the characters and didn't care about them in any way. I just wanted to be rid of them and their crap.
If you want to read this drama of dysfunction be my guest, but OUR LITTLE CRUELTIES just didn't do it for me.
I would like to thank #LizNugent, #NetGalley and #PenguinUK for an ARC of #OurLittleCruelties in exchange for an honest review.
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