Blog Tour: You Need to Know by Nicola Moriarty

I'm very pleased to be today's stop on the blog tour for Nicola Moriarty's new book 'You Need to Know'. Thank you to Penguin Random House for inviting me to take part.     

Synopsis:
Jill's three grown-up sons mean everything to her. She would do anything for her boys - protect them, lie for them, even die for them. Then one day she receives an email with the subject line: 'You Need To Know'. Jill doesn't want to know. She leaves the warning unread.

But some truths you can't hide from.

Soon Jill will start to wonder if she knows her sons at all . . .How long will these secrets stay hidden?
And when they are revealed . . . can Jill's family survive?

Review: 
'You Need to Know' is the latest novel by the Australian author Nicola Moriarty. It's actually the first book that I've read by her but I enjoyed it so much that I'll be definitely be checking out some of her other titles. 

Described as a dark domestic drama, I was very intrigued when I read the synopsis and couldn't wait to pick it up and get started. The story delves into the secrets that families keep and what they will do to protect themselves and each other. Moriarty does a fantastic job of getting beneath the skin of each of the characters and exposing the good and bad sides of their personalities. The book uses a multiple narrative perspective which works really well. It did take me a couple of chapters to establish all the characters in my head but once I had, I found that the different points of view, allowed me to develop a much closer understanding of each of the main figures in the story. There is Jill, the matriarch of the family, her daughters in law Mimi and Andrea and her youngest son Darren. Each of these is given a distinct voice as the plot begins to unravel.

The story takes place in the run up to Christmas. Interspersed throughout the narrative are scenes from a traffic accident on Christmas Eve. What is particularly intriguing for the reader, is that we don't know at the start what caused the accident and who is involved. This leads to a sense of suspense and impending doom hanging over the characters. Will they all make it until the end of the book? I don't want to reveal anything more but needless to say that I had a lot of questions in my head surrounding this which kept me turning the pages. 

I found 'You Need to Know' an interesting exploration of a family that on the surface may look fairly perfect but as the layers are peeled back, have a lot of dark secrets that they are keeping from one another. There are some hard-hitting revelations and a shocking outcome that completely took me by surprise. Although this isn't necessarily a book that ordinarily would have caught my attention, I'm so glad that I had an opportunity to read it because it was extremely gripping, fast paced and kept me hooked until the very end.

'You Need to Know' is published by Penguin Random House and is out now.