Book Review: Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent

Book: 167

Rating: 3.5/5

Hats off to this Irish, character driven, suspenseful and overall depressing book by Liz Nugent. I am inclined to check out more of her work after reading this one!

The book opens up with three brothers at a funeral: two are attending, and one is dead - and you don't know who or why. The book is then split up into four sections: the first three sections are in each perspective of a brother over the course of their life, jumping through time so the reader gets a jist of their early family life and adulthood. The final section alternates between each brother's perspective until you finally find out what happens and who is dead and alive at the funeral.

I appreciate how even though the reader is often re-living events through different perspectives it didn't feel repetitive. The book quite literally lived up to his name because almost every chapter in his section had a serious act of cruelty in it that made me almost DNF it. I decided to persevere in hopes that the other characters were redeeming; I had empathy for Luke, Bryan was problematic (to put in nicely), and the story wrapped up in a Shakespearean tragedy kind of way.

I'd recommend this book for fans of dark, character driven family dramas.

This book is out on November 24, 2020. Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for the ARC!