3.75/5 ( )

If you want emotional women's fiction, this is a pretty good book. The reader is introduced to three neighoring women and their families. They hide behind their Facebook posts and pictures what is really going on behind the scenes, and they soon discover each other's lives are not quite as perfect as their appear.
Kate and her teenage daughter Daisy are hiding from their past and hoping nobody finds out their true identies. Kate spends nearly 18 years torturing herself over something which was not her fault and thinking everyone else blames her as well, keeping to herself while Daisy wants to be the typical 18 year old with a life and friends.
Gisela is the perfect housewife, supporting her workaholic husband Jack and their two teenaged kids, Ollie who has a much older girlfriend, and their daughter Hannah who isn't quite sure what she wants to do with her life. They all seem so ungrateful and hateful to her and I'm not surprised when she's mad at them most of the time.
Spouses Sally and Chris cannot agree about having a child and it causes them to constantly fight. Sally's mom does not help, constantly nagging her she wants to be a grandmother.
These women are so judgemental and so catty towards one another at first, but they soon realize they have a lot in common and that they need each other for emotional support just like any good chick lit book would do. Although, I do think this book is only partially named and should be called "The Woman I Was Before I Discovered Men are Idiots" because that's what the men do in this book, make stupid mistakes. It was an overall good read and a nice change of pace from my usual genre. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to leave an honest review. ( )

Three women and their families move into a new neighborhood and live on the same street. Kate and her teenage daughter, Daisy, are very private and running away from the past, although we don't find out until later what the problem is. Sally and her husband were married young and decided not to have children. Now that Sally is older, she has changed her mind, but convincing her husband, Chris, proves very difficult. Gisela, her husband, Jack, and their teenage daughter Hannah live on the street, but their son, Ollie marries a woman that Gisela disapproves of. All three women believe the others are living the perfect lives. In fact, they all have secrets that the others don't know. The book tells the stories of each of these three women who eventually become friends.
Although each chapter is about one of the women, the author masterfully brings all of the women together in an emotional and terrible event. As their individual secrets and family difficulties come to light, the women become great friends who depend deeply upon one another.
This book took a little time to get into but as the story progressed, I couldn't put it down. It deals with secrets, tragedy, coming of age, and friendship and love. ( )

Is the grass greener on the other side of the fence?

If you believe everything you read on Facebook posted by your ‘friends’, it is! Or so believe Kate, Gisele and Sally, three neighbors who meet in their gated community. Two post constantly, about their so-called perfect lives. The other is at the other end of the spectrum...closed, distant, keeping everyone at arms length. They build slow friendships, eventually confiding their darkest secrets in each other, and becoming the people they always were meant to be.

This is the first book I’ve read by Ms Fisher and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! It sucked me in from the beginning! Written in three voices, you come to know each of the women very well, but not immediately. The author unfolds their stories slowly, so we get to know them at all different points in the story and see the changes in them, their personal relationships and their friendship. All three women are relatable on some level. The trust that is developed between these three women, is beautiful and mature.

Thanks to the Ms. Fisher, Bookouture and Net Galley for this ARC. Opinions are my own!

#perfectmom #perfectlife #lie ( )