The Last Anniversary

A Novel

By: Liane Moriarty

Narrated by: Heather Wilds

Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

From Liane Moriarty, author of the number-one New York Times best sellers Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, comes an unforgettable novel defined by her signature sharp wit, pause-resisting storyline, and lovable and eccentric characters.

A family secret explodes. A first kiss betrays. A mystery is solved. A marriage is tested. It all happens on one extraordinary night - the Last Anniversary!

Sophie Honeywell always wondered if Thomas Gordon was the one who got away. He was the perfect boyfriend, but on the day he was going to propose, she broke his heart. A year later, he married his travel agent, while Sophie has been mortifyingly single ever since. Now, Thomas is back in her life because Sophie has unexpectedly inherited his aunt Connie's house on Scribbly Gum Island - home of the famously unsolved Munro Baby mystery.

Sophie moves onto the island and begins a new life as part of an unconventional family where it seems everyone has a secret. Grace, a beautiful young mother, is feverishly planning a shocking escape from her perfect life. Margie, a frumpy housewife, has made a pact with a stranger, while dreamy Aunt Rose wonders if maybe it's about time she started making her own decisions.

As Sophie's life becomes increasingly complicated, she discovers that sometimes you have to stop waiting around - and come up with your own fairy-tale ending.

©2010 Liane Moriarty (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

The scoop on the narrator

As always, I love Liane Moriarty’s books.

Heather Wilds does have the perfect dry sarcasm that the books deserve. My only complaint is: why not have an Australian accent with a book based in Australia? It’s another reason why I love all the older books most—the accent! It was hard to make the switch between narrators, but the stories are all so great it’s worth it!

Trigger warning: body-shaming

I wish that Moriarty was a little more enlightened about body-shaming. The vivid descriptions of fat people describing how awful they think they look makes it tough to get through her otherwise fun reads.

interesting story but reader was difficult

so the story is cute enough. but the woman who reads the book made it very difficult to follow for the first hour or two. most of the characters seem to have the same run-on monotone sounds so it was difficult to delineate when a character was changing if you weren't paying really close attention. I almost quit the book at the very beginning

Skips couldn’t finish

Now have spent 30 minutes trying to exchange for the same book that doesn’t stop every 20 seconds! SO FRUSTRATING with Audible, around and around and never get to actual help! The book skips and it’s frustrating and not returnable without more pain in the butt. Very annoying. Was enjoying story! Grr..

good but not my favorite

It definitely took me a while to get used to the performance choice made by the narrator. Overall, it's a good story and made me laugh. It ends a bit weird. Enjoyable but not mu favorite of Liane Moriarty!

The narrator 🤔

The narrator’s voice is so monotone and her cadence is so strange. I feel like it distracted me from the story and I had to keep rewinding because I just couldn’t follow her.

Excellent

Liane Moriarty fast became one of my favourite authors. This story meanders through the lives of a family and finishes, at the very end with a bang! I loved this book.

The Tangled Webs We Weave

I love Liane's books because they are always complex, move a a good place, are intriguing and fun. This one is no exception. The story of Alice and Jack and the Monroe baby grabbed me right away. My favorite part is how the story starts out all spread around with different storylines and a complicated number of people. But as you go along things and people start to slowly weave together getting more and more interesting until you can't stop reading!

Excellent

Was skeptical at first however it turned out super sweet. Didn’t like the accents much but it made sense for the location.

Give it a couple chapters!

I couldn’t stand the tone of the reader at first, but it quickly grew on me, and I fell in love with all the characters along the way. Glad I stuck with it!