"Ciara sometimes thought about that day now. Liz knew she was handing over the reins that had steered her son his whole life. She didn't want to give that kind of power to a woman who knew exactly what she was doing."

They say never judge a book by its cover, but more than anything the cover of this book it what enticed me to request it on NetGalley. In fact, the cover was so alluring that I never even read the description, which is why I was so shocked when this book turned out to be a domestic thriller set in Ireland. Furthermore, I was even more shocked to finish the book and realize I had no idea how the title connected to the plot, or what the cover art was meant to represent beyond the main character’s house. This confusion was pretty representative of my whole reading experience, and left me feeling underwhelmed at the conclusion.

Synopsis:
Ciara Dunphy runs her small Irish town. A gorgeous mother of two, Ciara has set the standard for not just the other moms in her neighborhood, but the world through her mommy-blog Instagram account. As an influencer, her life is perfect: a loving husband, a beautiful home, and well-behaved, adorable children. She’s the go-to for advice, and everyone craves her approval. But when the camera is off, Ciara’s a different story. She resents her children, has been cheating on her husband, and spends thousands on clothes she’ll never wear using money her husband doesn’t know about.

Mishti Guha on the hand is as far out of the limelight as she can be, despite being Ciara’s best friend. An immigrant from India married to man chosen by her parents, Mishti was saved from exclusion when Ciara welcomed her into the mommy and me group with open arms. Now Mishti raises her daughter in a country that’s too cold, too rainy, too white, with a husband who’s never home, and a best friend who seems almost too good to be true. All Mishti wants is what Ciara has––the confidence, the love, the attention––but as her friend continues to slip up, Mishti realizes that there may be more to Ciara underneath the surface.

Then there’s Lauren Doyle, a native to their Irish village and an outcast from day one. Lauren’s as earthy as they come, with long flowing hair, handmade clothes, and three children who run naked in the yard. She may not have the perfect life of her next-door neighbor Ciara, but she has a loving partner, amazing children, and a roof over their heads. Sure, she’d love to be included in the mommy group Ciara has excluded her from, and sure she’d love for her children to have friends at school, and yes, of course she would love for her partner to agree to get married finally, but she’s mostly happy, and that’s enough, right?

But when Ciara is found murdered in her home, the persona she has worked so hard to create for herself crumbles, with secrets, affairs, and dark thoughts escaping through the crack in her skull. Suddenly the entire village seems to have something to gain from her death, including Mishti and Lauren, as well as the three woman’s partners. Will the killer come forward to claim Ciara’s crown, or will the revealed secrets destroy any semblance of normalcy the village once had?

Thoughts:
I went into this book with no expectations, and that may have been my downfall. Although I normally love psychological thrillers, this one fell short for me. Not only did I hate Ciara, but I hated all the characters, even the ones I was supposed to feel sympathy for. There were a lot of scenes I found either unnecessary or unnecessarily graphic, and I couldn’t make myself care about what happened to anyone, regardless of their backstory. A certain points I felt the dialogue was cringy, and none of the twists or reveals wowed me enough to rank higher than three stars. In fact, with each revealed secret I just felt more and more disturbed, and not in the way I usually am with domestic thrillers. By the end I just felt uncomfortable.
However, my biggest complaint would be the title. I understand from the official summary that ‘Dirty Laundry’ is referring to the characters airing each other’s dirty laundry, but there wasn’t a moment in the book where that clicked. There are hundreds of other titles that would have made sense for this story, and could have been pulled from the text to give readers an ah-ha! moment, but dirty laundry was not one of them.

Overall:
In the end, Dirty Laundry was an underwhelming, average story. Despite my numerous complaints, I didn’t hate the plot, and I did enjoy some of the twists and turns in the last few chapters. However, I could have gone without reading this book and been fine. For fans of Sally Hepworth or Geneva Rose, Disha Bose’s domestic thriller is a debut that falls in line with The Perfect Marriage and The Golden Couple.

You would think that when you graduate from high school that cliquish behavior amongst women would go away. I mean can they not grow up? Apparently at least some of the characters in this book have never grown up. This is a book that centers around three very different women who are neighbors with very different lifestyles. Each chapter is told from a different point of view from each character and goes from past to present.

Ciara has a seemingly perfect life. She has the perfect husband, perfect children and plenty of money. She is a social media influencer, and she only shows her followers everything that is pristine and perfect in her life. After a few chapters, you realize that her life is not as perfect as she is portraying it to be. I really did not like the character of Ciara. She had her nose so high in the air that if it rained she would drown. She needed to be brought down a few notches. To put it quite simply, she is a bully as you will very quickly see.

Mishti was probably my favorite character. She is a good soul. She is stuck in a loveless arranged marriage. She did not marry for love. She married for duty. Her husband is rarely ever home, and when he is home, she is treated like the hired help. She is a long way from her home and her family. I felt so sorry for Mishti. She struggled daily to be the kind of wife and mother that she thought she needed to be, and to fit into her community.

Then you have Lauren. Lauren has always been the black sheep of her community - no matter where she resided. No matter how hard she tries, she still feels second best. Ciara does not help this viewpoint as she is constantly putting Lauren down. Ciara takes great joy in bullying Lauren and making her feel like she is a bad mother and wife.

When Ciara's dead body is found in her home, you know the suspects are many. This was a mystery of sorts, but it also covered the gamut of all emotions from fear, jealousy, betrayal, love and hate. Dirty Laundry was aptly titled as each character and her family's dirty laundry is aired for public consumption.

This was a slow burn, but the short chapters made it easy to read.

Thank you to Random House-Ballatine Books for the ARC. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I love a title that works on many levels and this one fits the bill. I loved the small town setting and always gravitate to a book about neighborhood drama. Ultimately, it came off too juvenile for me. I couldn’t understand why grown women were acting like preteens towards each other when they had bigger fish to fry. The stubbornness of Lauren and Ciara was just too much for me in the end so I checked out early and stopped caring. This is definitely a character driven plot so if you’re into those this may work for you!

This was not for me. I’m okay with unlikable characters, but these were insufferable at times. I also thought the pacing of the story was weird. The middle was slow and had a lot of filler. The ending could’ve been fleshed out a bit more. It’s not for me, but I’m sure lots will enjoy it with it being the GMA bookclub pick.

Happy Pub Day!!! Great entertaining thriller that was easy to read in one sitting! I love the multiple point of views and felt like we understood the story from different sides. Great thriller!

Dirty laundry is like mean girls meets desperate housewives . I loved the small Irish village setting and all the different people who lived there . This would make an excellent book club pick as it touches on all different aspects of the mean moms on the playgrounds. Definitely a great story line with mostly bot likable characters in a good way

Dirty Laundry by Disha Bose is a story about three dysfunctional married couples who live on the same street. Some are a little crazier than others. There is no discernible plot, jus the day to day whining and inner thoughts of these people, many of whom think the solution is to have sex with someone who isn’t their partner. Frankly, it left me cold.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of Dirty Laundry by Random House Publishing-Ballantine, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own. #Netgalley #RandomHousePublishingBallantine #DishaBose #DirtyLaundry

The book was about three couples and their unhappy marriages. The first 40% of the book told the story of each couple and how they got together. About mid way through the book we finally start to see the connection between the couple. There was several twists regarding the final ending. I think that it took way too long to get to the point of the story. It wasn’t a bad read but nothing special. I do see potential in this debut author and would give their next book a chance.
****Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review****

This one was definitely not for me. From the description, I assumed this would be a murder mystery but instead it is a slow moving neighborhood drama of jealousy, promiscuity, and parenthood. I couldn't get into any of the characters. They were all so flawed that I didn't really care what happened to any of them. Not for me.

An impressive debut!

A fast paced mystery full of unlikeable characters, which is a trend I've really been loving in domestic thriller's lately!

Think mean girls mixed with desperate housewives mixed with murder and instagram influencers and you'll get this page turner that left me with a new author to watch!

Ciara Dunphy had it all. Beautiful children, a handsome hardworking husband, the perfect house, and a loyal base of social media followers that worshipped her. She seemed to have the perfect life. Online anyway.

But then her mangled dead body is found in her home. And you have to wonder, maybe Ciara’s life wasn’t quite a perfect as she led people to believe.

This book had me interested from the beginning. It starts with the finding of Ciara’s body and I HAD to know what happened. I read it in a day.

Women can be mean. I don’t understand the need to put up a front and make everyone think your life is something that it isn’t. Everyone struggles and none of us are perfect. And maybe if we were more open and honest about that, we would realize we all have a lot in common and can support each other through it.

Out of all the characters in the book, I relayed most to Lauren. She is the outsider, never feeling that she fits in. But no matter how many times she is shunned, she doesn’t give up. She is still kind and determined and just wants to do right by her kids.

There were definitely some little twists toward the end that I didn’t see coming, but I can’t say I was completely taken by surprise overall. Even still, I loved this book and found it very entertaining! I would still recommend this to my friends!

This novel is about a woman who seems to have everything…nice house, great husband, perfect children.
She lives in a cliquish neighborhood. Friends are not easy to cultivate or keep. Enemies are quick to attack vulnerability.
She is killed and there is no shortage of suspects.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me this ARC.

A drama about a group of friends whose intertwined lives lead to disaster. Set in Scotland the characters are a mix of different races, cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds. Wives and husbands living two different lives that ultimately collide. A good representation of the lives one leads in private versus the public.

This is one cleverly titled book. We have dirty laundry, real and metaphorical, popping up all over the place. For a small town in Ireland, there is a lot of monkey business going on. At first glance, we just think we are dealing with your neighborhood mean girl vs. the resident social influencer. There is so much more going on behind the scenes. Our three neighbors are all ethnically and economically diverse. The three moms--Chiara, Lauren, and Mishti--are all full-time moms. The dads--Gerry, Sean, and Parth --are all busy in their own orbit. Their paths cross in unexpected ways as we go back in time to view the events that lead up to what happened on September 30. Just one tip: watch the time stamps when you are in the "Now" chapters in the last part of the book. I enjoyed putting all the pieces together and with a digital version, I did a bit of flipping back and forth to check for details. I might have gotten lost if I listened to this one. A creative debut. Will look for more in the future from this author.

Thank you to Random House/Ballantine and NetGalley for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

There is so much exposition that we never get to the murder until near the end. Would have been better to start off with a tease to draw in the reader. I wasn't bored just underwhelmed. Too slow for me.

Ciara has the perfect life to her Instagram followers and the neighborhood women. Only her neighbor and friend, Mishti, and her enemy, Lauren, have any idea what her life is really like.

I love books with suburban women behaving poorly and this one really had a bad suburban woman! I kept waiting to see how far she would push things and how much everyone else would accept. I got my answer and the ending was just perfect. It really told a story with a meaningful ending.

“If she wanted to make a difference in her life, he would join her in smashing their porcelain mugs. He’d tear down the curtains with her. He’d laugh while she scream-cried.”

Dirty Laundry comes out 4/4.

Dirty Laundry by Disha Bose is a domestic thriller, with three couples that are neighbors and all have dysfunctional relationships. While it is billed as a twisty mystery, I found the twists to be somewhat less than surprising, and the relationships were horrid. There was not a single character in the story who I liked, the husbands were all jerks and the female friendships were portrayed like those of middle school bullies. I think that was kind of the point, though, as no one was beyond reproach, every character was easy to dislike and everyone was a viable suspect.

Overall, the book was an okay read, and some will enjoy the social media focus of the main character, Ciara Dunphy.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for the digital ARC of Dirty Laundry by Disha Bose. The opinions in this review are my own.

At first I wasn't sure about this one as I've read many books of this type before.

But what made Dirty Laundry stand out for me was the three POV characters. Ciara, the mean girl influencer, was the least interesting. Lauren is a little more unconventional, a free spirit who lives with the father of her three children. Mishti came to Ireland from Calcutta and struggles to connect to her husband, with whom she has an arranged marriage.

Gradually, you see how the lives of these three intertwine in interesting and dangerous ways.

Liked Disha Bose's writing and will keep an eye out for what she comes out with next!

Ciara Dunphy looks like she has it all, but looks can be deceiving. Queen bee of her Irish village, the women all look up to her. They all want to be her friend, except for the one lone villager, Lauren, who sees through her facade. As an influencer, Ciara posts photos and advice, but Lauren frequently calls her out on her antics. Lauren is unmarried, but lives with her childrens disheveled father and has somehow got off on the wrong foot with Ciara. Now everyone in the village hates Lauren, who has always been an outcast in the village. Ciara has taken Mishti, a transplant from India in an arranged loveless marriage, under her wing and considers her to be her best friend, but Ciara might have taken things too far this time. Is Mishti now on Lauren’s side? When Ciara’s husband decides to take the kids and give Ciara a night alone … someone comes for a visit … someone who wants her dead! Three very different couples, each of those remaining has a motive, but who will benefit the most? As the couples air their dirty laundry, Bose gives us many reasons to keep guessing who killed Ciara until the very end! Thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

Three couples
Small Irish village
Best friends
Secrets
Drama
Gossip
Domestic suspense
Mystery
You get a bit of everything reading Dirty Laundry.
I wasn’t a fan of any of the characters.
All in all, a ok read for me.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read this book for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.