Liane Moriarty’s sequel to Big Little Lies returns to Sydney’s Pirriwee Peninsula, following the original characters as their children become teenagers and the mothers navigate menopause, ageing parents and health worries. Although it opens with a severed finger and introduces a potential stalker, the review argues that the novel fails to recreate the original’s urgency, suspense and comic melodrama.

The 400-plus-page book brings Renata and Mary-Louise into more prominent roles, reflecting their importance in the television adaptation, while the familiar mothers support one another through middle age rather than competing. Teenagers’ vaping, hints of childhood trauma and domestic tensions provide much of the drama, but the reviewer finds these stakes comparatively low, the mystery too obvious and the severed finger largely sidelined.