Nine Perfect Strangers, by Liane Moriarty

Nine people who are not actually perfect strangers, as two are married and three are a family, travel to Tranquillum health and wellness resort for a 10-day retreat. With so many characters it takes a long time to introduce them all and then it’s easy to lose track of them and their various traumas. Most turn out to be quite interesting – all dealing with various life crises and looking for change. The least credible character is Masha, the resort director, who is determined to effect permanent change for her guests and implements unusual methods to achieve it. The tone is very uneven; Moriarty can’t seem to decide whether she is a champion of the wellness industry or a snide critic of it and wavers wildly between the two positions throughout. About half way through the retreat turns from a wellness journey to a medical and psychological experiment and the book jumps the shark. All credibility is shot as the story just turns silly. Moriarty canvasses a lot of issues through her multitude of characters but the sheer breadth means there is little depth in a lightweight tale that only pretends to a balance of humour and darkness. The nine miraculously manage to achieve their goals for change, if not in quite the way they expected, but nobody, least of all the reader, learns anything of use along the way.