About This Book
Scribbly Gum Island holds two secrets: the decades-old Munro Baby mystery that made it famous, and the quieter, stranger secrets of the family who still lives there. When Sophie Honeywell inherits a house on the island from her ex-boyfriend's aunt — a woman she barely knew — she finds herself drawn into an eccentric community where everyone seems to be hiding something. The novel weaves together an unsolved disappearance, a tangle of romantic regrets, and the particular claustrophobia of family life, building toward revelations that are both surprising and, in retrospect, inevitable.
Moriarty works in a register that few writers manage as effortlessly: genuinely funny and genuinely unsettling at the same time. Her chapters shift between characters with a confidence that makes the ensemble feel lived-in rather than constructed, and her observations about marriage, motherhood, and the stories families tell themselves cut with quiet precision. The Last Anniversary is an earlier novel, and it shows Moriarty developing the voice she'd later perfect — warm on the surface, sharper underneath, with a structural patience that rewards readers who let the pieces settle before rushing to connect them.
