Review: The Hypnotist's love story by Liiane Moriarty

4/5 stars 
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“It sometimes seemed so peculiar and wrong to her that you could be that intimate with someone, to go to sleep with him and wake up with him, to do really quite extraordinarily personal things together on a regular basis, and then, suddenly, you don’t even know his telephone number, or where he’s living or working, or what he did today or last week or last year."

I picked this book up at a thrift store (in mint condition might I add) and I didn't expect to like it nearly as much as I did. I literally had no expectations for this book at all as I knew nothing about it. The Hypnotist's Love Story is my third book by Moriarty, as I've already read What Alice Forgot and The Husband's Secret, and I do enjoy Moriarty's writing style a whole lot. 

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But this novel was more than just great writing - it was very entertaining, it was relatable and it was impossible to put down (but then again, previous 2 book of Moriarty I've read were as well). 

“He was a selfish, pompous, egocentric, nasty man. She did not want to be married to him, but she did not want him to marry someone else. She did not want him, but she wanted him to want her.”

Moriarty knows and writes women like nobody else. I think that is the biggest reason why I am so drawn to her books - I am able to identify with her characters (some more some less, but still each and every one of them). Her characters think exact thoughts that fly through my head, they do things that I've done or at least thought of doing - sometimes I have to stop and think " hey, is this character - me?".
Maybe it's the age thing, maybe since I'm getting older I like to read about women who are older and to see how they navigate their life. 

“Breathe in. She didn’t give a fig what other people thought! Breathe out. Rubbish. She gave a whole fig tree.”

I was able to identify with Ellen on a whole other level, as she seems to have many traits that I have as well. And when Patrick drove her crazy with his boxes of rubbish and stuff just laying around in her clean hallway - I honestly felt twitchy as if I had boxes in my hallway. Ohhh, to be OCD and have a book understand you - there's no better feeling. 

“Ellen had always assumed she would marry young and have a relationship like theirs. She thought she was that sort of person. Traditional. Nice. As if nice girls always found nice boys. As if “niceness” was all that was necessary to maintain a relationship.”
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The plot itself was very bizarre and "out-of-the-movie-screen" at times, but I just couldn't stop reading. I needed to know what will happen next. I just needed to be in the lives of those women. Man, now I sound like another character from this book - see, relatable! 

I know this book is not nearly as popular as Moriarty's other books, but I really enjoyed it and I would really recommend it to fans of women fiction such as What Alice Forgot by Moriarty or Eleanor Oliphant is completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.

“It's amazing how friends can slip through your fingers, how your social network can vanish like it never existed.”