Customer Reviews

Three Wishes

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lyn, Cat and Gemma Kettle are approaching their 34th birthday together. These Aussie triplets may share a birthday, but they have their own very different personalities. Gemma floats through life and relationships. Lyn powers her way through her organized and efficient days. The fiercely emotional Cat does battle with co-workers, her husband, and her sisters. In the year surrounding this particular birthday, their lives are thrown upside down by various tragedies and joys and they struggle through as they always have - together.

This heart-warming and heart-wrenching story is an impressive first book for Moriarty. She captures all the best and worst of family relationships - siblings, parents, spouses, and children - while balancing the heavy parts with funny bits of mayhem and wicked humor. The point of view alternates between the sisters and the story bounces back and forth in time, but never gets confusing. Interspersed between the chapters are little vignettes about how the triplets have touched the lives of strangers throughout the years.

Moriarty's characters are just quirky enough to really care about without being absurd. I thought the flashbacks to the past did a wonderful job of showing how the sisters evolved into their separate personalities. Three Wishes is a fun, fascinating look into three lives that are inextricably entwined, and an insightful look at family relationships in general.

I just loved this book! As one of the previous reviewers said I thought it would be far fetched, the idea of triplets but it really wasn't. Obviously this author has some knowledge of sisters and maybe of multiples, as it came across very genuine. Each sister has a very distinct, if crazy personality. I loved the relationships they shared with one another and the rest of their family. The book is told in turn from the point of view of each of the sisters, with interspersed "man on the street" style narratives from unnamed individuals witnessing the triplets at different points in their life, which I found unusual and refreshing. Emails sent between the sisters are hilariously funny. One sister always hits the "respond to all" button and ends up sending the sister she is talking about (supposedly behind her back) the email. I also enjoyed the setting (Australia) I haven't read many books set there. It's always fun to see how the other half lives, the little differences between your life and the life of those on the other side of the world. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys humor, books about family, sisters or chick lit.

I thought the book would be rather far-fetched in terms of plot, but it's actually not! I really enjoyed it because I also have two sisters and the author really managed to convey the relationship 3 female siblings can share. I definitely recommend it!

The Kettle family is quite a trip. There's Nana Kettle, mother of Frank Kettle, ex-husband of Maxine (Max) Kettle, mother of the wackiest triplets on the planet, Lynnette (Lyn), Catriona (Cat), and Gemma Kettle. The girls are long-legged and beautiful, but that's where the similarity ends. Author Moriarty grew up in a family with six children, she being the eldest, so she probably has an excellent concept of what chaos in a family means.

The scene is Sydney, Australia, and the story is about the triplets as they approach their thirty-fourth birthday. There are snippets of their lives from birth, including the divorce of their parents when they were six, the death of the fiancé of one of the girls; marriages, childbirth, miscarriage, unfaithful husbands, etc. There's a good mix of happy/sad/mundane events, but mostly these three girls and their family members try, like most of us, to survive one another. It's quite a hoot. However, there is one aspect of this story I found very disturbing. Since art imitates life, we all know of situations like the one portrayed in the book. All I can say is "Get out!"

Ms. Moriarty not only used prose to tell her story, she included emails between these very modern sisters, which I thought was very clever. In addition, she included vignettes by people who had been "exposed" to the sisters over the course of their lives. These vignettes were presented in italicized text. I liked the feature as it gave the unusual view of the story's characters from people outside the story line.

Carolyn Rowe Hill

This book starts with a scene where 3 triplets are eating birthday cake in a restaurant. One of the women is pregnant and the other throws a fork at her stomach. The scene is told from a bystander's point of view so we don't know the sisters by name yet. The novel then works backward so we can see how they got to this point.

For me, the middle of the book was best, because it focused on Gemma's story. Gemma is the flaky, endearing, yet smart sister who is scarred by a past relationship. Her fiance died, but no one in her family knew that he was abusive. Because of his behavior, she finds herself bowing out of relationships if the new boyfriend reminds her of the fiance even slightly. For example, one of them asks her to wash the sand from her feet at the beach before getting in the car, and this reminds her of her fiance's wrath when she got sand in his car, so she breaks up with the boyfriend. Gemma is a charming, troubled person and you root for her to conquer her troubles.

One of the other sisters, Cat, is harder to care about. Cat is one of the glass-half-empty people with an enormous sense of entitlement and an equally marked lack of empathy. She feels like she deserves everything in life and takes it out on others when things go wrong. Unfortunately, the last part of the book focuses on Cat.

The third sister, Lyn, is not as well-drawn as the other two. She's a workaholic who has trouble delegating, and her husband presses her to get an assistant to help her with her on-the-go breakfast business (Brekkie Bus).

I also had trouble with something that happened to the girls' grandmother near the end. It seemed completely unnecessary and irrelevant to the plot, on top of being disturbing.

Overall, Moriarty's breezy and clever style, as well as her way with dialogue, makes this book worth reading. But I do wish she had chosen to keep the focus on Gemma and given the grandmother a break.

It is the story of three intertwined lives, triplets, we meet them celebrating their 34th birthday and go back to their last year's adventures to understand the mess they are in. I read this book during the summer, and I totally enjoyed it. It is a quick read, funny, sad, you sympathize with each one of them, feel their hearts broken, laugh out loud at their mischief, but also sense the love and trust they have for each other.

I enjoyed Moriarty's style, a little suspence, sometimes predictable, definitely refreshing!

I just finished this book and my only regret is that the author has no previous books that I can read. There was nothing I didn't enjoy about the book - from the cover art to the conclusion.

The story draws you in immediately and then holds your interest with a plot both unusual and unpredictable. I won't spoil the book for others by outlining the plot, but the characters were well defined and you felt like you knew them by the end of the book and are sorry to see your association with them - and the book - over. You'll wish you knew these people.

If you're looking for a light book that isn't vapid, for an entertaining read with a plot and characters you'll think about during breaks in reading (the sign of a good read to me), then I recommend this book to you. The author has a fresh voice, resulting in a warm book that many people can relate to and enjoy. I sure hope she can write quickly, as I'll be waiting for her next book!

Three Wishes is a story about a year in the life of the Kettle triplets - Lyn, Cat and Gemma. It highlights all of the major issues that multiple of any age have to deal with, along with some issues that can take over anyone's lives.

The pacing of this story is a little disjointed. It starts at the girls' 34th birthday, then jumps back almost a year and starts from there. The chapters are interpersed with stories about the girls' lives as seen by random onlookers at different point in their lives. And the basic timeline has a lot of other flashback and overlap as well.

What makes this story so entertaining is the interaction between the three girls and the other characters in the story. The characters are well developed and very believable in their given roles.

It gets a little slow at a few points, and like any story told from multiple perspectives, I found myself looking forward to certain characters' points-of-view more than others. But on the whole, this was a very entertaining read.

Beginning with a unique birthday celebration and lasting throughout the year we come to know the inner workings of these triplets and their desires. This was a light hearted read which did touch on some weighty subjects. I imagine that if Frank Capra were alive today he would make a wonderful movie based on this family tale. I look forward to reading more by this author in the future.

What a wonderful voice this writer has. Ms. Moriarty goes on my list of "read anything by this author immediately." She's fresh, she's witty, and her characters are so well drawn that I could picture them perfectly. With her gift for description I could share Lyn's stress, Gemma's confusion, and Cat's pain. I truly felt their emotions, it's a rare writer that can touch you so deeply.

I especially loved the clever little "asides" where strangers describe a moment where the triplets impacted on their own lives and made a cherished memory. I won't forget these wonderful women either. Thank you Ms. Moriarty for such an incredibly well written book! I can't wait to read your next one. Well Done!!!