This isn’t a small book coming in at 656 pages but I really didn’t want it to end. Marian Keyes is so clever and such a brilliant storyteller. It’s just like life I suppose, you never really know what is going on behind closed doors.

The thing is with Marian Keyes’ writing, is that on the surface it is all very jolly, there’s some humour and some moments of brightness and joy but bubbling underneath the surface there is darkness and some very difficult subject matter indeed. We jump from character to character, all of them fully formed and completely real and soon we are deep into this family and desperate to find out what Cara has revealed. She allows us to peak through a crack where things may not be quite as they seem then quick as a whip she moves on leaving us wondering if that sentence means what we think it does. We are brought deep into the heart of the Casey family and Marian lets us fall in love with them. Then there is Jessie and Johnny who are generous and kind but their history is complicated and it looms large over their present. She is younger than him, impossibly cool, incredibly lovely and the whole family adore her, it’s just a shame Liam is such a complete and utter tool. Liam and Nell are newlyweds who are madly in love with one another. There’s Cara who works in a boutique hotel and can manage the most difficult of guests without breaking a sweat, and her lovely, sweet husband Ed. Slowly, month by month we watch as the inner workings of this family are laid bare at a variety of parties, murder mystery weekends and holidays to Italy. What she reveals is kept from us and we pinwheel back in time to 6 months earlier. Then Cara, suffering from concussion spills the metaphorical beans and every Casey secret and lie is laid bare. We meet the Caseys at a birthday lunch and tensions are running high. You’d think they’d know all there is to know about one another by now, right? Wrong. There are weekends away, sprawling lunches, parties a week doesn’t go by where the Casey family don’t see one another. There are regular family get-togethers with Johnnie’s brothers, Ed and Liam, their wives Cara and Nell respectively and the brothers assorted children. They are a large and sprawling family, presided over by Johnnie and Jessie who own their own business and are, quite frankly, loaded. In Grown Ups she takes us deep into the heart of the Casey family and reveals them to us, layer by layer.

Her latest book, Grown Ups, is another excellent book about family, relationships, love and the intricacies of modern life. Marian Keyes is one of those writers that everybody has heard of, she has written a ridiculous number of bestselling books and is one of the warmest and most generous authors out there.

Grown ups marian keyes summary