‘In ten days, you will not be the person you are now.’

Ten days at a health and wellness retreat. Five of those days spent in silence. Bliss! But you can’t read or write during them. Hold on. What is this place?!

Masha, the director of Tranquillum House, is keen to implement her new protocol.

“Nine people were depending on her. Nine perfect strangers who would soon become like family.”

Stranger 1: Frances, formerly a bestselling romance novelist, has back pain, a bad cold and a paper cut. We hear about her paper cut a lot.

“I’m only temporarily tragic”

Stranger 2: Jessica is married to Ben and loves plastic surgery, maybe more than she loves Ben.

“She couldn’t shake the feeling that if she didn’t record this moment on her phone then it wasn’t really happening, it didn’t count, it wasn’t real life.”

Stranger 3: Ben is married to Jessica and loves his car, maybe more than he loves Jessica.

“He avoided looking at her. He was trying really hard to get over that.”

Stranger 4: Heather, a midwife, is at Tranquillum House with her husband, Napoleon, and daughter, Zoe.

“The rage hit her with the power and momentum of a contraction during active labour. There was no escaping it.”

Stranger 5: Napoleon, a schoolteacher in a disadvantaged area, loves to talk. He’s at Tranquillum House with his wife and daughter.

“But he wasn’t broken.”

Stranger 6: Zoe, who just broke up with her boyfriend, is at Tranquillum House with her parents.

“She tried so hard to be everything for them while they tried so hard to pretend that she wasn’t their only reason for living.”

Stranger 7: Tony runs a sports marketing consultancy and has brilliant tattoos.

“Tony would never forget the shocking clarity of the moment that followed.”

Stranger 8: Carmel has four children and is at Tranquillum House to lose weight.

‘I love everything about this place’

Stranger 9: Lars is a family lawyer.

‘I’m a health-retreat junkie. I indulge and atone, indulge and atone. It works for me.’

With a gorgeous location and mandatory smoothies six times a day, our health retreat participants are hopeful that they will go home changed. For the better. All of them have their issues but I suspected from early on that the ethereal Masha might have more than her share.

Reading this book felt like I was bingeing an entire season of a soap opera at once. I don’t mean that as criticism; soap operas are fun to binge. There’s so much drama. The plot lines are delightfully over the top while just barely staying within the realms of possibility.

I loved the drama of this book and I loved the personalities all bouncing off one another (after they were allowed to speak, that is). Although I laughed at the absurdity of some of the things that happened, nothing happened that I couldn’t imagine actually happening off the page. The entire read felt like a guilty pleasure.

New favourite word: toska.

“There was no adequate English word to describe the kind of anguished longing she felt for something she could not have and did not even want.”

Most of Liane’s books already live in my Kindle’s black hole of good intentions and I loved bingeing Big Little Lies. I’ve been planning to binge this series, too, but wanted to read the book first this time. Now that I’ve read it, I’m even more intrigued to watch Nicole Kidman as Masha and see how it all plays out outside of my imagination.

“This was not how it was supposed to go.”

Content warnings are included on my blog.

Nine Perfect Strangers is the eighth novel by best-selling Australian author, Liane Moriarty. Nine guests arrive at an exclusive, expensive health resort in rural NSW. There is a family of three, and a couple, so not all are strangers to one another; as well, two more are recognised by other guests from their public profiles; nor is any of them perfect (it would be a very short story if they were!)

What they don’t realise is that they are the first group to undergo the radical new treatment plan the director has created, one which includes aspects that no small print or disclaimer has mentioned. Nor are all the resort’s staff one hundred percent on board.

The range of characters is diverse: a newly-single mother of four who feels discarded; a gay family lawyer faced with a fatherhood dilemma; a divorced romance novelist whose career has stalled; a family plagued by grief and guilt; a couple plagued by too much money; and a disconnected grandfather who’s feeling his age.

Tranquillum House is staffed by a paramedic and a PA, both turned wellness consultants, while the director is a former corporate executive determined to share the passion for wellness that her near-death experience ignited in her, years earlier. Masha (Maria) Dmitrichenko is beautiful, green-eyed and very charismatic, and easily able to deflect the scepticism and belligerence with which some of her guests arrive.

With a mix of health drinks, yoga, exercise, fasting, and silence, and a ban on alcohol, junk food and electronic devices, Masha promises that “You will leave Tranquillum House feeling happier, healthier, lighter, freer…In ten days, you will not be the person you are now.” If that last statement ultimately proves true, it doesn’t happen the way anyone expects.

There are multiple narrative strands covering the perspective of each of the guests as well as the staff and director of the resort. Many of the inner monologues are quite amusing, particularly the observations and assessments of fellow guests, and some of the chemically-enhanced chapters are truly hilarious, especially those of Lars and Frances. A hugely entertaining read with a twist that may have some reconsidering health retreat plans.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Pan Macmillan Australia