
Claire McPartlin
Enjoyable read about how things can get out of hand very easily, especially where there's opposing groups of women involved! Poppy is one of the main characters and she thought her life was going along great, until her husband and best friend announce they're in love and having a baby, even though Poppy and her husband had both agreed that neither one of them wanted children when they got married. So Poppy moves out and gets an apartment in the same place as her new friend and work colleague Annalise. They are also fed up with women in their company taking time off for various child related things, leaving them to do the work left, and on hearing about a Facebook group just for mothers decide to set up their own group for women who just don't want children and don't want to be made to feel guilty because of that. Of course the mother group hears about the non-mother group (NOPs), along with a few run-ins in pubs/restaurants with the mothers with children (MOPs), and things start getting completely out of hand with nasty messages posted and the small group turns into a larger, more bitchy group, along with an infiltrator in the non-mother group who no-one can initially find. Poppy did irritate me a bit I must admit. She was quite judgemental and only seemed to see her side of things. She could be quite bitchy and both her and Annalise jumped to a wrong conclusion without proof, which could have (and very nearly did) go badly wrong. I can totally understand her feeling betrayed and wanting a bit of revenge, but when things started getting really out of hand, and she started panicking about the direction the group was taking, she should have stepped in and said something as she was the founder. Annalise also had secrets which we start to find more about as the book goes on. The second half of the book starts to focus more on Annalise and Frankie, another of Poppy and Annalise's co-workers, who they have been, again, been rather bitchy to. I really liked Frankie, probably the only character who had any redeeming qualities to be honest! Things come to a head when both the MOPs and NOPs run into each other on a dinner and drinks outing on a boat and secrets are revealed and near disasters happen. So it just goes to show how things can really get out of hand on social media sites, because some people feel a lot braver when they're just posting messages online and don't have to deal with the fall-out in real life, or the actual people behind the names. There are real people involved, with real feelings, and when it's just messages flying back and forth these feelings and certain situations the person may be in aren't taken into account. A very thought provoking book that got better in the second half and kept me turning the pages.