Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Review: The Perfect Wife - JP Delaney

The perfect life. The perfect love. The perfect lie. From the bestselling author of The Girl Before comes a gripping new psychological thriller. . . .

“Dynamic, razor-sharp, and thought-provoking . . . a cutting-edge suspense novel unlike any you’ve read before.”—Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl

Abbie awakens in a daze with no memory of who she is or how she landed in this unsettling condition. The man by her side claims to be her husband. He’s a titan of the tech world, the founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most innovative start-ups. He tells Abbie that she is a gifted artist, an avid surfer, a loving mother to their young son, and the perfect wife. He says she had a terrible accident five years ago and that, through a huge technological breakthrough, she has been brought back from the abyss.

She is a miracle of science.

But as Abbie pieces together memories of her marriage, she begins to question her husband’s motives—and his version of events. Can she trust him when he says he wants them to be together forever? And what really happened to her, half a decade ago?

Beware the man who calls you . . .

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Review
4 Stars
I had nightmares when I went to sleep partway through the novel. I dreamed of AI, of robotic people taking over my life. It was horrifying, but it also was a huge sign to me that this novel had achieved what J.P. Delaney had likely hoped for. It got under my skin, it was unforgettable, it was consuming. Abbie awakens with little memory, she doesn't know what has happened or why her recovery is such a miracle, but she will once she arrives home to the truth. As her husband tells her, she's a miracle of science, the woman he loves, an AI with thoughts and feelings. Some things don't add up though, like what happened five years ago and why her husband doesn't seem to be telling her everything.

Y'all, The Perfect Wife is like The Stepford Wives mixed with I, Robot; it's just a little too perfect and things are a little too neat. Luckily, we get two perspectives, that of Abbie's and that of an unknown from the tech offices of Tim Scott. We read about a woman finding her memories, finding her place after being away so long, and we read about the same woman, many years earlier, as she creates art and steals the heart of young, socially awkward Tim. These two narratives, at first, meet in the middle, but soon the dark sides of young love, of feverish desire for fame, and the love a mother has for her child, change the tone completely. The story turns bleak and while readers don't know what happened, like AI Abbie we can guess that something terrible happened five years ago, we can guess that someone is holding back the truth.

I was completely caught up in this novel, I am not very often into science-fiction type novels, but I love how J.P Delaney writes a thriller and he mixed the two genres very well. The story touches on misogyny, artificial intelligence, marriage, mental health, and more. It's a complex story with philosophical questions that will leave you questioning your beliefs and morals long after the last page. The Perfect Wife is filled with twists, it was impossible to guess what came next and I found myself shocked at the ending. It truly is a novel where nothing is as it seems.

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