BOOK REVIEW: The Perfect Marriage

Would you defend your husband if he was accused of killing his mistress?

Sarah Morgan is a successful and powerful defense attorney in Washington D.C. At 33 years old, she is a named partner at her firm and life is going exactly how she planned.

The same cannot be said for her husband, Adam. He is a struggling writer who has had little success in his career. He begins to tire of his and Sarah’s relationship as she is constantly working.

Out in the secluded woods, at Adam and Sarah’s second home, Adam engages in a passionate affair with Kelly Summers.

Then, one morning everything changes. Adam is arrested for Kelly’s murder. She had been found stabbed to death in Adam and Sarah’s second home.

Sarah soon finds herself playing the defender for her own husband, a man accused of murdering his mistress.

But is Adam guilty or is he innocent?

Spoiler Free:

Ten years into her marriage, Sarah Morgan is a powerful defense attorney and successful law partner in Washington, D.C. Her husband, an aspiring a novelist with little success in his career, she rarely sees due to her need to support the both of them with her demanding job.

That is until in a split-second Adam becomes Sarah’s job and client after his mistress is found dead in their second home, murdered. Sarah must push aside her hurt and shock of the affair in order to prove Adam didn’t kill Kelly Summers. She knows he didn’t. She just has to convince everyone else.

A first-person point of view, dual-narrative piece, that jumps between Adam’s perspective and Sarah’s perspective, playing along the lines of morally grey characters and unreliable narrators. The Perfect Marriage captured my attention and pushed me to want to find out who murdered Kelly, but many details on the path to do so fell short, felt disjointed, or weren’t flushed out well enough. It became that halfway through I was able to predict and pick up where the author was taking the story and who in the end, committed the murder. The characters were also frustrating and ones where I couldn’t connect with.

I would say give this book a try if you’re into murder mysteries, especially since reviews range online about this book. I’d only give caution to your expectations.

TW: Discussions on Domestic Violence

Spoilers Full:

Okie-dokie…

Spoilers ahead…

Please proceed with caution.

I will spoil everything I did and did not like about this book ahead.

I’ll give you a second to scroll upwards to safety.

Are we ready?

Let’s get into it.

Like I said on my GoodReads reviews I’m pretty sure I found this book through a user on TikTok. Most of the time I follow the discretion of someone on TikTok they aren’t wrong, but now I’m second guessing a few things. Let me start by saying this… The Perfect Marriage is not the worst book I’ve read, not even close. But this book did have a lot of flaws in its plot, structure, and plot holes that I can’t really get over. Not to mention I didn't like any of the characters and couldn’t connect with them. Let’s get into some specifics.

This book is written in first person-dual point of view. It jumps between Adam’s POV and Sarah’s POV. In the beginning, I really liked this point of view since it played along with the intimate observations and details within this marriage. Within the first few chapters I felt like Adam would be the unreliable narrator since he passed out not to remembering what happened. Like he had killed her and not remembered. I was swayed that way mostly because of the point of view choice by Rose, so for that, it worked. But that’s about when it stopped. For the rest of the book the first POV felt like I was stuck in a divorce meeting being tossed back and forth between two flawed people in a marriage who hated each other but didn’t have the balls to say it first. How annoying and frustrating. Especially now knowing the ending, with Sarah being the conspirator and murderer behind it all, including framing her husband, I watch the whole book crumble.

Unreliable narrators and morally grey characters are a huge device that authors use to get the reader thinking and especially in a thriller similar to this one, it pushes the reader to problem solve alongside the characters to solve the murder. With this, the author needs to give inclinations to behaviors that a specific character does that will lead to the ending. It was almost like the author wanted to cause such big of a twist that she gave no inclination and therefore Sarah's character at the end felt like someone completely different. Almost like there were multiple personalities. At least that would give some explanation. Because half of the story was told in her POV and there was no behavior to give insight of what the ending was, it felt disjointed at best. Almost like reading the entire book was a disappointment for the author not to follow through with the plot she was painting in front of us. The ending could’ve been done, and believed, if any other POV was used. Even if the story was written in her assistants POV because there’s plausibility that she has a perception of Sarah that can be completely wrong. But having Sarah herself have the wrong perception of herself the entire time doesn’t work. The piece would’ve been better written in Third person limited, playing with dramatic irony and perceptions instead. Having finished, it feels like the author didn’t want to push herself outside her comfort zone to write in a different structure and POV for the success of the plot. The plot should always dictate what POV is needed, not what POV the author writes best in.

Getting over that, the characters didn’t offer anything. They had no depth to them and instead stayed on the surface with cliché descriptions. Adam’s character was actually so painfully annoying I wanted to squeeze his head off his body. I understood his panic in the beginning. I understood his behaviors when his wife was his defense attorney, but the plot line of him working with a reporter???? Random? Like a girl shows up at your door, you’re about to go on trial for the murder of your younger mistress, and you think it’s appropriate to not only invite the girl in, but work with her to build your own case? And then towards the end you kiss her? Honestly, wtf. Maybe it was a ploy by the author to raise his suspicions but it only made me think he was an absolute idiot incapable of being calculated and evil enough to stab his mistress 38 times. It took him out of the equation for me. And then!!! Oh gosh, THEN… he f***ing escapes jail?? Like slips through the open bars, walks out the precinct, and lives outside in the wilderness for a few days. And where does he go, TO THE WOMAN’S HOUSE!! Like how annoyingly stupid of a person are you?

And then there’s his mother, who if she was the only character that didn’t seem to have a brain inside of her head, she would’ve been fine for me to read. But I think because her son was also such an imbecile, I could barely take her. Sure, be the mother that is there for your child through anything. Be the mother that has a hard time coming to terms with the position your son has put himself in. Even be the mother that refuses to believe her son could’ve done such a violent crime. But don’t be the mother that treats her child like he walks on water, all while he was sleeping with another woman, not helping provide for his family, and allowed himself to be a victim in his marriage. And do not be the mother that brings her thirty-something year old son gushers as a snack while he’s on house arrest. Seriously? But like I said, if she was the only one who was pulling that entitled victim card, I think it would’ve been fine. That fact that the son was almost worst made it way too much. Like grow a pair and defend your wife to your mother for once. It’s probably why you’re in that situation in the first place.

Kelly’s character was one that I really wish was flushed out. For her being the main victim in the story I felt-shorthanded in information regarding her. She was portrayed as a married woman who slept around and had a past of killing her previous husband while having an abusive current one. Which we really never get a definite answer on if he did, if Kelly lied, and the truth surrounding who she really was. For the character that the story kind of surrounds, there isn’t anything definite that I learned about her. She feels incomplete. And because of it, it makes it harder to connect with the story.

Now we have to talk about the plot holes in this story because there’s a lot and if the people listed in the acknowledgements actually read the book, they would’ve picked up on them. Or maybe they didn’t, which is concerning. There’s a sentence thrown out at the end of a chapter, in Sarah’s POV about an awkward moment with Sarah and her assistant Anne at the bar, but there’s never any explanation of what that was. There is never any discussion between the two characters about what happened. Then on page 217 a mysterious person, it insinuates a man, climbs into Sarah’s bed and has intercourse with her, and it’s never told who that man was. I think we can all guess it was Bob (knowing the ending), but it leaves you hanging. If there was any description alluding to Bob there would be more allure and mystery within the book. The next scene is Bob pushing the meeting with her up, which I don’t think he would do if he was up in the middle of the night, and in a private conversation saying he wants to help with the cause for the image of the firm. Not anything personal between him and Sarah. Further, on page 143 Sarah is about to go into court for Adam’s plea, but runs to the bathroom to throw up. She says something about the stress of everything, but in the end, we know she has Bob’s child. In this scene, at any point is there any connection to her being pregnant while going through trial. There’s the one part she gets sick, being intimate with a random person, and that’s it. Lastly, Kelly’s character in itself felt like a plot hole. It goes back and forth on if she was a victim of abuse or a perpetrator. Her husband Scott, swears he never laid a finger on her and yet she tells Adam he beats her. The dichotomy of that is fine, but what’s the answer? Was she, or wasn’t she? We never know.

A lot of reviews online are discussing the realism behind a wife defending her murderous, cheating husband in a court of law. A lot of readers are saying how it took them out of the story and made the entire plot seem fake or like it held no weight. Even more so when the reason for Sarah killing Kelly and framing her husband was to not have to split her earnings in her divorce. And for the reasoning I definitely understand how the lack of realism makes Sarah's reason make little sense. I tend to always side on the side that fictional books don’t have to play by the rules of our worldly realism. Meaning I give a book the benefit of the doubt with the only stipulation an author has to create a word in which its possible. As for Sarah defending Adam, I really didn’t have a problem with that, although I know I can’t go defend my husband. I totally understand where some readers would struggle with that. I didn’t have a problem with the lack of realism until the doors on Adam jail cell were “left open” and he escaped, and the very end when Sarah uncovers her deception throughout the entire book as well as her reasonings. It had me shaking my head and saying WTF to myself over and over again. Also, I’m angry she named her child Summer after the woman she murdered, Kelly Summers. I see where the author thought it would be a” no way” moment, but instead it was just a “yikes” one for me.

I’m pretty hard on this book during this review but I do think it is warranted, but even though there were many things I gripe with, it still kept me reading. I think the plot in itself was juicy enough that I needed to know how it was going to end. Because of that I rate this book a 3.5. I battled myself over and over again what this book deserved, but in the end, even with the flaws, while reading I wasn’t angry the entire time I was reading. I was only disappointed in the end. Especially when there were things I never got answered. I hoped for more out of this book, but that doesn’t mean it should dip lower.

Jeneva Rose

Jeneva Rose is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including the million-copy bestselling thriller, The Perfect Marriage. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and optioned for film/tv. Originally from Wisconsin, she currently lives in Chicago with her husband, Drew, and her English bulldog, Winston.

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1913419653

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