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The Perfect Girl: A Novel

Până la Gilly Macmillan

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Evaluări:

Evaluare: 4 din 5 stele4/5 (68 stele)

Lungime: 459 pagini6 ore

Editor:: HarperCollins
Lansat:: Sep 6, 2016
ISBN:: 9780062476753
Format:: Carte

Descriere

The New York Times bestselling author of What She Knew returns with an electrifying new novel about how the past will always find us...

"Literary suspense at its finest.”—Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Baby

“A wonderfully addictive book with virtuoso plotting and characters - for anyone who loved Girl on the Train, it’s a must read.”
— Rosamund Lupton

Zoe Maisey is a seventeen-year-old musical prodigy with a genius IQ. Three years ago, she was involved in a tragic incident that left three classmates dead. She served her time, and now her mother, Maria, is resolved to keep that devastating fact tucked far away from their new beginning, hiding the past even from her new husband and demanding Zoe do the same.

Tonight Zoe is giving a recital that Maria has been planning for months. It needs to be the performance of her life. But instead, by the end of the evening, Maria is dead.

In the aftermath, everyone—police, family, Zoe’s former solicitor, and Zoe herself—tries to piece together what happened. But as Zoe knows all too well, the truth is rarely straightforward, and the closer we are to someone, the less we may see.

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Informații despre carte

The Perfect Girl: A Novel

Până la Gilly Macmillan

Evaluări:

Evaluare: 4 din 5 stele4/5 (68 stele)

Lungime: 459 pagini6 ore

Descriere

The New York Times bestselling author of What She Knew returns with an electrifying new novel about how the past will always find us...

"Literary suspense at its finest.”—Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Baby

“A wonderfully addictive book with virtuoso plotting and characters - for anyone who loved Girl on the Train, it’s a must read.”
— Rosamund Lupton

Tonight Zoe is giving a recital that Maria has been planning for months. It needs to be the performance of her life. But instead, by the end of the evening, Maria is dead.

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Editor:: HarperCollins
Lansat:: Sep 6, 2016
ISBN:: 9780062476753
Format:: Carte

Despre autor

Gilly Macmillan

Gilly Macmillan is the internationally bestselling author of What She Knew, The Perfect Girl, Odd Child Out, I Know You Know, and The Nanny. She resides in Bristol, England.

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The Perfect Girl - Gilly Macmillan

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SUNDAY AND MONDAY

An Evening of Summer Music

Sunday, August 24, 2014

7 P.M.

Holy Trinity Church, Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol

Zoe Maisey and Lucas Kennedy

play

Brahms, Debussy, Chopin, Liszt & Scarlatti

You won’t want to miss these two precociously talented teenagers making their Bristol debut—this promises to be a very special evening.

—Bristol Evening Post, What’s On

In Aid of the Family Bereavement Society

Tickets: £6 for adults, £3 for children.

Family ticket £15.

Please contact Maria at maria.maiseykennedy@gmail.com for bookings and details of future performances.

SUNDAY NIGHT

The Concert

ZOE

Before the concert begins, I stand inside the entrance to the church and look down the nave. Shadows lurk in the ceiling vaults even though the light outside hasn’t dimmed yet, and behind me the large wooden doors have been pulled shut.

In front of me, the last few members of the audience have just settled into their places. Almost every seat is filled. The sound of their talk is a medium-pitched rumble.

I shudder. In the heavy heat of the afternoon, when I was sweaty and tired after rehearsing, I forgot that it could be cold in the church even when the air was oven hot outside, so I chose a little black dress to wear this evening, with skinny straps, and now I’m feeling the chill. My arms are covered in goose bumps.

The doors to the church have been closed, sealing out the heat, because we don’t want outside noise to disturb us. This suburb of Bristol isn’t known for its rowdy inhabitants, but people have paid good money for their tickets.

And it’s not just that. The thing is that this concert is my first performance since I left the Unit, and my first performance as part of my Second Chance Life.

As my mum said, only about a hundred times today, This performance must be as perfect as it’s possible to be.

I glance at Lucas, who’s standing beside me. Only a millimeter or two of air separates us.

He’s wearing black trousers that my mum put a crease in this afternoon, and a black shirt. He looks good. His dark brown hair is just about tamed into neatness, but not quite, and I think that if he was bothered to, he could make those girls who are still lame enough to read vampire romance stories wilt.

I look good too, or I will when the goose bumps subside. I’m small-boned, I have pale, clear skin, and my hair is long and very blond but thin: cobweb-caught-in-sunlight hair, which looks amazing against my black dress. In the right light my hair can look white, and this gives me a look of innocence.

Like a baby deer, fragile, delicate was how the prosecutor described me, which I thought was quite nice, though it still hurts me to remember that she added but don’t be fooled.

I flex my fingers and lace them together to make sure the gloves I’m wearing are fitting extra snugly, the way I like them, and then I put my arms to my sides and shake them, to get my hands moving. I want my fingers to be warm and flexible. I want them pulsating with blood.

Beside me, Lucas shakes his hands too, slowly, and one at a time. Pianists catch hand shaking from each other like other people catch yawns.

At the far end of the nave, in front of the altar, the grand piano stands on a low platform, its hammer and string intestines reflected on the underside of the propped-up shiny black lid. It’s waiting for us. Lucas is staring at it, completely focused, as if it represents a vertical glacier that he has to ascend with his bare hands.

We have different approaches to nerves. He becomes as still as possible, he starts to breathe through his nose, slowly, and he won’t respond to anybody.

In contrast, I fidget, and my mind can’t rest because it has to run through the things I have to do, in the order I have to do them in, before I begin to perform. It’s not until I play the first note that the concentration I need, and the music itself, will wrap around me, pure and white like a shroud, and everything else will disappear.

Until that point, I’m sick with nerves, just like Lucas is.

Beside the piano, a lady has been introducing the concert, and now she gestures toward us, and then sort of scrapes and bows her way off the stage.

It’s time for us to go on.

I pull my gloves off quickly, and drop them onto a table beside me where the coffee and catechism leaflets are, and Lucas and I walk together down the aisle as if we’re play-acting a wedding. As we do, the heads of the audience turn to look at us, each row triggering the next.

We walk past my aunt Tessa, who’s in charge of a camera that’s been set up to record our performances. The idea is to replay them later, to analyze them for imperfection, and identify areas where improvement can be squeezed out of us.

Tessa is squinting a bit nervously at the camera as if it might turn around and lick her face, but she gives us a thumbs-up. I love Tessa; she’s like a much more chilled-out version of my mum. She has no kids of her own and she says that makes me all the more special to her.

The other faces in the church smile as Lucas and I walk between them, creasing deeper into expressions of encouragement as we approach. I’m seventeen now, but I’ve known this look since I was a little child.

Mum describes these sorts of people as our supporters. She says they’ll turn up to watch time and time again if we play well, and they’ll tell their friends. I don’t love the supporters, though. I don’t like the way they come up to you at the end of a concert and say stuff like You have such a gift, as if piano playing isn’t something that you work on day in and day out, if you want to make it perfect.

You can almost see the word genius flashing up like a neon sign in their minds, temptingly bright. Beware that sign, I would say to them, if they asked. Be careful what you wish for, because everything has a price.

In the front row of the church, the last pair of faces I focus on belong to my mum and Lucas’s dad. Or, to put it another way, my stepdad and his stepmum, because Lucas and I are stepsiblings. As usual, they’re wearing the too-bright expressions of parents who are disguising a level of ambition for their children that could choke you.

Lucas is ahead of me by the time we get to the end of the aisle and he’s already taking his seat as I step up onto the platform where the piano sits.

We’re going to start by playing a duet. It’s a crowd pleaser, the brainchild of our parents. Plus, they think it’ll help us to calm our nerves if we play together at the beginning.

Lucas and I would both rather play alone, but we humor them, partly because we have no choice, and partly because we’re both performers at heart and a performer wants to perform, needs to perform, loves to perform.

A performer is trained to perform.

So we’ll do it, and we’ll do it as well as we can.

As I sit down at the piano, I keep my back straight and I’m smiling for the audience even though my insides have constricted and twisted so they feel like a ball of elastic bands. But I don’t smile too much. It’s important that I look humble too, that I get my performance face just right.

There’s a bit of fuss while Lucas and I get settled and adjust the piano stools. We already know that they’re perfectly positioned, because we tried out the piano before everybody arrived, but still we fiddle about with them, the spacing of them, a tiny height adjustment. It’s part of the performance. It’s nerves. Or showmanship. Or both.

Once we’re both sitting perfectly, I place my hands over the keys. I have to work hard to control my breathing because my heart is hammering but my focus sharpens onto the music that’s ahead, all of me waiting to hear those first notes now, like a starting gun at the beginning of a race.

The audience is hushed. Just a cough from somebody that echoes around the vaults and columns. Lucas waits for the sound to disappear and, in the absolute silence that follows, he first wipes his palms on his trouser legs and then he positions his hands over the keys.

Now that smooth run of black and white stretching out beneath our hands is everything and I watch his hands as intently as an animal ready to pounce. I mustn’t miss his cue. There’s a beat or two more of perfect silence before he arches his palms and his hands bounce lightly: once, twice, three times.

Then we’re off, in perfect synchrony.

We dazzle when we do this; everybody says so. The energy two players produce can be electrifying when it’s right. It’s a tightrope act controlling the power, the tone, and the dynamics, because all of it must be perfectly balanced, and it wasn’t so good this afternoon when we got tired and cross with each other while practicing in the heat, but tonight, it’s brilliant. It’s seamless, beautiful, and we’re right in the music, both of us, and I’ll admit that doesn’t always happen. Mostly doesn’t happen.

In fact, I’m so into it that at first I don’t hear the shouting, and not hearing the shouting means that I don’t realize that what’s just begun is the end.

But I wish I had realized.

Why do I wish that?

Because, six hours later, my mother is dead.

MONDAY MORNING

SAM

At 8 A.M. Tessa still hasn’t stirred, but I’ve been awake since dawn.

I’m a criminal lawyer, with a heavy workload. I often work late and usually I sleep heavily until my alarm goes off, but today I have a hospital appointment that’s been burning a hole in the page of my diary for more than a week, and it’s on my mind the minute my eyes open.

The curtains are drawn at my bedroom window, darkening the room, and light filters around them in lazy, unpredictable curves as they move with the breeze from the river. If I opened them, I would see the wide expanse of the floating harbor outside, and the colorful mixture of modern apartments and old warehouses and boathouses that bundle together on the bank opposite.

But I don’t.

I stay where I am and I notice that the breeze is so soft that it barely disrupts the stillness of the room. They promised us a storm last night, but it never came. There was just a short, violent rain shower, followed by a dusting of drizzle, which offered a brief respite from the heat, but only brief, because now it’s thickening again.

Tessa arrived in the rain, in the middle of the night.

She apologized for disturbing me, as if she hadn’t just made my evening. She said she’d tried to phone. I hadn’t noticed because I’d passed out on the sofa in front of the TV, with the remains of a special chow mein on my lap, and the letter from the hospital on my chest.

When I opened the door to her, I noticed dark smudges of exhaustion on the damp skin underneath her eyes, and she stood very still when I embraced her, as if every muscle in her body was stretched too tight.

She said she didn’t want to talk, so I didn’t press her to. Ours is a quiet, respectful affair; we don’t ask for or expect a comprehensive emotional download from each other. We’re more in the business of providing refuge for each other, and by that I mean a strong, safe place to reside, a place where we are almost certainly what two less reserved adults would call in love, though we would never say that.

I’m a shy person. I moved from Devon to Bristol two years ago, because it’s what you do if you want to avoid spending your whole life and career among the same small circle of people, in the area you grew up in. Opportunities in Bristol are much greater, and I’d cut my teeth on Zoe Guerin’s case, so I felt ready for a change.

But it hasn’t worked out too well for me. My cases are more varied, and the workload is more intense, that’s true, but new friendships haven’t come easily because I have to work all hours, and you don’t meet too many potential partners when you’re doing prison visits and court attendances. So when Tess and I ran into each other, just in the street one day, it felt like a godsend. She was a familiar face, we had shared history, however difficult, and we slipped quickly into a pattern of snatching time with each other, just coffees and drinks at first, and then more. Tessa is married, though, so that’s where things have sort of stalled. We can’t move on unless she leaves her husband.

Last night, after she arrived, she flopped on my sofa as if the stuffing had been knocked out of her, and I brought her a cold beer and discreetly slipped the hospital letter into a drawer on my way to the kitchen, so she wouldn’t see it. I didn’t want it to mar things between us, not until I was sure. Not until I’d got through today’s appointment. It was fairly easy to disguise the numbness in my left hand. Nobody at work had noticed it either.

She sipped her beer and we watched a Hitchcock film, in the dark, and the black-and-white images on the screen made the room flicker as if it was animated. Beside me, Tessa remained still and quiet as she watched, once or twice rolling the cold drink across her forehead, and I snuck a glance or two at her when I could, wondering what was wrong.

Tessa doesn’t share the white-blond hair, pale skin, and refined features of her sister or her niece—her looks have none of their hauteur—though she does share their sharp blue eyes. Tess mostly wears her thick, silky strawberry-blond hair tied back, and the open features on her heart-shaped face and her lightly freckled skin make her look approachable and kind, and her eyes often dance with humor. Her figure is athletic, her attitude is practical and no-nonsense. For me, she is beautiful.

As I look at her now, in the warm darkness of my bedroom, she’s lying with her hands on the pillow beside her face, fingers curled in beside her lips. Only the sight of the tarnished gold wedding ring on her finger spoils the picture for me.

After a while, I ease myself out of bed, because I want breakfast. So I’m riffling through a pile of laundry on the floor to locate something to wear when my phone vibrates.

I snatch it up quickly, because I don’t want it to disturb her.

The screen tells me that it’s Jeanette calling, my secretary. She’s always at her desk early, especially on a Monday.

I go through an internal fight with myself, wondering whether to answer it or not, but the truth is that I’m a conscientious chap so the battle was really lost as soon as the phone started buzzing. I answer the call.

Sam, I’m sorry, but there’s a client turned up for you here, at the office.

Who? I ask, and I mentally shuffle through the deck of some of my more notable clients, trying to guess which of them might have pitched himself or herself off the good behavior wagon and back into the mud this time.

She’s only a girl. Jeannette tells me this in a stage whisper.

What’s her name? As I ask I think, It can’t be, can it?, because I’ve only had one client who was a teenage girl.

She says she’s called Zoe Maisey, only you knew her as Zoe Guerin.

I take myself out of the bedroom, into the en suite, shut the door and sit on the side of the bath. Here, the morning light streams in through the frosted window, yellowing the room, assaulting my dark-widened pupils.

You are joking?

I’m afraid I absolutely am not. Sam, she says her mum was found dead last night.

Oh dear God.

Those three words express in only a paltry way my utter disbelief, because of course Zoe is Tessa’s niece, and her mother, Maria, is Tessa’s sister.

Sam?

Can you put her on the phone?

She’s insisting she wants to see you.

I calculate that because my appointment isn’t until late morning, I probably have time to deal with this, at least partly.

Tell her I’m on my way.

I’m about to hang up the phone when Jeanette adds, And she’s with her uncle, and my insides take a swan dive yet again, because Zoe’s uncle is Tessa’s husband.

SUNDAY NIGHT

The Concert

TESSA

When you don’t have kids of your own, people have a tendency to give you things to look after. I think they assume that you’re lacking in outlets for any nurturing instincts that you might have.

On the night of Zoe’s concert, the child substitute that I’ve been given to be in charge of is the camera. I’m supposed to be looking after it throughout the duration of the performance, so that I can record the show in its entirety. It is, I’m told by my sister in a pedantic way, as if I’m lacking in mental capacity, an important job.

Shall we deal with the reasons for my childlessness straightaway? Let’s do it. In spite of the fact that I’m a successful professional and happy in my skin, it’s what people always seem to be most curious about.

So here goes: Unexplained Infertility is a thing. It’s an official thing in spite of its unofficial-sounding title, and I have it. My husband, Richard, and I didn’t discover it until we were in our thirties, because we left having kids until after we’d gone traveling and established our careers.

After we found out, we tried IVF and went three rounds before we gave up. Surrogacy: I didn’t fancy it; not brave enough. Adoption: same reason. They’d never pass us now anyway, not with Richard’s drinking.

As for being somebody who’s lacking in nurturing instincts, I could snort with laughter over that, because I’m a vet.

My practice is in the city center, lodged where several of Bristol’s most contrasting neighborhoods meet. On an average day, I probably see between twenty and twenty-five animals that I prod, probe, stroke, reassure, and sometimes muzzle in order to treat their health and sometimes their psychological problems. Then I might reassure, or advise, and very occasionally stroke their owners too if there’s bad news.

In short, I nurture, all day, most days of the week.

But you know there’s a bit of irony here, which never escapes me when I’m with my little sister, especially when I’m roped in to help with her family, as I am tonight.

You see, when we were growing up, Maria was the naughty girl, compared to my Perfect Peter. She had lots of potential as a child, especially musical potential, which got my parents excited, but she never met their expectations.

From a very young age she was feisty, and funny, but when she hit fourteen she began to run wild. While I burrowed into my bedroom in the evenings, studying hard, my heart set on vet school, her desk, on the other side of our room, would be covered only in makeup she’d discarded after getting ready for a night out. She stopped studying, she stopped playing classical music, and she had fun instead.

She didn’t see the point of the rest of it, she said, in spite of the fact that my dad’s eyes bulged when she spoke like that.

Boyfriendless, much plainer, and less socially adept than my beautiful little sister, I loved living vicariously through her and I think she liked that too. She whispered her secrets to me after she got home in the small hours: kisses and drinks and pills taken; jealousies and triumphs: adventures, all of them.

But then, to all of our surprise, aged just nineteen she met Philip Guerin at a music festival. He was twenty-seven and had already inherited the family farm, and she just took off and went to live with him there, and shortly afterward she married him. Just like that. Living the dream, my mother said sarcastically, as she actually wrung her hands.

Zoe followed soon after. Maria had her when she was just twenty-two, and I think it was after that that the reality of life on the farm with a small child began to rub the shiny edges off her a bit. But she didn’t quit, to give her credit. Instead, she began to put all her energies into Zoe, and when Zoe’s extraordinary musicality presented itself as plain to see when she was all of three years old and began to pick out tunes on the piano at the farm, Maria made it her mission to nurture that talent.

That was before the accident, of course, when things went very wrong for them. But my point is that in the meantime, having done everything right all my life, and studied hard, and followed the rules, I am married, sure, but I’ve ended up with no children. I’ve come to terms with it, but Richard isn’t coping so well, especially after a dramatic professional disappointment, which coincided with me refusing to go for IVF round number four.

So here we are tonight. I’m helping my sister and Zoe, which is something I love to do when Maria will let me. I’m looking forward to the performance, because Zoe’s playing has almost regained the standard it used to be, before she went to the Unit, and I’m sure she’s going to blow everybody away tonight, and I’m hoping I won’t mess up the job of recording everything.

I’ve had a meager thirty-second tutorial from Lucas, the son of my sister’s newish husband, on how to operate the camera. Lucas is a film and camera buff, so I was in good hands, but the tutorial wasn’t really enough, because by instinct I’m a bit of a technophobe, and even as Lucas was saying them, I felt his words swimming uncontrolled around my head like a panicky shoal of fish.

I could do with my Richard being here to help me, but he’s let me down again.

Just an hour ago I went to find him when it was time to get ready for the concert. He was in the shed at the bottom of our garden, supposedly working on building a model airplane, but when I got there I found him squeezing out the dregs of his box of wine from the shiny bladder inside. He’d ripped the cardboard away and he was massaging and twisting that silvery bag as if it was a recalcitrant udder, holding it over his tea mug.

As I stood watching in the doorway, a few pale drops of liquid dribbled from the bag into the mug. Richard drank them immediately and then he noticed me. He made no apology and no effort to hide what he was doing. Tess! he said. Do we have another box?

Even from the doorway I could tell that his breath stank and his speech was slurred, and although he was trying to behave like a civilized drinker, somebody just enjoying a glass of white on a Sunday afternoon, shame wandered across his features and exaggerated the tremor in his hands. The balsa wood model he was ostensibly there to make lay in its box, all the precision-cut pieces still in perfect order underneath the unopened instruction manual.

In the garage, I said. And I left to go to the concert on my own.

So now I’m here with a camera that I’m not sure is working properly, a pounding head, and a disappointed heart, and I’m telling myself that I mustn’t, I must not, give in to temptation and go and see Sam after the concert tonight, because that would be wrong.

SUNDAY NIGHT

The Concert

ZOE

Lucas hears the shouting before me.

He stops playing first, but I don’t notice immediately because we’re in the middle of a complicated passage of music that always pulls me through it with the unstoppability of a freight train.

When I realize that his hands have stilled, and that I’m playing on my own, I keep going at first, glancing at him because I wonder if he’s forgotten his part. We’re playing the duet from memory, and that happens sometimes: your brain just freezes.

So I’m expecting him to pick up the melody at any moment, I’m willing him to remember, because this concert must be perfect, and I’m doing that right up until the moment when I work out that he’s properly stopped, because a man is standing in the center of the aisle.

So I stop playing too and, as the last vibrations from my chords die away, I look at the man, and I think I might recognize him.

The expression on his face is smudged out of normal. It’s in no way appreciative of our playing, it’s red with rage; the tendons on his neck are straining so much that they look like extra bones.

It’s a travesty! he shouts. A travesty! It’s disrespectful! His words ricochet around the space, and one or two people stand up.

He’s staring at me and I realize that I do know him.

I know him because I killed his daughter.

The piano stool makes very little noise when I stand up, because even though it tips over, it’s on a square of crimson carpet that breaks the sound of its fall so that it’s a dull thud only.

My mother rises from her seat. She knows the man too.

Mr. Barlow, she says. Mr. Barlow, Tom, please, and she starts to walk toward him.

I don’t stay. I’m too afraid of what he might do to me.

I leave the stage, my hip clashing painfully with the edge of the piano, and I flee toward the back of the church, away from him, to where there’s a doorway behind the altar that takes me out of his sight. I shove through it, then clatter down slippery stone steps into a tiny room where there’s just a sink draped with stained cloths and I crouch in a corner, shaking, drenched yet again with the cold sweat of my remorse, with the impossibility of this life of mine, of second chances or fresh starts, until eventually my mum finds me.

She says words that mean nothing but are an attempt to make me feel better. She says them to me in a hushed voice, and her hand smooths the hair on my head, smooths it lightly down my back. She says, Shush now. Shush, but I’m not sure if that’s because she wants to comfort me or because she wants my sobbing to quiet down so nobody else can hear me.

Fifteen minutes later—it takes that long for us to be sure that they’ve got rid of Thomas Barlow and his raging grief—she leads me out of a back door, through the graveyard, and toward the car.

There’s no question that I’ll perform now. I’m still shaking, and the notes are all jumbled in my head anyway.

Outside, I take in the fact that the night is deeply dusky and warm, and that feels like a balm after the cold air inside. I notice a strong smell from the glowing white roses that hang over the churchyard gate, and the dark fluttering of bats that swarm from a high corner of the church tower. Around us, as we walk in the tired grass, gravestones whose cadaverous foundations have failed them lean against each other for support. I see a Celtic cross, the contours of lichen-covered stone mounds, writing everywhere, words of remembrance, and, above us, the dark, pointed leaves of the yew tree greedily sucking away the last of the light.

From inside the church we hear the sound of Lucas beginning his Debussy. The show must go on. The sound is a warm bath of notes at first, then a river flowing. It’s something beautiful, which I wrap around me to shield me from what’s just happened.

It diverts me from looking down at the edges of the path where there’s a plaque that has been recently laid. Amelia Barlow is inscribed on it. Aged 15. Beloved by family, cherished by friends. The sun shone brighter when you were alive. There are freshly tended flowers planted around it.

We didn’t know that her family had laid a plaque for her there. We would never have hired that church as a venue if we’d known, never in a million years. Continents would have drifted and re-formed before we’d have done that.

For the whole drive home my mum says almost nothing, apart from, It doesn’t matter. We can reorganize the concert, and you’ll be ready for the diploma. You’re already ready.

My mother: who never talks about what really matters, and who is trying to reassure me, because although public musical performance at the child prodigy level was my downfall tonight, she believes it’s ultimately going to be my salvation. She believes that it was the catalyst for our second life, and that it will also be the fuel that will propel it into a stratosphere that is a gazillion light-years away from our life so far.

And perhaps I should have listened harder when she spoke because it was the last time she ever truly reassured me, the last time I felt the frustration of our inability to connect with each other prickle the air between us.

Perhaps I should have emerged from the cocoon of my own misery to ask her if she was OK, even though that was the one thing we hadn’t been for the past few years. We hadn’t been OK.

But I wish I had. Asked her, I mean. I wish I had.

MONDAY MORNING

SAM

In the bathroom of my flat, after ending the call with Jeanette, and feeling a coruscating dread at the thought of having to break the news to Tessa, I sit for a moment longer and remember when I was first introduced to Zoe Maisey, or Zoe Guerin as she was known then.

My first encounter with Zoe was more than three years previously, when I lived in North Devon, and the introduction came in the form of a phone call from the Defense Solicitor Call Center, because I was the solicitor on duty when she was arrested.

The call came in at nine-thirty in the morning, about eight hours after the accident had happened. They described Zoe and her situation as follows:

Juvenile, appropriate adult present, charge is death by careless driving, two fatalities, another critically injured, ready for interview at Barnstaple Police Station and your Duty Solicitor number is 00746387A.

I phoned the custody suite at the police station right away, identified myself, and asked the custody sergeant to put Zoe on the phone.

Hello? she said.

I introduced myself. Don’t tell the police anything about the accident, I said. I’m on my way. I’ll be about forty-five minutes. Don’t start any interviews without me.

And in reply she said, OK, in a voice that sounded quiet with shock, and she had not a single question that she wanted to ask me.

I drove through the countryside to get to the police station. It was a beautiful, cold morning. I passed white frosted fields bordered by hedges that were a couple of feet thick, sturdy and sinuous at once as they partitioned off the surrounding fields, and stripped of leaves by the winter but so dense that the shadows they cast were deep horizontal bands. The blue-gray ocean, surprisingly calm, was visible here and there where clefts in the landscape revealed it, and Lundy Island

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Recenzii

This book is written from various characters' viewpoints, alternating via chapters. Mosly it's done very well, and doesn't interfere with the flow of the story. In fact it gives quite a lot of depth to the events, after all there is more than one side to any story, and no two people experience the same thing in the same way.The chapters told from a teen point of view have a genuine adolescent feel, you really do get the impression a teen is telling you those parts of the story.Despite the book being so well written, it failed to really grab me. Something would seem to be building, but then peter out. I was able to read large chunks in one sitting, but didn't feel any great urge to pick it up later. Until near the end that is, but the end felt somewhat like an anticlimax to me. The promised drama didn't really happen, and the epilogue tied up the loose ends a little too neatly.Overall, this is a good book. There are certainly far worse choices out there. Other readers have loved it, so give it a go.I received this book for free through a giveaway.

Rating: 3

Zoe is a child genius, a musical prodigy - the perfect daughter. But a party gone wrong led to the death of three teenagers - and Zoe was the one to take the blame. She faced the courts, served her time. And now she's free. Her mother remarried and now Zoe has a stepfather and stepbrother in her life, along with a half-sister. As Zoe Maisey, life should go back to normal again. But on the night when Zoe decides to give a piano performance, there is a disruption that threatens to bring her past back to the forefront. By midnight, Zoe's mother is dead. Who killed Zoe's mother and why? And what will happen now to this "perfect" family?

One of the things I liked about this novel was how it was split into two parts and went back and forth between different character perspectives as well as between different points in time. This ensured that the reader was attentive; I like to be kept on my toes because it makes me work that much harder to make connections - and sometimes, a challenge is a good thing!

While I enjoyed reading from the perspective of different characters and found the events leading up to the murder interesting, I didn't really find Zoe to be a well-developed character. For one thing, the whole genius aspect had no purpose so it didn't really even need to be included in the story. I thought that it was mentioned because it would lead to something somewhere but it didn't, so that was a bit of a disappointment. Her character just made me sad but I couldn't connect with her or feel anything other than marginal pity. I feel like she could have been a lot more complex, especially in showing her emotions regarding her mother's death.

I also found the character of the solicitor to be quite unnecessary. I thought that the author had included him and his perspective for a purpose but he pretty much did nothing throughout the whole novel and had his own mini sidestory going on that I didn't really care about. I pretty much hate when authors include things that have no bearing or purpose so the solicitor was definitely a disappointing character for me.

While the premise was interesting, and the whodunit aspect had me hyped, finding out what happened and the way that it resolved itself was a bit lacking in the wow factor, so I didn't get that thrill that I was hoping for.

Overall, this is a well-written novel that incorporated many different perspectives and timelines. However, it was lackluster in terms of creating complex characters, and did not deliver on the thrill factor as strongly as I had hoped. Still a decent read, and worth giving a shot!

Rating: 2

I purchased The Perfect Girl at an airport newsstand because I’d heard good things about What She Knew, Ms. Macmillan’s previous novel. I ended up staying up really late finishing it the day after I bought it (I’m probably the only person who got 5 hours of sleep in Vegas not because of the gambling or the drinking, but because I wanted to finish a book).

However, even though I really enjoyed reading the book, I don’t actually think I liked the book. It is written the way many books seem to be these days (and I enjoy it) – something has happened, we go back in time and forward in time to get some glimpses and start to put together the Real Story. In this one, a teen named Zoe is a piano prodigy, and is performing a concert with her step-brother when someone comes into the church and screams at her. We quickly learn he is the father of someone Zoe killed – accidentally – a couple of years ago.

We also learn that by the end of the night Zoe’s mother will be dead.

We get chapters from the point of view of at least five characters, and the storytelling is engaging. But in the end, I kind of didn’t care that much, and found one of the storylines completely useless, and another a bit of a … I want to say cliché, but that’s not right. Honestly it felt a little like what I might do if I were writing a story when I was in middle school. Basically, one of the characters uses a film script to convey autobiographical information to another character. But there’s no need for it.

This is a fine time killer, and might even suck you in, but it’s nowhere near as interesting as other similar books, such as pretty much any in Liane Moriarty’s body of work.

Rating: 3

A special thank you to Edelweiss and William Morrow Paperbacks for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was just okay. The best part of the story was the lead up to whodunnit however it is told from multiple points of view and in my opinion, this adds unnecessary bulk to the story because most of these narrators are unreliable. Once the mystery was solved, and it is revealed who killed Maria, the story ties up too neatly.

I read that the original title was Butterfly in the Dark and I think this works much better with the story than The Perfect Girl.

Rating: 3

Loved this book. I truly cared about these people..as if the were in real life not on the pages of a book. Couldn't stop reading until I had finished. Highly recommend

Rating: 5

Wow, this was one wild roller coaster ride! I hadn't read Gilly Macmillian's first book, What She Knew, when I got this book but I have it now, right now next to me to read! Zoe is a talented pianist who is scheduled to play with her new step-brother when someone from her past shows up at the concert and it all goes downhill from there fast! This is one of those books that keep you up way past your bedtime. Highly recommended!

Rating: 5

I loved her first book, "Burnt Paper Sky" - known as "What She Knew" in Canada now. This is book #2 and I found it hugely boring and couldn't wait for it to be over. The ending is predictable and the characters didn't do anything to make me like them.

Rating: 2

Ooh, this book was good! It grabbed me from the beginning, and I couldn't put it down.Zoe is a 17-year-old girl with a painful past. When she was 15 years old, she was the driver in a car accident that left three of her classmates - including her best friend - dead. Since then, her mother Maria has remarried and is determined to hide their tragic past from her new husband and his 16-year-old son Lucas. But the past always has a way of catching up to you, as Zoe and Maria soon find out. When Maria is found dead, all family members are under suspicion. Does Maria's death have something to do with Zoe's past?I loved this book. Each chapter is told in the first person from a different character's perspective - Zoe, Lucas, Maria, Tess (Zoe's aunt and Maria's sister), Richard (Zoe's uncle and Tess's husband), and Sam (Zoe's lawyer from her car accident case). The first half of the book gets the reader caught up on Zoe's past and the complicated relationships that each of the main characters has with each other. It is not until halfway into the book that Maria dies and the book takes on the added dimension of a mystery.What's so great about each chapter's being told from a different character's perspective is that the reader can feel the tension as the plot tightens. Each character starts to figure things out - not just with the mystery of Maria's death but also with the truth behind each person's true being - and the chapters get shorter as the perspectives bounce back and forth, their individual thoughts converging on the truth. It's wonderfully tense and gripping.The resolution at the end was a little bit disappointing. I think author Gilly Macmillan intended it to be an oh-my-gosh-how-diabolical moment, but it didn't quite achieve that. If we could give books 1/2 stars, I would have given this book 4 1/2 stars because of the less-than-perfect ending. However, the book hits closer to 5 stars than to 4, which is why I went ahead and gave it 5 stars.

Rating: 5

Zoe is a 17 year old musical prodigy with a genius IQ to boot. Attempting to settle into her "new normal" life with her mom and newly acquired stepfather, stepbrother, and half sister she is finally starting to feel like she is putting her life back together. After a devastating accident left 3 of her schoolmates dead, landing Zoe in juvenile detention for 18 months it's been difficult to put her life back together. An elaborately planned evening piano concert was supposed to be her reemergence back into her former glory days of playing, but before sunrise the next day, Zoe's mother is dead and she finds herself falling down the rabbit hole as she examines her new family under more scrutiny and tries to understand just what happened to her mother. Given that the span of this book was over the course of roughly 24 hours and at over 400 pages long, it was incredibly rich in detail. Alternating perspectives between Zoe, Tessa (her aunt), Richard (her uncle), and Sam (her former lawyer) kept the story fresh. It was interesting to see events unfold through so many different lenses and mindsets. The story contained flashbacks and recollections of the horrible accident which sent Zoe to a correctional facility which ultimatly played a large part in her feelings and thought processes when faced with a new crime/investigative procedures. It made it all the more threatening for Zoe which ramped up the paranoia and tenseness. The ending was not as much of a shocker for me compared to her previous novel but it was one that I was hoping for which left me satisfied. Overall it was a great read, a perfect thriller to get sucked into!

Rating: 4

I hated this book and I am not exactly sure why. The main character got on my nerves and the story seemed contrived somehow. The whole thing seemed dull and under developed. I ended up not finishing it. Maybe I will go back to it at a later date and it will capture my attention more. Until then, this was a dud.

Rating: 1

I really enjoyed this book and flew through it. Zoe is the perfect girl. She's beautiful and smart and musically gifted. Then one night she makes a terrible error in judgement (but did she?) and her life is forever changed and she becomes a criminal with a record. Several years later Zoe and her mother have moved on, in a new place, with a new name and a new family including a new baby sister and no one knows of the past. She loves Her "second chance life" and falls in love again with her music. One night she performs a concert with her stepbrother and the inevitable happens, her past catches up with her. What happens next is unimaginable. How did Zoe go from rising from the ashes to having her life again turned upside down?Things are not always what they seem and people are not always who you think they are. The characters all have stories in themselves, they are a fascinating mix, some likeable, some not, and there's a lot going on behind the scenes. I love the descriptive way of this author's storytelling. The script written by Lucas was heartbreaking. The book is narrated by numerous characters in the story, a few too many for my liking actually. A few viewpoints, or a couple I am fine with but when it starts getting into 6 and 7, that's a few too many for me, but that's just me.Not sure how I feel about the ending. The end justifies the means? Clever; but what a tangled web we weave. This was a gripping and hard to put down thriller. I read most in one sitting. Would love to see it on the screen.

Rating: 5

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.Zoe is a piano prodigy with a tragic secret from her past. She and her mother, Maria, are on their "Second Chance Family", attempting to put their lives back together by denying who they used to be. But after a disastrous music recital, Maria is found murdered, and multiple characters attempt to put the pieces together to figure out what really happened.This is a book that flies by. I got so into it I didn't even realize how close I was to the end until the first of the big reveals happened.There is so much suspense and tension, and so many layers of mystery to unfold. I didn't see any of the big reveals coming, and it made for a great read to be that surprised.I felt like there were one too many subplots that kind of took away from the main story line. It felt like Macmillan was exploring what makes and breaks a marriage, and what secrets a husband and wife can hide from the world and each other--and this was really interesting in itself, but it was distracting (especially the subplot with the lawyer).I also felt like we heard from a few too many characters. Sometimes a narrator would get a really short part before the point of view switched again, and it became hard to keep track of everyone and who was sharing when.If you are looking for a gripping, twisty psychological thriller, I would definitely recommend this book. The twists, turns, and big reveals more than make up for any minor shortcomings.

Rating: 4

Interesting story of a perfect young piano genius who does everything right but unfortunately at 14 drives an automobile from a party (she apparently had a spiked drink) and the 3 passengers in the car are killed. She is blamed and put away for a year. Her mother moves away and starts a new life with a new husband. They never tell the new husband of the daughters background problem. The mother is killed and the "perfect girl" does the unthinkable. Interesting but could have been shorter.

Rating: 3

Zoe Maisey is a genius: a piano prodigy with an amazingly high IQ. She is also a killer. When she was fourteen, Zoe was responsible for the death of three fellow teens. Now, she and her mother have started over (their "Second Chance Life") and Zoe is playing her first concert in her new life, along with her stepbrother, Lucas. But her performance is disrupted and Zoe flees the concert hall. And, by the end of the night, Zoe's mother is dead. Zoe is alone, forced to confront a new world without her protector. Plus, who is responsible for her mother's death?This book grabbed me immediately; it sucks you in from the start and doesn't let you go until it finishes, when you're exhilarated and exhausted. It's a fascinating, easy-to-read thriller with short chapters that tell us about the events surrounding the timeframe after Zoe's concert, but also going back into the past via flashbacks from the characters. We hear from Zoe, her aunt, Tessa, Tessa's husband, Richard, and Sam, Zoe's lawyer from her "previous" life. Their narratives weave flawlessly into a tense and sometimes psychologically creepy tale that has you sitting spellbound, turning pages frantically, wanting to know what happens.In theory, the action happens over a very short period of time, as Maria's killer is unveiled, but the ability to go into the past with the characters extends the time and makes you tensely await each action. Macmillan's characters are nuanced and deep--each with their own quirks, flaws, and motivations. Beyond the actual plotline of murder, there is a deep thread of discord and familial drama and angst running among our characters, who are certainly a flawed bunch. The book makes you question and ponder many things, including the topics of forgiveness, loyalty, marriage, and what really makes a family. I won't forget either the exciting story or the characters themselves for some time.Overall, while there were certainly a few things to quibble with with this one, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a tense but enjoyable thriller to escape into and certainly well worth the thread.I received a copy of this book from the publisher and Librarything (thank you)!

Rating: 4

Gilly MacMillan's first novel, What She Knew, was an Edgar nominated, New York Times Bestseller. Her second novel, The Perfect Girl, is newly released.Seventeen year old Zoe is a brilliant piano virtuoso. Her mother Maria has nurtured her career from the very beginning. An accident three years ago ended with one of Zoe's friends dead. But, she's served her time, she and her mother have moved and they have a new family unit. But while giving a concert in their new hometown, a man bursts in ranting and disrupts the event. And six hours later, Maria is dead......Who killed Maria is the question that needs answering by the end of the book. And there are a few obvious choices. But it is the exploration of the characters, their lives, their thoughts and their reasoning that make The Perfect Girl a 'literary suspense' novel.There are eight main characters in The Perfect Girl, but only four of them are given a voice with their own chapters. I was surprised at those that were - Tessa and Richard, Zoe's aunt and uncle and Sam, Zoe's previous solicitor. A fifth, Lucas - Zoe's new stepbrother, we come to know through his film script.Zoe is driven to be perfect - in her piano playing and in her behavior. After all, this is her Second Chance with her new Second Chance family in their new Second Chance home. It's heartbreaking to read Zoe's chapters, as we learn of her past and the events that lead to that fateful night. But I found her a hard character to actually like. Maria is also driven as well to make everything 'perfect'. Maria is not given a voice and we only learn about her from others - notably her sister Tessa (who seems to be the most reasonable character) Chris, Maria's new husband, also only becomes known through his actions and dialogue described by others. (But he's a real piece of work) It was Uncle Richard that I was drawn to the most, despite his spectacular lack of perfection. I understand Sam's inclusion in the book, but felt he was quite removed from the 'main event'.These are all fractured people with fractured lives and secrets, some holding it together better than others. It was hard to really like any of them, but as a 'removed' observer, I was caught up in their turmoil. The final whodunit isn't the ending I had predicted, but seems, well, just perfect.

Rating: 4

This book is destined to be a mega-hit. Gilly MacMillan did a pretty good job with her first book, What She Knew, but she hit it out of this park with this psychological suspense. I could not read this book fast enough. I had to know what happened next. I don't think the who-dunit is really the draw on this one, because it doesn't take much to figure out. But the how is this all going to work out in the end is what kept me racing through. The story centers around Zoe Maisey, a teenage girl, who is musical prodigy with dark secrets in her past. She's fully ensconced in her new life in a new town with and step-family where her and her mom kept her secret from all. Turns out that she's not the only one with secrets. And when secrets clash it's anybody's guess how what's going to happen to all the players. I was gifted an advanced copy of this book, due out September 2016, by William Morrow publisher through LibraryThing for an honest review. And my opinion is GET THIS BOOK.

Rating: 4

Good debut novel.Story of 8 year old Ben Finch who goes missing while he is out a walk in the woods with his Mum.The book revolves around Rachel (Bens Mother) and the policeman Jim Clemo who is desperate to solve this case.

Rating: 4

Gillian MacMillan's The Perfect Girl is a twisty ride. I really liked it and have to look for her other book What She Knew. The story starts with a concert on a Sunday evening and every chapter is either titled with the Day, moving back and forth in time or by the Character whose point of view is told. There is the question of how or whether we can ever really start over and how our history and past choices will impact the future. Zoe was involved in a fatal car crash three years before the opening concert setting at age fourteen and spent months in a secured unit. Her mother Maria starts over with Zoe's release in a new town near her sister Tessa. Secrets and lies are at the center of the story and I really wanted to look ahead and see what was coming. The suspense here is exceptional and this book is highly recommended.

Rating: 5

I received this as pert of the LT early reviewer program. Zoe is a gifted child musician with a troubled past. When her mother tries to rebuild a perfect second chance life for them, they try to keep her history a secret. But someone has found them out and her mom ends up dead. Told over the course of 2 days with multiple shifts in perspective, this is a quick intriguing read. I enjoy books with flawed characters, and this one is full of them. Some are easier to like and relate to than others, but that just adds to the tension. Well written and nicely paced. I give it a solid recommendation for a quick read.

Rating: 4

Rachel Jenner is out in the woods with her eight year old son Ben. Ben wants to run in front and Rachel agrees reluctantly. Next thing she she knows is that Ben has gone and she doesn't know where. DI Jim Clemo is on the case of the missing child. This is there events of what happened. Good mother or bad mother, good cop or bad cop, thats for the reader to decide. Decided I was too at the end of the story.This is the harrowing tale of a little boy who is taken while out with his mom. The story is told from the points of view of Rachel and Jim. Also there is a lot of blogs, transcripts and everything else that brings the book right up to date. I really enjoyed this debut thriller and I was on the edge of my seat as the search was drawing a close. I was drawn straight in and really wanted to see what happened. It does ask the question good mother or bad, and would I have done anything different myself. It did remind me of when my lads were children and how I found it difficult to say it wsd ok to play a little way from home.My only niggle in the book was the big family secret reveal. I really felt it was unnecessary to the story and it didn't add anything extra to the story.However the book was a cracking read and I really enjoyed it.

Rating: 4

This book was impossible for me to follow - despite the fact that it takes place over 24 hours. There are 4 narrators taking turns on chapters and all narrate in the first person. Also the chapters go back and forth in time. There is no continuity at all, not in voice or time. A really trying contrivance in the book is that each chapter ends in a kind of mid-air moment - supposedly to create suspense. I found this book impossible.

Rating: 2

Author Gilly Macmillan follows up her 2015 gripping debut novel What She Knew, about a mom whose eight-year-old son vanishes, with another tense and topical suspense thriller, The Perfect Girl.The Perfect Girl opens with 17-year-old Zoe Maisey and her stepbrother Lucas ready to perform a piano recital. Zoe's mom Maria and Lucas' dad Chris sit proudly in the front row, ready to hear their talented children play. Zoe then tells us that six hours later her mother will be dead.Now that the author has your attention, we shift narrators to Sam, a solicitor whom we find is having an affair with Zoe's Aunt Tessa. Sam and Tessa met a few years prior, when Sam was Zoe's lawyer. When Zoe was 14 years-old, she was involved in a car accident that took the lives of three of her classmates, and Sam relates that part of the story to us.We also get Tessa's point of view. Tessa loves her niece Zoe and sister Maria fiercely. She is having trouble in her marriage; she and her husband have been trying for years to conceive a child, and her husband has slid into alcoholism and depression.The timeline shifts back and forth, but it is never confusing. The title refers to not only Zoe- who is trying her best to be the perfect girl her mother wants, but to Tessa, who has always been the perfect girl in her family, and Maria, a former wild child who, after Zoe's accident, has worked hard to be the perfect wife to Chris.But what is the cost of trying for perfection? When Zoe was fourteen, she went to a party, had what she thought was one drink, hoping to get the attention of Jack, the guy every girl wanted. She thought she was using good judgement, but in trying to impress Jack a terrible tragedy occurs.Maria changed her life when she married Chris. Her marriage to Zoe's husband broke up after Zoe's accident, and Maria rebuilt her life with Chris and his son Lucas. She designed the perfect life for her husband- they had the perfect house, she had a beautiful kitchen where she created wonderful meals for her husband. The cost of attempting perfection, especially for women, can be too much to pay.So how did Maria end up dead? That is the ultimate mystery here, and you'll fly through the pages to find out the answer.Reading The Perfect Girl put me in mind of HBO's series, The Night Of. A seemingly good kid makes a few bad decisions that leads to more trouble. There's also a lawyer's point of view, as in the HBO series. Fans of The Night Of will want to follow-up with The Perfect Girl.

Rating: 4

At the opening of this story, you know how it's going to end. Or rather, you know that the protagonist's mother is going to die. But you don't know how or by whom. It's not a particularly unique style of writing that hasn't been done before, but it's still refreshing enough for me to have enjoyed it. I was not familiar with this author before receiving an advanced copy of the book. But I was very pleasantly surprised. The plot moved along at a decent pace, gradually revealing the story in chapters told by alternating viewpoints. I liked it, and it kept me guessing. I've seen reviews that state that this novel is not as good as MacMillan's previous book, What She Knew. I've not read that one, but now I want to.

Rating: 4

Family comes together. Loves this book. It kept me up at night because I couldn't wait to see what would happen.

Rating: 4

I didn't like this book. I felt it was just blah.

Rating: 2

The book opens with 17-year-old genius musician Zoe preparing for a comeback piano concert. We know Zoe has undergone some sort of jail time for killing someone, but at the beginning we don't know who or why. We also know her mother, Maria, is now married to Chris, and stepmother to his teenage son, Lucas. Zoe refers to them as her “Second Chance Family”. By the end of that night, Zoe’s mother is dead. Before long Zoe learns that secrets from the past usually never stay hidden.

The author switches the narrator throughout the book alternating Zoe, and other characters sharing their pasts as the events unfold. The story is told over a 24 hour timeline. I thought this was done very well and allowed me to becoming involved in all the messy and dysfunctional parts of the characters' lives. The entire way it was written, even using a screenplay by Lucas, slowly reveals all their secrets.

This is not a heart pounding thriller but there is plenty of suspense to keep most readers turning pages. The story kept me interested but I almost got the feeling this first originated as a short story and the author kept adding content to fill it out. I've never read anything by Gilly Macmillan but would definitely try another in the future. I understand her first two books, Burnt Paper Sky and What She Knew, have been reviewed very positively.

Rating: 4

Zoe was the perfect child until an accident caused the deaths of several classmates. After paying the price for her actions all Zoe wants to do is to be left alone and to try to have a life. However, fate does not allow this. Zoe’s parents divorce, Zoe’s mother marries an abusive man with a wonderful son, they have another child and things go terribly wrong. Filled with twists and turns, this is a fascinating story of crime, punishment and redemption.

Rating: 5

Gilly Macmillan returns following What She Knew with her second gripping psychological thriller, THE PERFECT GIRL -a hypnotic literary domestic suspense mystery; a teen, a family of dark secrets, a performance, and the lengths they will go to protect those they love. How small initial differences may lead to large unforeseen consequences over time. A first and second life. Is there hope for a third? A Sunday Night performance—before and after. Set in Bristol, Zoe Maisey, a musical prodigy—a pianist. A fall from grace, a tormented life---after causing the death of three teenagers when she was only fourteen years old. A conviction. She has done her time at the Unit. Eighteen months. Was she really guilty—DUI? Drugged, or set up?A scholarship. A cost. Leaving the farm for a private school. A broken family. The unraveling. A father, shut down. A mother who pretends the past does not exist. Appearances. The actress. Survival. Protect her daughter. A fantasy world until reality comes to the surface. A perfectionist. Plaster masking the broken cracks. Zoe left one life and entered another. Piano could help her rediscover herself. Her talent and intellect. The family encouraged her. A Second Chance family. Desperate, the second chance family may not be as it appears. The book starts with a Bristol debut. Sunday evening, a performance – a second chance at life. Lucas and Zoe (yin and yang). Zoe and her stepbrother, Lucas. They were to start with a duet, a brain child of their parents. They would prefer to play alone, both performers; however, they are trying to please their parents. Everything else fades away when she is performing. The music awaiting, the audience, everything perfectly balanced—tonight is seamless, beautiful. Next there is shouting. The end. Six hours later her mother is dead.Told from multiple perspectives: Zoe, Sam the attorney, Lucas-step-brother, and Tessa, the aunt (Zoe’s mom’s sister) and Tessa’s husband, Richard. We hear from each person and the events leading up to the concert before and after.Devastation. Can anyone escape the past? Tessa —unexplained fertility—they looked at all the options, her husband Richard’s drinking, she is a Bristol vet. She and her husband are growing apart and during the trial, she gets close to Zoe’s lawyer, Sam. Marie was the naughty girl (the sister) and Zoe’s mom, while Tessa was focused on being a vet. Marie the younger sister. Marie made it her mission to nurture her daughter, Zoe’s talent. Zoe was the child Tessa loved since childhood – she made a stupid mistake. The fall out has fractured Marie, and Tessa is stronger. She believes Zoe and wants her to know she is loved before and after the accident.She is the first to see the man. A meltdown. Truths uncovered. Revenge. Lucas hears the shouting before Zoe, during a complicated part---a man is standing in the middle of the isle. A travesty. She killed his daughter. She knows him. Her mother rises from her seat. She pleads. Zoe is afraid. She leaves the stage. She flees to a corner. Thomas Barlow. Who could have stopped him and changed the events which unfolded? What are the odds he would be living in the same community as Chris, Marie, Zoe, Grace, and Lucas? Why was she preforming at the church where his daughter was buried? Could this be a coincidence? Should Zoe and Marie be able to move on with their privacy? Are they cursed?Zoe once again causes domestic bliss to implode. A victim. A new family, dark secrets, a past comes to the surface. A mother’s remarriage. An attempt to start over. Grace a new baby sister. Chris a demanding controlling husband and step-father. A mother living in a fantasy world, abusive; withholding the past in order to protect her new family and future. Zoe’s hour glass life. How can Zoe payback everyone she loves, for everything she has done? In order for Zoe to have a shot at a Third Chance family, she has to protect those she loves.Loved THE PERFECT GIRL! The author brilliantly creates her characters and slowly builds tension and suspense, leaving readers on the edge of their seats with their every move. My first attempt listening to the audio, had many interruptions. I put it aside and began again. The second time without interruptions, I was immediately pulled into the story. The author creates an intense exploration---a slow burning domestic psychological suspense. Strong, impressive complex character-driven tale; each is performing with their own motives---- with highly charged topics of domestic abuse and alcoholism. The past slowly unravels. Chris and Marie are two master performers – wearing masks. Manipulators. You will root for Zoe to the explosive ending, where her first and second lives have many similarities—truth is altered to protect family. Fact and fiction. Perfect versus flawed. Loved the twist with Richard and Tessa!The butterfly effect is exhibited --The scientific theory that a single occurrence, no matter how small, can change the course of the universe forever. Paths and outcomes. A concept that small causes can have large effects.Narrators, Penelope Rawlins and Dugald Bruce-Lockhart delivered an outstanding performance!Fans of Mary Kubica and Paula Daly will enjoy the author’s taut and twisted thrill ride-- no matter how fast and far we run, the past always catches up with us in the end. However, the past may serve you well--to handle the next chapter of your life.

Rating: 4

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Her Every Fear: A Novel

Jar of Hearts

The Daughter: A Novel

The Ex: A Novel

Where They Found Her: A Novel

Sometimes I Lie: A Novel

What She Knew: A Novel

The Perfect Mother: A Novel

Lying in Wait: A Novel

The Neighbors

The New Neighbor: A Novel

Everything You Want Me to Be: A Novel

The Favorite Sister

The Twilight Wife: A Psychological Thriller by the Author of The Good Neighbor

The Hand That Feeds You: A Novel

Last Seen Alive: A Novel

The First Mistake

The Other Widow: A Novel

Mine: A Novel of Obsession

Leave No Trace: A Novel

Unraveling Oliver: A Novel

All the Beautiful Lies: A Novel

Writing Fiction, with Elizabeth Buchan: With Elizabeth Buchan, author of the novel Everything She Thought She Wanted (and 9 others)

Ep 45: "The Burning Girl" Blisters With Growing Pains: It comes as no surprise that novelist Claire Messud discovered her life's calling at such a young age.

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Ep 186: Finding the book that feels like it was written just for you

#213: A Guy Who Still Uses LiveJournal

Episode 95 - The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson: Do you love a mystery? Do you love playing detective, looking for clues on every page? This week’s novel is about a lot of things – segregation, bullying, and most of all, a family mystery. This week's episode is "The Parker...

Unveiling North Korea with Fact and Fiction

Dhonielle Clayton: Live at Politics and Prose: Dhonielle Clayton discusses her novel, "The Belles", with fellow YA author Jason Reynolds at Politics and Prose on 2/9/18.

Comics Alternative Interviews: Josh Simmons: Creepy

Agatha Christie

Ep 276 - The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

Comics Alternative Interviews: James Albon: Canine Romance

StarShipSofa No 504 Marcelle Dubé: Main Fiction: "The Verdant Gene" by Marcelle Dube Originally published in Fiction River: Moonscapes Marcelle Dubé writes science fiction, fantasy, and mystery fiction. Her short stories have appeared in magazines and award-winning anthologi...

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SSWW Elisabeth Egan Author Interview

Comics Alternative Interviews: Back with Zach Worton: Self-Destruction and Tiki Bars

The Politics of Writing About Loved Ones: Sarah Saffian

140: #140: Drinking Tea and Saying Rude Things Nicely

Episode 95 - The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson: Do you love a mystery? Do you love playing detective, looking for clues on every page? This week’s novel is about a lot of things – segregation, bullying, and most of all, a family mystery. This week's episode is "The Parker...

Episode 84: A Birder's Guide to Murder, with JR Ripley: A Podcast for Bird Watchers Everywhere!

History’s First Benedict Arnold: Who was the original Benedict Arnold? Why, it’s Benedict Arnold—as you’ll find out from spy novelist and history fanatic Brad Meltzer.

Exit West

A Daughter’s Diary

The Millions Top Ten: July 2019

On the Page

Culture

Lost Children Archive

Fiction

Crimes of the Heart

New Year New Books

Sex And Vanity

The Millions Top Ten: September 2017

Murder She Writes

Kelly Rimmer

The Books Briefing: The People Who Give, and Receive Little in Return

Driven By Distraction

A Year in Reading: Paul Yoon

Secrets, Lies And Mysteries