Reviews with content warning for Rape - The Perfect Marriage

Reviews tagging 'Rape'

The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose

19 reviews

tlanereads's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Honestly, I regret wasting my time on this book, and I regret losing sleep to finish it.
I was following along and tracking it. I was getting through it without hating it.
But then it got to the ending.
What a waste of time.

There are very few instances when I think that these endings work.
This was not one of them.

Follows is essentially my rant.
Because my major issue with the novel has to deal with the ending of the novel/the "big reveal," most of this will be blacked out for spoilers.
Another user, "mrsoz", brought this up as well. When you write a story from a first-person, present tense perspective, you cannot successfully have the twist that the author attempted.

For the entirety of the book, we follow one version of the protagonist. We get to experience the emotions and reactions of the character from an internal perspective. There are scenes where the MC reacts to something internally that do not match up with this grand final reveal. If we are meant to believe that the MC plotted this murder, knew about the cheating, knew about the "betrayal" of Anne, why would the MC react internally the way that she did? At one point, she imagines herself tackling and beating Anne, spinning her around (??) and slamming her into the desk.
Again, there are some narratives that can successfully pull off the whole "the narrator is the bad guy all along" twist, but in these cases, you still need to remain true to the character you have introduced. If all of the emotions and reactions are external, played up for an audience, then they can make sense, but our MC does not express this reaction to Anne externally. This is entirely internal, performed for no audience except herself (and the reader). Knowing what she knows, it doesn't make sense.
In this novel, our MC makes a sudden and drastic shift that contradicts all of her feelings and reactions from earlier.
If she truly did the crime, after the reveal, it should make sense (in hindsight) that she was acting the emotions, not actually feeling them.
Instead, now it feels like the entire story was a waste. I wasted my time reading about evidence and conversations, about an MC whose feelings and commentary weren't real (Why would she privately wonder if maybe he did kill the victim/was capable if she knew the answer?).

I understand misdirection--leaving clues that are meant to make the "big reveal" big. All of the leads and misdirections in this book are flimsy. They are introduced briefly and loosely, brought up and then dropped. Nothing feels substantial or important. It doesn't feel like you are solving things alongside the protagonists.
The characters themselves are also flimsy and unbelievable. They all seem like caricatures, the extremes of who they are meant to portray. Outside of the female MC, no one has depth of any kind. You can get away with this for some characters (the overbearing MIL), but not all.
Some characters are introduced and feel purposeless and forced, only meant to help a later (underdeveloped) scene.
Adam, the male MC, spirals at an unrealistic speed, a matter made worse by the fact that the passage of time is difficult to track. A character that we are supposed to recognize as competent and (at least relatively) intelligent becomes the most thoughtless character, acting irrationally without natural (or believable) progression.

Almost immediately after returning from his plea in court, he meets a "journalist" whom he instantly trusts with no reason to. He relies on her for everything and eventually even tries to kiss her. Mind you, their relationship is never developed. She's a PI for Scott Summers, you say? Then she sucks at her job. She rarely interacts with Adam one-on-one. Adam has no reason to immediately rely on Rebecca this way other than feeling alone. If the author had built up his paranoia and descent into "madness" prior to their meeting, it could have worked. If she had build up the relationship between them, it could have made sense. But she doesn't, so it flops.
The decisions that Adam makes relies on the reader believing that he is a man that is at the end of his rope and acting impulsively in a panic, but the author never convinces us of this, meaning the rest of his scenes feel absurd.
Beyond that, some of them really are that: absurd.
Adam escapes the jail and no one notices. Weird but okay, I can suspend belief for that.
Then he walks all night and sleeps in the woods? No one is coming after him yet? He makes it to a truck stop and steals clothes? He rambles about the bugs? Most of all, he just HAPPENS to have the phone number to a journalist he has met a handful of times memorized. He knows exactly where she lives despite never having seen her away from the lake house?
It doesn't make sense. Hence, "absurd."

TLDR: I regret reading this and left feeling like I wasted my time.

Content Warnings

brennan_reads04's review against another edition

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mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

sophiemagill's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

violetbentbackwards1036's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

tanacef's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

emmma_lynne's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Didn’t see the ending coming until Sarah’s almost last chapter. You could tell there was a difference in her tone. In a book, this is wild. The rest of the book was mid tho. Recommended to me. Wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else.

Content Warnings

laurak483's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Picked up this book because it was on Kindle Unlimited and I enjoyed the authors Tiktok account. But oh man was this a hot mess of a book. Only reason I didn’t DNF was I wanted to know who the killer was and WOW was that ending unsatisfying and way out of left field. Not a single character had any redeeming qualities or a single shred of my sympathy or respect left by the end. Not to mention just how entirely unrealistic or feasible this entire investigation and scenario was from a legal standpoint. We also had some very poor references/depictions of assault and police brutality. I reserve one star reviews for books I DNF but honestly I am tempted to break my rule for this one.

Content Warnings