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A review by the_coycaterpillar_reads
The Perfect Couple by Jackie Kabler
2.0
The Perfect Couple – always beware any book title that has perfect in it. Nine times out of ten it is anything but perfect. Gemma and Danny have the perfect life, the perfect jobs, and the perfect friends. Nothing and no-one are perfect, and Danny and Gemma are no exception. Gemma is a freelance journalist and Danny works in IT. Life is sweet, that is until Gemma goes on a business trip and comes home to no chilled prosecco, no dinner cooking, and no Danny. Initially Gemma thinks he’s been held late at work but the hours tick by and still there’s no Danny. She is finally forced to report him missing.
The synopsis initially got me overly excited at the prospect of reading The Perfect Couple. A twisty domestic thriller usually gets my pulse rocketing but no such luck with this tale. It’s not all negative and there were genuinely parts that had me intrigued enough to keep reading, and my favourite red herring trope had me questioning everything but by the midpoint of the book was becoming increasingly frustrated at the pacing and the direction that the author was taking the story in.
Although the premise of The Perfect Couple had serious potential to keep me hooked it just wasn’t a good fit for me. The pacing from the very beginning was slow (considering how it started, it didn’t sit well with me.) As it progressed, I really had considered DNF’ing it, but I wanted to see if I was right in my assumptions. By the mid-point it felt like we weren’t any further forward in working out what exactly had happened to Danny – although I’m sure every reader at this point knew what happened to him.
The Perfect Couple’s main character, Gemma just grated on my very last nerve. As a character she was mind numbingly dull and seemed to lack any substance whatsoever. She didn’t stand out (maybe that was the author’s intention) and for someone that had been a crime investigative journalist she was incredibly naïve bordering on stupid when dealing with different lines of investigation. The investigating detectives also seemed blind. It made me wonder what kind of cases they were used to dealing with in Bristol because there were facts that were staring at them in the face and they still couldn’t see it. Didn’t see the wood for the trees!
As a well-seasoned suspense reader, it just didn’t work well for me, there were more holes in the plot than a colander.
The synopsis initially got me overly excited at the prospect of reading The Perfect Couple. A twisty domestic thriller usually gets my pulse rocketing but no such luck with this tale. It’s not all negative and there were genuinely parts that had me intrigued enough to keep reading, and my favourite red herring trope had me questioning everything but by the midpoint of the book was becoming increasingly frustrated at the pacing and the direction that the author was taking the story in.
Although the premise of The Perfect Couple had serious potential to keep me hooked it just wasn’t a good fit for me. The pacing from the very beginning was slow (considering how it started, it didn’t sit well with me.) As it progressed, I really had considered DNF’ing it, but I wanted to see if I was right in my assumptions. By the mid-point it felt like we weren’t any further forward in working out what exactly had happened to Danny – although I’m sure every reader at this point knew what happened to him.
The Perfect Couple’s main character, Gemma just grated on my very last nerve. As a character she was mind numbingly dull and seemed to lack any substance whatsoever. She didn’t stand out (maybe that was the author’s intention) and for someone that had been a crime investigative journalist she was incredibly naïve bordering on stupid when dealing with different lines of investigation. The investigating detectives also seemed blind. It made me wonder what kind of cases they were used to dealing with in Bristol because there were facts that were staring at them in the face and they still couldn’t see it. Didn’t see the wood for the trees!
As a well-seasoned suspense reader, it just didn’t work well for me, there were more holes in the plot than a colander.