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A review by sammy234
Perfect by Judith McNaught
2.0
Judith McNaught's books are either incredibly emotional or unbearably cheesy, and there is no in between. Perfect was the latter.
It was so cheesy that sometimes I had to put the book down out of secondhand embarrassment, and I get no pleasure out of saying that. McNaught is one of my favorite authors. I usually adore her work. I love her stupid, paranoid heroes and her Mary Sue heroines.
This book just didn't work for me, though. There was the classic big Judith McNaught misunderstanding in the second half, (which to be fair,I was expecting)where the hero thinks the heroine has betrayed him and so he turns on her until she can convince him of her innocence. But in this novel, shockingly, she did actually... turn on him? And it just diminished what should have been an incredible love story.
First she believes he's a murderer, then she doesn't and believes he's been framed, then someone tries to convince her that he is in fact a murderer, then a murder happens near where she lives and she somehow blames the hero. Even though he's fleeing the cops and in a different country at that point. Like why would he come back to just murder some random dude, oh my gosh. Especially since he wanted to prove his innocence above all else.
I don't know. I get that Judith McNaught novels can get a little formulaic, but the big misunderstanding here didn't work too much so I couldn't enjoy it this time, when usually I wouldn't care. I was also hoping for the book to take another plot direction that it absolutely did not. Zach and Julie were supposed to run off together after he broke out of prison and be sort of like Bonny and Clyde, which I was personally very excited for. Unfortunately, that did not happen.
Instead we got a lot of boring domestic scenes. Julie's father yelling at Zach about the dangers of premarital sex! Julie's entire small town talking about them having premarital sex for some reason! The entire town talking about sex in general! Going to the fair! Meeting Patrick Swayze! A rather heated baseball game! Elderly townsfolk that have no influence on the character's lives or the plot falling in love! Disrespectful taxi drivers that charge you extra for messing up your love life! Zach, throwing a party after he just got released from prison!
Not exactly riveting stuff, to be honest. Two stars.
It was so cheesy that sometimes I had to put the book down out of secondhand embarrassment, and I get no pleasure out of saying that. McNaught is one of my favorite authors. I usually adore her work. I love her stupid, paranoid heroes and her Mary Sue heroines.
This book just didn't work for me, though. There was the classic big Judith McNaught misunderstanding in the second half, (which to be fair,I was expecting)where the hero thinks the heroine has betrayed him and so he turns on her until she can convince him of her innocence. But in this novel, shockingly, she did actually... turn on him? And it just diminished what should have been an incredible love story.
First she believes he's a murderer, then she doesn't and believes he's been framed, then someone tries to convince her that he is in fact a murderer, then a murder happens near where she lives and she somehow blames the hero. Even though he's fleeing the cops and in a different country at that point. Like why would he come back to just murder some random dude, oh my gosh. Especially since he wanted to prove his innocence above all else.
I don't know. I get that Judith McNaught novels can get a little formulaic, but the big misunderstanding here didn't work too much so I couldn't enjoy it this time, when usually I wouldn't care. I was also hoping for the book to take another plot direction that it absolutely did not. Zach and Julie were supposed to run off together after he broke out of prison and be sort of like Bonny and Clyde, which I was personally very excited for. Unfortunately, that did not happen.
Instead we got a lot of boring domestic scenes. Julie's father yelling at Zach about the dangers of premarital sex! Julie's entire small town talking about them having premarital sex for some reason! The entire town talking about sex in general! Going to the fair! Meeting Patrick Swayze! A rather heated baseball game! Elderly townsfolk that have no influence on the character's lives or the plot falling in love! Disrespectful taxi drivers that charge you extra for messing up your love life! Zach, throwing a party after he just got released from prison!
Not exactly riveting stuff, to be honest. Two stars.