the perfect family by robyn harding

I received the perfect family from Simon & Schuster Australia, through Net Galley, in exchange for an honest review.

Star Rating:

★★★★

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i haven’t read an adult book in forever. all the ones i’ve read recently are ya, so i felt this would be a bit refreshing (and it wasn’t fantasy or sci fi). i went into the perfect family completely blind as to what was going to happen. the description sounded interesting enough, and i was looking for a thriller/mystery. unfortunately, i didn’t read much like a thriller. there was mystery, however i felt that if the main characters communicated properly, there wouldn’t have been any mystery to begin with.

as always, i like to start with the characters.

i quite liked the parents. granted, they had issues, but they seemed like nice enough people. rich people. stuck up themselves people. but nice enough. obviously the relationships with their children weren’t very good, but with a little bit of communication, i felt they would’ve been the “perfect family”.

tarryn was your typical feminist type teenager. she was angry at the world, clearly felt she was better than everyone else, the typical teenage feminist.

her brother, eli, on the other hand wasn’t. he was respectful enough, but he has a dark past that actually gives him something to be upset about. out of everyone in this book, eli was the only one i felt was deserving of his feelings (the anger and the upset).

none of the characters were that likeable. some were alright, some reacted in ways that i thought to be funny. but none lead me to the conclusion of the book. it was a twist that i wasn’t expecting, but it also was disappointing. to put it simply, the whole book felt anticlimactic.

the family were being harassed by someone who clearly didn’t like them. of all these “traumatising” events, none of them really felt that bad, until the very end. most of it was minor pranks.

the best thing about this book is the writing style. it flowed. it wasn’t particularly fast paced, but it was so easy to read. i just kept going, and going, and going. i don’t think i’ve every read a book that was so easy to read. i’ll definitely be checking out the authors other works.

overall, if it wasn’t for the anticlimactic ending, i would definitely have rated this book 5 stars, but i just felt like it wasn’t enough. if you’re looking for something that’s easy to read, then the perfect family is definitely the book for you. and if you want to read about rich people’s houses getting egged, then go hard. unfortunately, i went into this book expecting something darker.