Her Perfect Life

Her Perfect Life is Sam Hepburn's first novel. She later published Gone Before in 2020 and A Good Mother in 2021. Hepburn writes psychological thrillers. This is the first book of hers that I have read. The premise for the story is how far would a person go to create the perfect life. Character Gracie Dwyer has it all, the handsome husband, the adorable child, the beautiful home and the glittering career. The perfect life. Her new friend Juliet doesn’t exactly fit in. She’s a down-on-her-luck single parent with no money and not much hope. So just what is it that draws Gracie and Juliet together? And when the cracks start to appear in Gracie’s perfect life, can both of them survive?

When I began reading I thought that the story sounded familiar and that perhaps I already read this book. After reviewing my previously published book reviews I noticed that in 2020 I reviewed Valerie Keogh's book The Perfect Life.  It is exactly like this novel. I also got it confused with Hank Phillippi Ryan's 2021 book, also titled Her Perfect Life and wondered whether I purchased the right book. I knew that I was going to read a book with this title for the Monthly Key Word Reading Challenge but failed to write down the author's name, not knowing that there could be more than one book with this title.

I was not thrilled with the Hepburn book. It had a slow start. There was no suspense and I felt nothing for the characters. While the plot is similar to the Keough book, the writing is not as good as Keough's. Since I thought the Keough book was mediocre, this book was a big disappointment.