The perfect life. The perfect love. The perfect lie. From the bestselling author of The Girl Before comes a gripping psychological thriller. . . .“Mind-bending . . . Delaney takes domestic suspense beyond its comfort zone.”—The New York Times Book ReviewNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY • A COSMOPOLITAN NEW MUST-READ Abbie awakens in a daze with no memory of … NEW MUST-READ
Abbie awakens in a daze with no memory of who she is or how she landed in this unsettling condition. The man by her side claims to be her husband. He’s a titan of the tech world, the founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most innovative start-ups. He tells Abbie that she is a gifted artist, an avid surfer, a loving mother to their young son, and the perfect wife. He says she had a terrible accident five years ago and that, through a huge technological breakthrough, she has been brought back from the abyss.
She is a miracle of science.
But as Abbie pieces together memories of her marriage, she begins to question her husband’s motives—and his version of events. Can she trust him when he says he wants them to be together forever? And what really happened to her, half a decade ago?
Beware the man who calls you . . .
THE PERFECT WIFE
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Dynamic, razor-sharp, and thought-provoking . . . a cutting-edge suspense novel unlike any you’ve read before.
Wow. So very different, original, stunning in its conception. Some reviewers will call it dystopian; at times Stepford Wives kept coming to me. The main character, Abbie, is a robot woman created by her tech genius husband, Tim, as an experiment to replace his missing wife. But robot Abbie has feelings just like we imagine the real Abbie had. So…this story is fascinating, but I felt a certain frustration – an almost coldness in that we don’t know if we can trust Tim, or anyone else in the story or even Abbie’s memories. This came close to being a five star book, but those are the reasons I could only give a four.
Thank you to the publishers at NetGalley for inviting me to read the advanced copy for review. Delaney’s writing and creativity are amazing, brilliant, and it’s definitely a page-turner.
Outstanding, brilliant, thought-provoking, and a real page-turner; as I write this review, I consider THE PERFECT WIFE the best book of 2019.
JP Delaney calls THE PERFECT WIFE a psychological thriller, I would rather say a sci-fi psychological thriller. If you enjoyed Stepford Wives, I, Robot, or Bicentennial Man, this is a book for you.
The structure is somewhat different from what we are used to: most of the chapters alternate between the present, told from a second person POV (“you”), and the past told from a first person plural POV (“we”), and it works beautifully. The transitions are seamless, the rhythm never broken, and there’s no confusion whatsoever. The writing is impeccable, crisp and clear, and even with the amount of information provided, it never slows down the narrative. The tension and the suspense are sustained throughout, beginning on page one, and the pace never falters.
THE PERFECT WIFE is also enlightening on several subjects, among those: autism – one of the author’s sons is autistic – of which I knew little. If you’re interested in robotics, technology, autism, or simply in what makes us human, you will like this novel. Personally, I’m almost at a loss for words because I consider THE PERFECT WIFE a book as close to perfect as I could ever hope for.
“The Perfect Wife” by J P Delaney puts a technology twist on a psychological thriller. I must caution readers that the family includes a child with a significant developmental disability, and the storyline includes some nonstandard intervention strategies.
Delaney immediately pulls readers into the story, using a second person narrative to establish a sense of participation, thus making, even commanding, readers to become involved in the here and now, the complicated present
Abbie Cullen-Scott, wife of technology genius and multimillionaire Tim, is stiff, confused, and immobile with shock. “You’re saying the real me died— what? Five years ago. And you’ve somehow brought me back like this.” She is a robot, a very sophisticated and life-like robot, one capable of fooling many people. Everything seems genuine, her appearance, her conversations, even her signature, but it is all digitally generated, just a facsimile of what she once was.
“It’s incredible how quickly you forget she isn’t real. For a while back there it was just like talking with an ordinary person.”
There is a shift in structure and tone to a first person plural past tense. Someone is speaking to readers or to an unknown interrogator, reporting on events, detailing the workplace, and describing people in the wild world of technology and artificial intelligence. These chapters provide background information, both the innocent and the traumatic, and reveal just how the participants got to where they are in “the now.”
“We were engineers, mathematicians, coders, developing intelligent mannequins for high-end fashion stores— shopbots.”
The narrative continues with verb voices and tenses alternating chapter by chapter. Abbie’s life with Tim gradually evolves through uploaded remembrances, but the past tense chapters reveal that theirs was not the idyllic life that memories have painted. Questions, troubling questions, proliferate and readers cannot help but wonder what is really happening. The “A” in “AI” does not seem to stand for ‘artificial’ anymore but for autonomous. Moreover, Tim runs a tech company; what are the business implications of this robot? What drives Tim? Is it love, devotion, technology, or a cult-like obsession?
Delany adds another complication, a nine year-old child with a significant degenerative disability. Of course, Danny has a personal aide and attends a school specializing in education for students with autism. The school utilizes an intense applied behavioral analysis program. (Note: some extreme approaches described in the book are not part of educationally accepted strategies for students with disabilities.)
Delany raises questions about the future of technology. Could technology enable people to live forever? Could people work endlessly with just replacement parts as needed? Would this be a person or a marketable commodity owned by a corporation? I received a review copy of “The Perfect Wife” from J P Delaney and Ballantine Books. It was both compelling and thought provoking. When it comes to technology, perhaps we should be mindful of what we wish for.
My mind is officially blown after finishing this one. I really had no idea what to expect then I’d first come across this book but it went above and beyond all of my expectations. It kept me guessing the entire time and that ending left me with my jaw on the floor.
A tour de force . . . The Perfect Wife is a chilling and uniquely disturbing twenty-first-century twist on the unreliable narrator that makes for a compulsive and deeply thought-provoking book. It asks troubling questions about selfhood and ‘souls’ and what makes us human, and plays them out in a compelling psychological thriller.
Seriously, amazingly, awesomely brilliant. . . . speculative fiction mixed up with a mind-bendingly twisty psycho thriller! I devoured it.
The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney
This story was for me very interesting, a little creepy and unputdownable! I wasn’t really sure what to expect knowing that there was a robot with AI involved, but I’ve got to say I liked it! The characters are really fleshed out and I got to know and understand if not like them or what they were capable of doing and it intrigues me knowing how AI is moving along rapidly in today’s society. Take a ride with JP Delaney and read this you won’t regret it! Thank you Netgalley and the Publishers and JP Delaney for allowing me to read this book.
I’ve been debating if this is a 4 or 5 star read and I’m going to change this to a 5 star (rounding up from 4.5) read. It was engaging and disturbing and entertaining all at once and I couldn’t put it down. The first 10% of the book had me reeling. I was horrified for the main character and didn’t know where this story was going to go. I was actually quite frightened. But then I got into the story and I just wanted to see where JP Delaney was going to take this unique, well thought out psychological suspense.
I don’t want to give anything away as this is such a unique and compelling story, but I loved the way the author took technology and where we could go with it and made it utterly disturbing yet believable at that same time. A free spirit woman and a genius scientist gone awry. A story told in past and present from 2 different voices wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but it was the cast of characters and the way they were portrayed that made the overall story an overwhelming unputdownable book.
Abbie has come back to life after being gone for 5 years. Her life has changed but she remembers small things of her past. Her husband, Tim seems to fill in all her memories where she can’t piece them together. And then there is Danny, their son. When Abbie went missing, they were just coming to terms with who Danny was and what needed to be done to help him. Can the “new Abbie” be everything she was meant to be? Can she come to terms with who she is now? Or will the past come crashing back into her future and change everything?
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes a good mystery. But this also plays on the psychological side and with what the future holds for humanity. With the many twists and what a strong character Abbie is, the men just might be left on the wayside. Be prepared to see what she can do and to what extent Tim will go to to have The Perfect Wife and perfect life.
When I started reading The Perfect Wife, I was expecting a psychological thriller. I was expecting to read about Abbie’s remembering what happened to her the night of her accident. I was even expecting a few twists to the plot, which the book delivered. What I wasn’t expecting was the science fiction angle of the book. That took me by surprise.
The plotline of The Perfect Wife was interesting. Abbie wakes up wondering who she was. She is filled in by her husband. Abbie is an AI. She is a replica of Tim’s wife who went missing over five years ago. Abbie’s memories of her marriage show that Tim and herself are in love and happy. But Abbie can’t help but think that something is missing. That memories are missing. Abbie soon embarks on a mission to discover her missing memories. She also wants to find out what happened to Abbie 5 years earlier. Did she disappear? Or did something more sinister happen?
I liked Abbie, but I couldn’t get a feel for the AI. She was bland, personality-wise, for 90% of the book. I couldn’t connect to either version of her, which irritated me because I wanted to in the worse way. Abbie before was much more enjoyable.
Tim creeped me out. I understood that he was devastated by Abbie disappearance. But to make an AI that had her memories was creepy. Even creepier was how he was before Abbie. Talk about chills!!
Danny was also an essential character in The Perfect Wife. The author did a tremendous job of describing his form of autism. The author also did a fantastic job of explaining the various schools/treatments that Abbie and Tim tried.
I wasn’t a fan of the switch between 2nd person POV and 3rd person POV. I don’t like 2nd person POV. Add in that it kept switching to 3rd person and I was like “What” during some parts of the plotline. I kept having to reread chapters, and I am not a huge fan of doing that.
The end of The Perfect Wife confused me. I had to read it a few times. Even now, after I have finished the book, I still don’t get it. The author did wrap up the “What Happened To Abbie” storyline well but it didn’t jive with the rest of the story. Plus, what happened to Abbie and Danny at the end. I couldn’t figure out which one was the truth.
I enjoyed the sci-fi element of this domestic thriller.
Strange story of addictive lust and control. An odd story.
This book was overall fine. It puts a very original spin on the idea of The Stepford Wives. The narrators were unreliable and interesting. I had been wanted to read this book for awhile so I was stoked when I finally got a chance to pick it up. It started a little slow for me, but once I got into it, I was really enjoying it! I was hanging on every word I was reading. Then, when I got to the I started struggling again. The ending while unexpected was a bit too confusing for me. I had to read it twice and still had a hard time understanding exactly what was happening. I know others have absolutely loved this book and if I wouldn’t have struggled so much at the end, this would have been a five star read so it’s definitely one to check out!
The Perfect Wife is definitely an interesting thriller. I really enjoyed the combination of AI and reality combined in Abby. I found it interesting to see a glimpse into the life of a parent with an autistic child as well since I had no idea what it entailed. The ending was super sweet and proved how truly real Abby is.
Very different, hard to put down
I have never read a techno-thriller before. I think that’s what you call it when the main protagonist is a sentient robot. But it was fascinating and well-told. The robot is the replica of a man’s missing wife. They have an autistic son. But something doesn’t pass the smell test (not that she has any way of smelling). A page-turner!
What did I just listen to? This book ended completely different than any way I tried to predict and gave a curve ball that works for the story, but makes you question how you could not predict this output. This is kind of a tech mystery/thriller book and has some interesting characters. It is worth reading/listening to if you like a little sci-fi mixed into your book.
This was a very original book. I couldn’t put it down. A very original plot.
This is an amazing book! The plot is unexpected and compelling. The characters are engaging and the reader is able to quickly form a relationship with several people. I listened to the audio version and finished in several hours. I could not put it down.
Twists and turns and confusing and intriguing. I realized it was Sci-fi when I bought this book, but forgot by the time I read it. It was a fascinating book with a different take on the future and how AI might impact us. Even projecting, had no clue as to how it would wrap up – surprised tho!