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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I enjoyed this book quite a lot even if the technical terms and items added in the story felt a bit surreal at times, it didn’t stop me reading and thinking that this is very doable and one day maybe it will become something normal in our day by day living.
We are looking for the perfect people to surround us, but that perfect for us it’s not always the same perfect for others.
The story’s well written and engaging, with compelling characters and the tech added another layer of mystery and how the usage of it brings more awareness to the life we live now.
When Abbie wakes she has no memory of who she is or what has happened to her. She is told by a man who says he is her husband that she had an accident 5 years ago and thanks to a technological breakthrough she has been brought from near death.
He tells her she is an artist, a surfer, the mother of a young son … the perfect wife. She is a miracle of science.
But Abbie isn’t so sure of what he’s telling her. She comes to doubt what he says … but what his motive be? His version of events just doesn’t add up to what she believes. What really happened to her 5 years ago?
THE PERFECT WIFE seems, to me, to be more science fiction than thriller. This was a disturbing story and frightening in thinking of these things in today’s world. I wonder ..is this what comes next in future technology … or has it already happened? It kind of put me in mind of the Stepford Wives. The ending left me in goosebumps.
Many thanks to the author / Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine / Netgalley for the digital copy of this most intriguing book. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
After reading Recursion by Blake Crouch, where memories can be programmed into a person, followed by The Perfect Wife who is a AI robot created with the memories of a missing wife, it feels like a glimpse into the future. Only because both books were great reads and well done. Both are highly recommended
This book surprised me. A lot. I’m not into Sci-Fi at all…. usually! But, this book was a Sci-Fi kind of book and was excellent. From the very beginning I wanted to know what was happening and why it was happening. I wanted to know exactly what happened to Abbie. Why was there a need to bring her back from whatever happened to her? Who is Tim besides being her husband?
They have supposedly been very happily married for a long time and have a son who is autistic and the light of their eyes. Tim would do anything for him and Abbie. The best school for their son to help him live as normal a life as possible. A beautiful home for them and a beach house he had built for Abbie that was beyond anything she ever dreamed of.
But what happened? Why did Tim tell her she was a “cobot?” Cobot, a companion robot for someone who can’t handle grieving for a lost family member. That is what Tim told Abbie she was now. It was his field of expertise and he loved her so much he could not move on even after she had been gone five years.
Something sinister is going on though. Abbie is finding things that are not exactly as he said. She wants him to love “her” but he still can’t let go of “Abbie”. There is more to this than meets the eye.
This book was well written and you won’t look at Abbie the cobot as anything other than human. Her thoughts and the way she interacts with others and their son is phenomenal. She seems like a real person with somewhat real feelings.
Tim though is a very sick man. Things he does are so perverse. Not to Abbie but to other women. He seems to treat women like they are nothing. He put Abbie up on a pedestal to not be touched after giving birth to their son. Things changed after they had their son, Danny. It was like he only needed a son then their sex life was over. Theirs but not his… He was a sick sick perverted man.
This book goes from present day Abbie the cobot to past Abbie the woman. It’s the story of how the cobot came to be and why. It’s a very good book indeed.
It kept my interest very well and I loved the characters. Even Tim for a while. But he did finally make me love to hate him. He treated everyone like they were so stupid and inept. Like he was the only person who had any sense at all.
This book truly is a good read. You will not think of it as a Sci-Fi except when you think about Abbie the cobot. The ending was truly amazing. I thought I had this one figured out but I sure did not. That ending truly blew me away. I was shocked. I would love to have read a little bit more but the ending was done in a way that fit this story perfectly in my opinion. It all comes together. All of your questions are answered at the end but one….. Which one would that be???
Thank you to #NetGalley and #Random House publishers for this review copy. These thoughts are mine and mine alone.
I have to give this book a huge 5 stars. It was well written. The characters well developed. Questions you will have answered. It was just an all around good book.
Well done J.P. Delaney. I will be reading more of your work!
Part SciFi, part psychological thriller, part love story. Once into this book, I had my questions if it was for me. Science Fiction is not something I enjoy, or ever read. But, something kept me going. I’m glad I did. It was an enjoyable read, going back and forth from the Robot Abbie to Abbie in real life to Tim’s work environment seamlessly.
This book delves into AI (artificial intelligence) companion robots (cabots) made by a Tim a tech genius after his wife, Abbie disappears and is presumed dead. He is left with their small autistic son, Danny. The robot is eerily the exact replica of Abbie, with a few small tweaks. Memories have been downloaded. Was Tim’s love for Abbie so strong he couldn’t bear to lose her? Or is he a mad scientist?
I haven’t read this author’s previous best sellers, although I have them. I look forward to reading the. The writing style sucks you in immediately. I recommend this book if you want something to think about, out of your normal genre or just a quick thriller! Great vacation read!
Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for this ARC of this book. Opinion is mine alone!
Original, clever and intriguing, I couldn’t put the book down because the story itself was so unique. Every twist and turn was perfectly executed, the themes are wonderfully explored and Abbie was an exquisitely drawn character.
The Perfect Wife by J.P. Delaney was a surprise and so very unexpected! I definitely do not want to give too much away but can say I was engrossed from start to end! Abbie has no idea where she is and how she got there. Except there is a man that says he is her husband and she is his perfect wife. When memories start come back that make her question things, who can she trust? Full of surprises and the unexpected, The Perfect Wife by J.P. Delaney is a great summer page-turner!
Happy reading!
I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, J. P. Delaney, and Quercus, Ballantine Books, publishers. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work.
What would you do if you could erase the memory of your spouse, add back only the parts of your relationship where you were cast in a good light, and control the way your future was presented to said spouse? Or what if you were on the other side of that equation – your brain was only exposed to those thoughts and memories approved by your spouse? How long would this take to make you a little crazy?
Tim is a Silicone Valley shining star. His wife Abbie has been missing for several years, leaving Tim – once he is cleared of murdering his missing wife – as the single parent of their autistic son, Danny. Tim and his crew of geeks have managed over those years to come close to perfecting a companion robot amidst their sales person robots, and Tim has carefully adding into the software of one that looks remarkably like Abbie only those memories from her past and their relationship that he wants her to have. Her software is the first trial run of a newly written program that allows the bot to develop compassion and empathy, make educated guesses, or research things mentally on-line when she doesn’t know something about the subject. Within days Abbie has learned to pause when puzzled, knowing that wiki might just provide the information she needs to make an educated decision. It tales a little longer for her to see that Tim is up to something, and that he is much too controlling, but there is so much missing from her recollections of their personal lives that she is for a time lost. Surely she, an independent artist with a firm set of values and a healthy self worth, couldn’t have lived like this. And the ABA techniques of praise and punishment practiced by Danny’s specialized school, using electric shock as a deterrent for unsociable behavior for a boy diagnosed with childhood disintegrative disorder before his 4th birthday, is untenable. Unfortunately she apparently has no say in his care. Unless she choses to take the reins of their lives into her own hands… And somehow, it all feels very familiar…
I thoroughly enjoyed Annie and Danny, and found the details of both autism treatment choices and robot development interesting and at times entertaining. This was a fascinating read, one I am happy to recommend to family and friends.
pub date August 6, 2019
The Perfect Wife centers around AI without all the science-y stuff. Thankfully, the author gives us the gist of it without getting too technical. The story is told in second person point of view, which isn’t a favorite for me, and that combined with an unknown narrator did create some confusion at times. According to the acknowledgments, the author’s aim for this book was psychological suspense, and there is a speculative element. For me, it’s a little more on the speculative side than I care for, and parts of it stretch the suspension of disbelief quite far. Some of my favorite parts of the book centered around Danny and Abbie’s interactions, especially as the parent of an autistic child. Those parts had a ring of truth about them, and most times were incredibly sweet moments between parent and child. The conclusion does have a pretty good twist, and I certainly didn’t see all that coming, but some of it was also part of the above mentioned confusion. In the end, I found The Perfect Wife to be a little bit strange but still compelling enough to keep me reading. JP Delaney does have an interesting writing style and I’ll be interested to see what’s next from this author.
A twisty, completely original psychological thriller that grabs you from the start and doesn’t let go until the very end.
I was captivated by this book. The characters were very realistic and the story flowed. The mystery was engrossing and the ending a shocker! Absolutely loved it! I received a complimentary copy from NetGalley and the publisher and this is my honest opinion.
3.25-3.5 STARS
While sci-fi is not a genre that I generally read, the premise for “The Perfect Wife” was intriguing enough for me to give it this book a go, especially since I have enjoyed other books by author JP Delaney in the past.
With characters that felt flat and a story that unfolds at a super slow pace, I just wasn’t “blown away” by this reinvented version of the “Stepford Wives.” Still, I found the story compelling, despite the scientific holes that the author chose to sidestep, but which took away from my overall enjoyment of this book.
For those of you who are still eager to delve between the pages of “The Perfect Wife,” my advice would be to suspend belief from the get go, in order to fully immerse yourself in this futuristic psychological thriller–something that I should have done, but didn’t.
Abbie wakes to find herself a cobot.
An advanced AI companion/robot Invented by her genius husband Tim five-years after her demise and implanted with her memories and personality.
Returning with Tim to her former marital home Abby #2 attempts to acclimatise herself to her new reality with her husband and disabled son.
Told in a then and now fashion this skips between the two-time frames the then narrated by an unknown observer and the now with Abbie the Cobot.
Gradually a picture of events stars to emerge.
This was such a unique and unusual story that captured my imagination almost instantly.
This took me places I wasn’t expecting and that finale caught me completely by surprise.
This was not incredibly complicated but it was just so gripping a really great psychological thriller that I managed to read in one entire sitting.
I also loved the inclusion of Danny and how his autism was addressed.
My son has Aspergers totally different end of the scale in terms of functioning but I can still relate somewhat.
I enjoyed this one much more than I thought I would the only thing that let this down for me was as much as I adored being lead down the garden path here in terms of the grand finale I would still have perhaps prefered a different final destination.
That still doesn’t take away from the fact that this was such a unique piece of fiction.
That kept me on my toes right until that finish line.
I voluntary reviewed a copy of The Perfect Wife.
Reviewed By Beckie Bookworm
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9460945-bex-beckie-bookworm
https://www.facebook.com/beckiebookworm/
http://www.beckiebookworm.com
5 out of 5 stars
I would like to thank Netgalley and Ballatine books for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
I have wanted to read a J.P. Delaney book for a long time so I was super excited when Netgalley informed me that I had been approved to read an advanced copy of The Perfect Wife. Let me just say that I was not disappointed in any way!
This was in no way, shape or form your typical psychological thriller. It was totally and completely original and I am thrilled that I got read this!
Abbie awakens and has no idea where she is or what happened to her. She is confused but when the man beside her tells her that his name is Tim, that he is the brains behind a extremely successful tech company and that he is her husband. Abbie thinks she may have been in an accident and as some of her memories start to come back she immediately asks her husband about their son Danny. Only after she is told that he is fine does she begin to breath a sigh of relief. She just wants to go home and see her son but Tim has something to tell her. Something very important. It seems that something has happened to Abbie and she is not who she thinks she is. This confuses her even more. What could he mean? He tells her that it has been five years. That she is an AI. He won’t tell her what happened to Abbie as it may be to much for her to handle right now. After losing Abbie, the most perfect wife anyone could ever ask for he could not recover so he had to bring her back. She says that if she is not Abbie then who is she? “You ARE Abbie. You have her memories and the longer you are awake the more memories you will develop.”
Abbie does feel like her self. She loves Danny and wants desperately to help Danny with his Autism. She also wants to be the prefect wife she once was. The problem is that the more she tries to find who she once was the more she begins to doubt that her life with Tim was what he has been telling her.
This is a fantastic psychological thriller with a bit of Sci Fi thrown in for good measure. I was hooked right away and could not wait to find out what would happen.
I have to say I am freaked out after reading this book. This is too close to what happens in the Terminator movies. This was so not where I was expecting this book to go. It was really hard to think about Abbie as an AI bot and not a real person. It was also interesting to see what happened to the real Abbie. But the whole AI thing creep me out and I hope we aren’t anywhere near that close to making this happen. This was completely different take on a mystery/thriller book and I enjoyed every minute reading this book.
*I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.*
Wow! What a twisted and crazy good book! This book mixes sci-fi, love and thriller in a way that I’ve never read before!
I don’t want to give too much away but I look forward to more reads from this author.
The story was hard for me to put down and I stayed up up very late because I had to know what would happen next. Great book overall and a new author on my radar.
The Perfect Wife by J.P. Delaney has got to be one of my best reads of the YEAR!! This techno-thriller has it all – a very unique and clever plot, a story that is TOTALLY unpredictable, and fascinating characters make for a very compelling read!
This book explores what happens when “The ‘A’ in AI doesn’t stand for ‘Artificial’ anymore. It stands for ‘autonomous.'” There is no smooth road in this novel. It is filled to the brim with twists and turns that could induce whiplash. AND THE ENDING – OMG!!!! – there is so much going on, layers upon layers of delicious cleverness and deceit!
I’ll let the book blurb tell you what the publishers want you to know about the book. I refuse to add anything that could spoil this absolutely amazing read! Congratulations, J.P., you really hit it out of the park this time!!
Many thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for allowing me the privilege of reading an ARC of this novel in exchange for an unbiased review. All opinions expressed here are my own.
AI(Artificial Intelligence) how far has it gone and where will it end? In this book almost nothing seems to be what you think it is. Yes sometimes you can guess but plenty of times you be wrong. This story is full of suspense. It combines the real world (problems in a marriage, the tribulations of bringing up an autistic child, sex discrimination and assaults in the work place) with the world of Artificial Intelligence. The ending was a surprise (not a cliff hanger or incomplete story) but it will keep you wondering what might happen in the future.
A fascinating book. I read it in a few hours in one sitting. Extremely difficult to put down once you get hooked in. Every parent who has a child with autism should read this. It is deeply emotional and tugs at the heartstrings. How far would you go to protect your child especially if it is from the other parent? With mind altering tech and a deep mystery you will be glued to the pages.
This story is uniquely different from anything I’ve read before. A mind bending story that kept me engrossed and turning the pages to solve the mystery of what happened to Abbie Cullen-Scott.