REVIEW

My Perfect Wife, Clare Boyd

Reviewed By
Andrea Thompson

As popular fiction catches up with the fact that the home is where true horror lives, there’s a heck of a lot of authors writing about the dangers nested deep in our most intimate relationships.  My Perfect Wife depicts how many small acts of cruelty and control can incrementally cause such enormous amounts of damage.

Returning home to help out her parents who are in a bind, Heather Shaw is once again living in the humble house she grew up in, located next door to the Huxley mansion. As a teenager, sneaking over for swimming lessons from the 25 year old Lucas Huxley, Heather’s memories of these sessions are some of the happiest she has to recall.  The only daughter of overprotective and pious parents, Heather viewed her time with Lucas as happy escapes from the burden of never being allowed to forget her station in life.  Gordon and Sally Shaw were always there to remind their daughter of the dangers of mixing with a class above her own.

Lucas and Elizabeth Huxley are a golden couple with two adorable children, seemingly living the dream with a huge business partnership on the horizon that will soon catapult the family into the upper echelons of the rich and indulged. Elizabeth walks the tight rope of keeping the domestic front running smoothly whilst keeping the mental load invisible from her powerhouse of a husband.  To assist them in their goals, the Huxley’s employ a young Yugoslavian couple to manage the house and renovations, and Heather’s parents also to keep on top of the gardening and odd jobs.

Back in the orbit of the charismatic Lucas once again, Heather draws the ire of Gordon who forcibly reminds her that she should not interfere in a marriage.  Elizabeth seems quite hostile to Heather, who wonders if Lucas has revealed the past nature of their relationship to his seemingly fragile wife.

As Elizabeth plans the house party to end all house parties with the aim of pleasing their prospective new business partners, emotions and expectations are at an all time high.  It is obvious to everyone that things are not right at the Huxleys, but who should be the one to step up and put things to order?

Fraught with tension, My Perfect Wife presents a very believable depiction of a faltering marriage with witnesses forced to participate in its downfall by bonds of love or duty. We have the view from the inside, and the view from the outside. 

The moral tone in this book is not just about trust in relationships but about being an enabler of someone else’s bad behaviour by cause of inaction or misguided loyalties.  It is not a spoiler to say that toxic relationships are at the centre of My Perfect Wife but it is not just about the co-dependencies that exist between two people in a marriage.   

It’s a bit of a tightrope to classify novels such as My Perfect Wife as they are dramatic novels centred around crimes of coerce and control.  We’re used to a whodunit, more than a whydunit in our suspense reading.  My Perfect Wife is a slow complicated march towards a sure explosion that rewards the reader with some thinking material for the after.

Book Source Declaration
I received a copy of this book from the publisher or author.
BOOK DETAILS
BOOK INFORMATION
Author
ISBN
9781838881672
Year of Publication
BLURB

The evening ahead of her felt like the start of a long tightrope walk above a raging waterfall, where one misstep could be fatal…

Everyone in town knows Copper Lodge, that designer home with floor-to-ceiling windows that looms over the small red-brick houses on Connelly Close. And the couple who live there, Elizabeth and Lucas Huxley, with their two blonde-haired, cherubic children, are seemingly perfect, plucked right out of a magazine.

But meet Heather, the gardener’s daughter, arriving from the coast in her beat-up little car to spend the summer helping to prepare for the most important night of the Huxleys’ lives: a summer party designed to put Elizabeth’s past trauma behind them and save their family from financial ruin. Heather grew up in the grounds of this magnificent house, she knows its secrets…

As the night of the party draws near, the lawn is mown in neat lines, the champagne flutes are sparkling, and you could cut the tension with an over-polished knife. It’s Elizabeth’s one chance to prove to her husband that she’s on the mend, that she can handle something as simple as a drinks reception without snapping under the pressure. If she makes one mistake, he’ll try to take her children away.

Heather wants to stay as far away from the party – and the Huxleys – as possible, but something dark is dragging her back: the secret she’s been keeping since she was a teenager is about to explode like the fireworks over Copper Lodge…

Review My Perfect Wife, Clare Boyd
Andrea Thompson
Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Add new comment

This is a book review site, with no relationship whatsoever with any of the authors mentioned here.

We do not provide a method for you to contact authors for any reason and comments of this nature are automatically deleted.

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.