Emotional, vivid, and relatable!

Perfectly Undone is an engaging tale that takes us into the life of Dr. Dylan Michels, a woman who finds herself quickly unraveling as she tries to not only live with the responsibility and guilt she secretly harbours, but also balance a successful career, intimate relationship, and familial obligations.

The writing is descriptive and genuine. The characters are diligent, compulsive, and tenacious. And the plot is an intriguing tale full of heartache, loss, grief, betrayal, infidelity, relationship dynamics, family, romance, and love.

Overall, I think, Perfectly Undone is a fantastic debut for Raintree that does an excellent job of highlighting the importance of forgiving one's self, moving on, and living life to the fullest.

I am not a romance reader, but I do enjoy books by Robyn Carr, including her Virgin River series and the new Sullivan's Crossing series. This reminded me a bit of those, with a more manageable cast of characters. I don't know why, but I'm really drawn to stories of women doctors and their lives - the personal, the professional, the romantic. The female characters are stronger and less likely to fall into the boring "damsel in distress" trope -- or if they do, it's with a more independent twist.

This could probably be labeled a romance, because the pages are filled with descriptions of the female character's emotional interior, and more sex than I am used to in other chick lit titles (ala Erin Hilderbrand, Susan Wiggs). But there's a lot more to the story, including two intriguing mysteries that keep the pages turning: one, about the main character's involvement in her sister's death; and the other, a secret her boyfriend Cooper is harboring which puts their relationship in jeopardy. These drawn out secrets give the book a thrilling quality, but at the same time you get attached to the family, all of whom are experiencing interesting life changes (there are three separations throughout the book!).

I'll recommend this one to lovers of chick lit with strong female characters - Robyn Carr especially.

Perfectly Undone is a well crafted story about a sought after doctor, Dylan, trying to balance love, family, friendships and her career. Through it all, she is not living her life, but the her sister has not had the chance to live. So when her boyfriend proposes, everything comes to a head and the very big secret she has been holding in starts to come undone. 

Over the course of the novel, we see Dylan slowly come to terms with her past and go on a journey of finding herself, learning to let go and forgive, and to let people in. It's such a relateable read, and one that women, no matter what stage of their life the are in, can find similarities.

I had started the book and then moved onto something else, then some time later started the book again. Even with that, it wasn't enough to keep me interested. I didn't really care for the main character or her boyfriend.

This was a great story of how when you get wrapped up in your own insecurities that you lose sight of what's really important in life and how if you notice it in time you can salvage your relationships and still have a great quality of life.

I found this protagonist difficult to root for. She was very unlikeable and her motivation for her behavior was weak. I'm all for a dark moment in one's past that colors our behavior, but her sister's passing felt more like an excuse for her selfishness rather than a barrier to positive change. She can't forgive her boyfriend's infidelity, yet she treats him like garbage for most of the book and is completely self-absorbed. Her own behavior with the gardener doesn't seem to be an issue, and ultimately she doesn't ever confess to Cooper that she almost cheated on him, too. The discussion questions at the end of the book asked several complex, provocative questions which didn't even seem to apply to the plot. I found myself wondering if these questions pertained to the same book I'd just read. This novel rambled on and on without any rising stakes or a moment that forced the protagonist to come to her senses. Thanks for the opportunity to read an advance copy. I won't be posting my reviews elsewhere.

I have mixed feelings about PERFECTLY UNDONE, and wavered between giving it three or four stars. For me, it came down to my connection with Dylan, which came and went multiple times. While the plot certainly had surprises, Dylan's reactions were frustrating. Emotional growth is a key component for contemporary women's fiction and while it happened, I feel there was more emphasis on her starting point (and subsequent actions that reinforced her beliefs). I also found the male characters to be fairly unrealistic, delivering pitch-perfect dialogue at all times. The writing itself was beautiful and I definitely saw the world through Dylan's eyes. Now that I've finished, I suspect I may not be the target audience for this book, but avid readers of women's fiction who love truly getting inside a character's head and appreciate a realistically driven plot will find it very satisfying.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy!

Rated 4.5 - PERFECTLY UNDONE by Jamie Raintree portrays a doctor’s world with human frailties and love that’s so absorbing you’ll want to devour it from cover to cover.

Dr. Dylan Michels’ family suffered the loss of her sister when she was eighteen and Dylan was sixteen. Tragedy hasn’t been kind to this family and their healing is a long time coming. Dylan seems to be the one who suffers the most, but we don’t always know our family as well as we think we do.

Cooper and Stephen are best friends made even more so when Cooper’s sister marries Stephen. Cooper, Stephen and Dylan supported each other through medical school, but will their adult lives withstand their future?

I wasn’t sure I liked Dr. Dylan Michels at first. She seemed callused and hardened by her past, unable to love those who love her. By the end of the book I understood because she eventually became the woman she was meant to be.

I adored Cooper. It was easy to forgive him for his faults because he was so in love with Dylan. As the outsider looking in, I could see why he erred, and I rooted for him even when I was dead set against his actions.

Dylan’s family reflects her way of distancing herself from others. I so wanted to point them in the right direction as the pain was evident. Cooper’s family seems so pulled together even when they’re not. It was a tug of war watching them all come “perfectly undone”.

The emotion in this book is raw and uncensored. Those who have lost a child, or have been the victim of infidelity may find this book extremely hard to experience. For me, I felt it dealt with life’s worst moments in a raw, engaging manner, eventually concluding in beauty. This book will make you cry when you least expect it. In the end, it’s a joyful cry so it’s well worth the sensitive journey.

There is so much passion within these pages that it stirs something deep inside in appreciation. Gardeners will appreciate Reese and his wisdom. He epitomizes the philosophy of gardening as a healer of fresh wounds.

There are a lot of repetitive ideas and circumstances in this book, but I didn’t realize how much so until I looked back on them in the end. In truth, don’t we all repeat the mistakes of others and connect because of it? The web is deep in this story and with it the pain is like shards of glass. It’s the rare author who has me immediately looking for another book by her to read. Jamie Raintree is a rare find.

Gifted in her approach to weaving an emotive story full of interesting characters you will love for all their faults and goodness, Jamie Raintree sucked me right in until the end. PERFECTLY UNDONE is gripping family drama that will tie you to your chair anxiously turning the pages. I can’t wait for the next book excerpted at the end of this one. A recommended read!

Review by Dorine, courtesy of The Zest Quest.

This book has a great synopsis and I was hoping to find an interesting story. It was interesting, but unfortunately not enough for me to completely enjoy it. The first third of the story is very slow, you don't fully understand Dylan (I could never completely understand her) and I just felt we were going in circles, going back to the same thing. I could not relate to Dylan and even though it was a nice story about forgiveness I didn't completely like it.

Do you ever read a book in which the narrator is so frustrating that you wish she were real so that you could shout at her to just STOP?

Well, I have. And it's this book.

Dylan is an OB-GYN who has what looks like the perfect life. Her boyfriend Cooper, a fellow physician, loves her. He adores her. He wants to marry her. And in response, she takes off and wanders around in the rain.

Not that Cooper is without fault. He even discloses a painful one to Dylan. He shows his love, though. He hires a landscape architect to design a garden area for her that he knows will make her happy, and he adopts a puppy because he knows she is a good caretaker. Dylan, though, doesn't see that. She's too busy hating her mother and holding herself responsible for her sisters's death years ago.

Dylan, you might say, is tiresome.

Yet she's also someone you hope will figure herself out and find happiness. She's clearly a good doctor, and when she suffers losses - both significant and insignificant - you can see that she is someone who leads with her heart. Unfortunately, she can't be honest with Cooper about what stops her from saying yes to him.

Jamie Raintree uses the garden as a symbol of Dylan and Cooper's relationship and even of Dylan herself. Sometimes you need to set nature free, and sometimes you need to prune it a little. Regardless, you have to embrace its inherent beauty and flaws. You have to recognize that perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

I loved every second of this book! I was absolutely hooked from the first sentence and was drawn in to the characters and their lives. An interesting look at how an incident in the past can influence the future to the point of continually trying to make up for it. This is domestic fiction at its finest!

There has been a bit of buzz ahead of Jamie Raintree's debut.

It's deserved.

In this contemporary novel, Raintree weaves in the complications that occur in someone when they have a traumatic moment in the past and a passion to make the future make up for it. Dylan was a character who I liked almost immediately, and watching her work through the passion for her career, the disappointments, the complications she faces in her personal relationships, and discoveries about the real dangers of keeping secrets. The imagery - especially of the backyard - pulled me deeper into the story, and I found Raintree handled the intimate moments of this book - both physical and professional - with grace.

I devoured this book and will absolutely be reading Jamie Raintree's next.

Good novel. The characters are believably damaged and the story line is compelling.

I really enjoyed the heartbreaking and compelling novel by Jamie Raintree. Dr Dylan Michels is a very busy OB/GYN who is in a long term relationship with her partner Cooper who is a Paediatrician. Despite being busy and successful in her career, she still feels enormous guilt for the death of her sister Abby when she was just 16, and blames herself for her sister's death. She has a secret about what really happened the night she died that she has not told anyone.

She throws herself into her work and it becomes all too consuming, and comes at a cost to herself, her relationship with Cooper and her family. The death of a baby she delivers brings everything to the forefront and she must face herself and think about what is important in her life.

This I believe is a debut novel and I was kept turning the pages to find out what was happening constantly. This author has been signed by Graydon House which is a new imprint for Harlequin and will be specializing in Women's Fiction titles - I am very excited to see what else this imprint and this author will bring to readers. Thank you to Net-Galley and Harlequin for the ARC of this book for review.

A gripping tale about the guilt women carry and the ramifications of that guilt as obstacles to their happiness.

The idea of the story itself is a good one. Two doctors struggle with their relationship with each other, both holding back secrets that eventually ruin their relationship. There were a few things that bothered me about the book. It's too coincidental that her parents are going through the same thing. Also, when her sister-in-law goes into early labour, the power is out yet they are able to fill a tub full of water for her to have a water birth. I''m also not sure how they were able to sterilize a scissor without power. The author doesn't go into these details but it's inconsistencies like this that make me rate the book lower than it could have been.

This is a poignant novel about perceived guilt and the ability to finally move on in life to define one's own happiness. The characters are well-drawn and the plot well paced. I couldn't put this book down.

OH my gosh. I COULD NOT put this book down. Dylan and Cooper met and fell in love in medical school. After nine years together they seem to have it all. Cooper has become partner in his pediatric practice. Dylan is a very motivated, OB/GYN that goes above and beyond to take care of her patients. They seem to have it all. OR DO THEY? Cooper finally pops the big question and Dylan CAN'T SAY YES!!! There are many story lines that mesh together in this very captivating story of deep love, guilt and secrets.. The discussion questions at the end of this book make it perfect for a book discussion group.

I love this book!! From start to finish, I was deeply intrigued as to what was going to happen next. I fell in love with almost all of the characters immediately and would definitely read this many, many more times. Filled with heartbreak, romance, and more heartbreak, Perfectly Undone shows the reality of relationships and the hardships.

I have tried to read this several times, sadly it is just not my cup of tea, I did not finish the title and can not fairly review it.