This was both more and less than I expected. In the "more" column is the intimate look at a woman (Tess) grieving for her husband (Mark). As the book begins, we find Tess hospitalized with a stab wound and certain that her son, Jamie, has been kidnapped. The narrative then loops back to the day of her husband's plane crash and Tessa is telling her late husband about their life without him. Integrated into the story are Mark's brother, Ian, and her new friend and grief counselor, Shelley. Their accounts of events leading up to the pivotal day from the beginning of the book are included. In the less column is the way those two behaved and reacted to Tess. Are they helping Tess? Can we believe them? Can we believe Tess?

Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Tess is struggling to find a new normal after her husband dies in a plane crash. And when Tess wakes up a few months later on the day after her son's eighth birthday, she's not sure exactly how she ended up the in the hospital. But as she tries to sort through her memories, she's knows a few things to be true: (1) she was stabbed, (2) her son is missing, and (3) her brother-in-law and grief counselor had something to do with it.

This psychological thriller was definitely gripping, and I really enjoyed the set-up. However, the suspense wasn't really there for me, as I figured out the premise very early in the novel and spent about 250 pages thinking, "Wow, this is super obvious." I'm passing the book to a friend to see if they catch on as quickly, and I'm curious to see if others have the same experience. But either way, it was a fast and engaging read.

What Ann amazing debut!! I love a book that has blindsided me so with a twist, that I must go back through the story trying to find what surely must be mistakes. This one delivers! Well played Lauren North, well played. I'll be looking for her future novels.
Thank you to net galley for the ebook,

A dark and emotionally jarring read, THE PERFECT SON by Lauren North is a tale of grief, loss and one woman’s inability to cope with the sudden death of her husband, of the ease with which she is railroaded and that until her son goes missing, she is mired in her own crippling despair. Told by jumping time from past to present when Tess has been hospitalized after being stabbed and her young son goes missing, this tale is often a difficult read to stay involved in.

Very dark, very depressing and very frustrating to follow Tess’ voice throughout as suspicious events happen and even Tess doubts her own sanity and finds herself putting her trust in a stranger who came along when she was at her weakest. With her brother-in-law bullying her, a stranger who threatens her and the mystery of who her husband may really be, Tess is paralyzed. Her only moments of clarity seem to come from her ‘discussions’ with her late husband. But can she stand on her own two feet in the land of the living?

After a very slow start that seems to go on for many pages, the suspense picks up, yet is not so suspenseful, as the direction this tale will take is easy to discover.

I couldn’t connect with Tess’ actions, or inactions. Yes, she is suffering, but she also seems too clueless regarding the life she and her husband shared. While she was concerned about her son’s well-being, she failed to give him the support he needed. When all is said and done, this was just an okay read for me.

I received a complimentary ARC edition from Berkley! This is my honest and voluntary review.

For the first few chapters, at least, I felt sorry for Tess Clarke. She's in the hospital after being stabbed, and her son Jamie - who celebrated his 8th birthday the previous day - has gone missing. That's on top of losing her husband Mark in an airplane accident a few months earlier, so needless to say, she's a bit of a physical and emotional mess (emphasis on the latter). Making matters worse, she's sure that Mark's brother Ian, and Shelley, her grief counselor, are in cahoots and have absconded with the child. So why isn't anybody listening?

The story proceeds to outline day by day, starting 55 days before Jamie's birthday party, the things that happen in Tess's life after the tragic loss of her husband. We see her bond almost instantly with Shelley, who lost a young son who closely resembles Jamie (hmmm, a clue, perhaps)? We hear Ian's constant insistence that Tess, as executrix to Mark's estate, should get on with the paperwork because Mark owes him a substantial amount of money that Ian desperately needs (aha, another clue)?. We also watch Tess's relentless, over-the-top angst, about which I'll say this: Somewhere around the 39th day prior to the birthday bash, I stopped feeling sorry for her and started to root for Shelley and Ian.

Even if you can't work up a lot of empathy for Tess, though, this is a good "mess with your head" story. I tried to guess at the ending and missed; honestly, that actually makes me happier with the outcome. This is a great beach read - yep, there's still time before the kiddies head back to school - and overall a quite enjoyable one. Thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review a pre-publication copy.

Omg, what an unexpected ending. The beginning was very interesting and then the book started to be a little bit dull and then bam!! the big turn around. Great psychological suspend about grieving wife and missing son. What happened on his eighth birthday party? I will be looking for more from Lauren North..

Thank you to Net Galley and Berkley Publishing Group for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I received a free e-copy of The Perfect son by Lauren North from NetGalley for my honest review.

Tess, a recent widow, wakes up in a hospital bed the day after her sons (Jamie) 8th birthday. She had been stabbed in her abdomen and her son, Jamie is missing. All Tess feels like she has to live for is her son, Jamie and now he is missing.

Tessa’s husband, Mark was killed in a plane crash months ago and she has been seeing a grief counselor, Shelley about it. Shelley has dealt with her own grief, as she lost her son, Dylan, to cancer. Tess suspects Shelley might have taker her son. She also suspects Marks brother, Ian though. Ian claims that he lent a lot of money to Mark before the accident and wants it back right now.

Tess doesn't think the authorities are doing enough to find her son. How far will she go to find the truth? How far would you go, as a mother?

This one took a while to get through mostly because I could not stand Tess. I don't think I am a fan of the author's writing style. Tess came off really shrill, and I found her very off putting. I didn't sympathize with her grief. I think this made it very hard to invest in the mystery. I did think the twist was well done, but I was a bit of a slog to get there.

This book is very well written and I completely missed the reveal, which is rare for me, but this novel is very slow and depressing. The novel opens with Tess in the hospital following a stabbing and then backtracks to show us Tess before the events that put her in the hospital. As a recent widow she is obviously consumed by grief but unfortunately that puts the reader in a never ending view of her grief and her life falling apart. As things start to happen she wonders who she can trust and starts having doubts about her brother-in-law and her new friend. There is suspense in the sense that you wonder what happened but it’s a very slow suspense as not much happens before the reveal. Overall this book was too slow and sad for me.

Tess struggles to get her life back on track following the death of her husband in a plane crash. She goes through the motions of life, taking her son Jamie to school, picking him up,. It's hard for both of them. When a grief counselor dealing with her own loss becomes too close to Jamie, and she begins to receive threatening calls, Tess begins to worry. Tess will stop at nothing to keep her son safe.

Serious plot holes in this book. I had to go back and reread passages because the author had me so confused at the end. The protagonist was not likeable at all.

Absolutely thrilling! I was very invested from the first page. I couldn’t wait to finish it, and I did so very quickly!

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The twist in the story was easily inferred. Good read, but not memorable.

Tess is certain of four things when she wakes up in a hospital:
1) she’s in the hospital
2) she’s been stabbed
3) she’s alive
4) Jamie, her son, is missing.
The entire time I was reading this book I had thought I discovered the ending or different sorts of ending so many times. But I didn’t. I absolutely never saw the ending/big twist coming. It was beautifully written. The plot had a great pace and kept me hooked. I enjoyed the narrator of Tess. I felt so sad for this woman and found myself close to tears a couple of times. This debut is a psychological thriller that you won’t be able to get out of your mind for weeks. Grief does that.

I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover but that’s exactly what I did. I assumed that The Perfect Son by Lauren North was going to be about an evil child along the lines of Baby Teeth. WRONG. Wrong on many levels but I was thoroughly entertained and later in the book I was shocked!



When Tess Clarke wakes up in the hospital the day after her son Jamie’s eighth birthday, she’s sure of these things: She’s been stabbed, her son is missing, her brother-in-law and her grief counselor are involved. But no one is listening to her.

After her husband, Mark, died suddenly in a terrible accident a few months earlier, the only thing keeping Tess together is Jamie. As they struggle to make sense of their new life without Mark, they find joy in brief moments of normalcy like walking to school and watching television together. Life is hard without Mark, but Tess has Jamie, and that’s what matters.

But there in the hospital, confused and surrounded by people who won’t listen, Tess’s world falls apart. To save her son, she must piece together what happened between Mark’s death and Jamie’s birthday, but the truth might just be too much for her to bear.



This was a great novel, I highly recommend it!

Order here, due out August 13

Hard to believe that this is a debut thriller, the author has done a great job laying out not only plot but character development. This is a true page turner that will leave you guessing right until the end. Don't miss it!

The novel opens with Tess in the hospital. She’s been stabbed and her eight-year-old son is missing. Since her husband Mark died in a plane crash, Tess’s memory is full of holes. Maybe it’s from the depression or grief, or maybe it’s from the medicine she’s been prescribed to deal with the depression, or maybe something more sinister is afoot.

The story itself is a well-done thriller. It goes back in time from when her husband died to the days approaching her son’s birthday when she was stabbed and Jamie goes missing. It flashes to the present day as she’s recovering from her wound when she gets interviewed by a therapist or police officer—it’s not clear which. Those sections didn’t work for me because each one is basically the same: Tess worrying about where her son is and the therapist trying to go back from the death to the night of the birthday and the discussions get cut off after almost no discussion.

However, the rest of the suspense is done well. Shelley volunteers as a grief counselor and she and Tess become fast friends. But after so many calls hanging up or threatening her about something underhanded that Mark was involved with before his death, the cars chasing her, the man in her garden, Tess begins to suspect that Shelley is working with Mark’s brother to steal Jamie and the money that Ian claims Mark owes him.

I recommend this. Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this novel, which RELEASES AUGUST 13, 2019.

This was crazy and intense from the first page. I had no idea what the hell was going on!

As the secrets unravel, it's all you can do to not jump in the book and shake the main character to wake her up to the truth.

I think it wraps up well and would be phenomenal on the screen.

Tess wakes up in a hospital with a stab wound and has no idea how she got there. She remembers that it happened on her son, Jamie's birthday and now she doesn't know where he is. Even worse, she remembers that her husband is dead, killed in a tragic plane crash several weeks prior.

The story takes the reader back to a little more than a month before Jamie's birthday and alternates between that time and the current time in the hospital, leading up to the actual birthday.

While I thought the premise was good and the way the story was told was original, I was a little let down by the ending. Well, let me re-phrase that. The whole idea was good and creative but without giving too much away, I think the ending would have packed a little more punch IF the author hadn't portrayed the main character the way she did with such severity. She ended up getting on my nerves a little.


Overall, I think this book will do well. It was previously released in the U.K. as The Perfect Betrayal. Releases here August 2019. Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for the copy. No review was required. All opinions are my own.

"I cling to what I know. ONE—I’m in the hospital. I try to remember the rest, but it’s gone. How did I get here? How did it come to this?"

I was happy to find out that the author was a psychology student, and - especially when it comes to psychological thrillers - I love an author who has a deep knowledge of psychology and thrusts that into a compelling plot line that grips you all the way through, along with a well-crafted twist that'll make you shudder.

The Perfect Son starts with a bang - our protagonist finds herself on a hospital bed, knowing that her son is missing, and no one is listening to her. It continues with a fast pace, and doesn't let up. We are occasionally given short interviews at the hospital between a detective and the mother who's desperate to find her son as they try to piece together what happened before Tess' life came crashing all around her. Afterwards, the story jumps back two months prior to the night in question - Jamie's birthday. Who stabbed Tess that night?

The house is located in the countryside. The perfect setting! And I certainly loved how the author crafts her suspense scenes as protagonist Tess discovers new secrets about her late husband, and people from his life suddenly start to show up at her door one by one. What are their true intentions?

This is the type of book where you want to shake the protagonist and get her to see the truth. And I actually felt Tess' grief in the most gut-wrenching, realistic way. How is that even possible?

The Perfect Son is a taut, gripping psychological thrillerthat will catch you off guard with a clever twist. For a debut, this was absolutely brilliant.