"The Perfect Life" is the story of Nessa, a vulnerable and fragile young woman with a controlling boyfriend. Nessa's habit of making up identities to look at houses way out of her price range is escalating into something approaching an obsession. But when the owner of one of those houses - a children's author whose books Nessa had a strong connection to as a child - is found dead, Nessa is the prime suspect...

On the whole, I enjoyed this thriller, which is told in alternating Then and Now sections, but I did get frustrated at times with the characters. Nessa had too little backbone and not enough actual vulnerability for me to really like or relate to her, and Connor was almost a panto villain. I liked the back-story though, and on the whole the story was original and well told.

An enjoyable if not particularly memorable read.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher, who gave me a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have previously read ‘Day of the Accident’ by Nuala Ellwood and loved it so had high hopes for this one. In all honesty it wasn’t as good as the previous read but still entertaining and did seem to get better with every page I read.

Vanessa likes to pretend to be different people and enjoys playing make believe looking round houses she couldn’t possibly afford. What started as harmless fun became sinister when one of the owners is found dead and everyone suspects Vanessa.

Entertaining read overall but I felt that there were a few holes in the plot.

A tangled web of a story that never quite manages to untangle itself. Vanessa’s wild imagination tends to get her into trouble and her poor elder sister has the job of trying to pick up the pieces. A romance that isn’t quite as it seems and a murder involving our narrator never quite managed to catch me in the web of this rather incredulous tale!

What if all you ever wanted was the perfect life? What if you think that you have achieved it? What if what you thought was love was something else? What if your dream turns into a nightmare?...A well written book telling the tragic tale of lost childhoods, tragedy, love and the horrors of domestic violence..

When all you want to do is reclaim the happiness you felt as a child but end up terrorized, by a person you felt you could trust... highs and lows, obsession and stalking, this book has it all. A thrilling, gripping tale, where you just want everything to turn out for the best. A definite page Turner, interwoven with an excellent plot, I loved it.

A clever, twisty plot that takes psychological mind games to a new level. Nuala Ellwood has done it again!'

This was an excellent read. What started as a harmless thing to do - looking at houses she couldn't afford - it turned out to be quite the opposite. A dead body in one of the houses puts an air of suspicion on Vanessa they think she killed him. I was gripped from the beginning. A great read full of twists and turns.

A well written story that is truly remarkable and electrifying amazing characters that are brilliant and the ending is just incredible what a discovery truth about the body that was found in one of the houses excellent highly recommended.

The main character, Vanessa, suffers the loss of her mother at an early age which has a great impact on her life. She had enjoyed a happy childhood and was striving for the ‘perfect’ life.

She lived in a bit of a dreamworld and was quite naive which led to her compulsion of viewing properties, under various assumed names, searching for her ideal forever home. It was during one of these viewings that the owner is found dead and Vanessa is caught up in a murder enquiry..

The premise of the book is interesting but I felt that the hopping between timelines needed more clarification to save confusion. I enjoyed the book and will definitely read more by this author.

Absolutely riveting and intriguing! I read it in 2 sittings and was completely engrossed into the life of Vanessa which brought me back to my early thirties and the aspirations attached to this period that everyone has experienced. But this novel is more than that, there is some intrigue, some reflection and self questioning. I highly recommend it!

What a corker!
What started as a thriller, turned into something that I can't quite put my finger on. It felt like a domestic thriller and sometimes even a little bit mysterious.

The Perfect Lie centres around Vanessa, who is charged with the murder of a man while she's pretending to be someone else. The story flips between a Then and a Now. Sometimes this felt a bit confusing, but I think that worked with the nature of the book. I don't want to say too much, as there are a lot of spoilers, but we learn more about Vanessa's distant and near past, and a relationship turned sour.

Well written characters, but perhaps a bit confused in theme. But that didn't detract from a great read.

There are, however, some difficult themes dealt with in The Perfect Lie, and maybe a trigger warning at the beginning may be useful for some people.

Thank you to Penguin and Netgalley for a chance to read The Perfect Lie in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley for my copy of The Perfect Life. It's difficult to give a 'proper' review without spoiling it for other readers so I think I'll just say that, for me, it was disappointing. I did not enjoy the 'then' and 'now' narrative - in fact at times I was completely lost. Far too disjointed for me. I admit that I was intrigued to find out what happened in the end - but even that was disappointing, and unbelievable. The main character, Vanessa, came across as weak, gullible and slightly crazy, and her relationship with her sister made me cringe. It was obvious that the sister's husband, Jack, was not happy with Vanessa living with them. Vanessa sensed that - so why did she stay? I felt uncomfortable reading parts of the book, and at the end I thought "What was it actually about?" Relationships? Loss? I don't know. Oh, one error for the publisher to correct - towards the beginning of the book it talks about Georgie looking "rather lost, as though Imogen and Jack leaving home has diminished her somehow." "Jack" hasn't left - this needs replacing with "Harry", her son. This was an OK read, but not one that I'd recommend to anyone who loves a thriller.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Publishing for a free E-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

TRIGGER WARNINGS - This review will contain mentions of abuse, death, abortion and rape.

The premise of this story is interesting, with the main character Vanessa being involved in the murder of a man who's house she had viewed. The narrative jumps from past to present, giving the reader an idea of Vanessa's life before compared to how it is now and, for the first half of the book, this works perfectly well, setting the scene to the murder while bringing up multiple questions from Vanessa's past, particularly involving the novels she loved as a child.

(SPOILERS)
However, at around the halfway point, the story seems to lose momentum and the abuse Vanessa has been suffering escalates. While this is understandable and, to an extent, fits with the pacing of the novel, the rape seems to come out of nowhere and could be triggering to readers in the way it is written. After this, the novel seems to get very heavy on an abortion yet this doesn't really add anything to the actual plot other than intense amounts of shaming of abortions. Personally, I felt like the abortion was not handled well in the novel and it was simply unnecessary.

The ending felt rushed and, while I definitely did not see the main twist coming, parts of the story were incredibly predictable.

It is difficult to empathise with the main character and her motivations and at times her hobby seems pointless, simply a way to make her memorable in a see of female main characters. Ultimately, it struggles to do this and Vanessa becomes forgettable, much like this story.

A rare thing happened as I finished this book. There were tears. But to the beginning...I started The Perfect Life this morning. It is still afternoon, though the dusk of November is already upon us, the brightness of a crisp day has been overshadowed by a grey hue, and I can hear fireworks being set off despite it being 3 days past Guy Fawkes Night; I've already finished my fourth Nuala Ellwood novel, and it's unequivocally her best yet.

Fascinatingly, I didn't question Vanessa and her actions at all. And I do believe the official synopsis to draw a reader into buying this is a little misleading, because there is so much more to the lead character and the story than her momentarily morphing personas. Ms Ellwood has written this so eloquently that if you know, you know. You can see what's happening to Vanessa. What she can't see. And it is utterly brilliant. Her grasp of the traits of psychopaths is frighteningly accurate, and her ability to weave this into a compelling novel that you will not be able to put down is masterful.

I was partly drawn to this by the title. It is a story about a woman called Vanessa, who, after having had a slightly traumatic childhood has visions of living the perfect life. What she imagines is a beautiful home and a perfect family. At the start she lives in a London flat sharing with her best friend, Lottie. She has a good job in the beauty industry where she is very well respected. Her sister, Georgie, also lives in London and while there is a big age gap, they are very close so in many ways as Georgie looked after Vanessa when their mother died. All that is missing from her life is the husband and family home she dreams of. Vanessa is haunted by a book that her mother used to read to her as a child called Holly Maze House. This is a book about the house and a little boy called Gabriel who lives there.
When Vanessa meets Connor he wants to move their relationship on very quickly to the extent that he asks her to move in with him after quite a short time in their relationship. She then has to break the news to Lottie who is very unhappy about the situation and Vanessa leaving, partly because she feels she hasn’t known Connor for long enough.
At this point things start to go wrong for Vanessa. Lottie cuts her off so she has lost her best friend and things start going wrong at work as her relationship with Connor starts to fall apart. To distract herself from her problems Vanessa gets fixated with looking at beautiful expensive properties and this is one of the things that leads to her eventual downfall as she looks at one property after another making up names and complete lifestyles with each viewing she books. It is difficult to describe too much more without giving away the rest of the story.
On the whole I really enjoyed this book. The characters and plot are believable throughout most of the book. The exception being the ending which to me seemed quite far fetched. I did believe it would be possible to get fixated with looking at unaffordable properties and to invent a lifestyle to go with each viewing but I found the link to Holly Maze House and the author, Geoffrey Rivers slightly tenuous. Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me an ARC of this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin General for the ARC copy of this book.
Sorry to say this one wasn’t for me at all. Didn’t like the constant change of timeline and none of the characters drew me in. Found the “fairy tale“ like element a bit over the top and the ending just left me wondering why I had just spent 4 hours reading the story.

I'm finding it hard to properly review this book because I haven't got a clue what I really feel about it. My overwhelming thought is that this book was okay. That's it, nothing special about it and nothing glaringly wrong about it either.

Okay, so first of all, the first half of the book is incredibly slow. The mix between the Then and Now chapters didn't have much of a clear definition and I felt like it interrupted the flow of the story a lot of the time. The book did eventually pick up, but by then I was already kind of bored.
This really isn't a thriller book either. It's more of a woman trying to make sense of the manipulation she is suffering through and doesn't get me wrong, it was interesting enough, but it's marketed as something it's not.
I also thought that Vanessa was very one dimensional. I didn't like nor care for her character and frankly, I found her challenging to read from. She was very selfish and chaotic and made questionable decisions.
The ending was predictable and to be honest, I skim read it at best. I felt the plot was unoriginal in this sense and there was no big reveal or any of the dramatics you'd expect. I kind of felt let down.

Overall, a decent book but sadly, unmemorable.
I received this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was certainly an interesting concept which was well written and I read it in one day. It was an story about Vanessa who was looking for the story book lovely life that she fantasised about when she was young and was searching for that since her mother r died at an early age.

It was an interesting read as I found myself alternately liking and loathing Vanessa and not quite understanding why a seemingly intelligent woman had firstly got involved with someone who was clearly mentally abusing her and then had decided to play out the fantasy of visiting very exclusive homes up for sale, under the guise of different personas.

The tale is well written and the characters are interesting and kept the pages turning. I enjoyed the ending which I didn’t see coming and this rounded the story off well.

A definite recommendation for those that love a chic lit style thriller and love to hate the characters they are reading about.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was an amazing read and I am so thankful I had the chance to read it before its publication day.

A pacy psychollogical thriller that touches many interesting topics including depression, lies, rape, and trying to become someone else.

I was hooked from the very beginning and cannot recommend it enough!

Vanessa struggles with finding happiness and uses house viewing as a way to pretend her life is better, just those few moments of looking around that special house, she feels elated and happy.

But her addiction becomes her downfall and her life takes a sudden change for the worst.

This was an enjoyable book, but some plots didn't add up right and the actions of her best friend were very odd.

Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for ARC