My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner/Simon & Schuster for the ARC of "The Perfect Home" in exchange for an honest review.
The only thing less than perfect about "The Perfect Home" is the predictable inevitability of its climactic scene... Anyone who consumed mass quantities of 1990's movie suspense thrillers can see it coming from 20 miles away. But that didn't make it any less fun for me to read. and the book had me barreling through the pages at warp speed.
I started loving this story right away as it casts a knowing witty gaze at the blatant unreality of 'Reality TV'. Just about every suspicion you've ever had about such shows is confirmed here.....that the participants merely craft fake personas for the camera, that greed and hunger for attention fuels them, that the shows themselves are as fictitious as any scripted dramas, comedies and professional wrestling.
Exhibit A - the Deckers, Wyatt and Dawn, America's home renovation sweethearts and stars of, what else....The Perfect Home.
Wyatt's the dashing, smiling, happy hunk who thrives on audience love, high ratings, and millions of social media clicks. On the show, Dawn plays the role of practical, reserved helpmate who's not nearly as attractive as her effervescent husband. Off the show, she's shy and uncomfortable when forced into all the required public appearances their fame demands.
But trouble in Paradise erupts. Dawn gives birth to twins, but only after Wyatt consumed overdoses of an illegal fertility drug to increase his sperm count. When Dawn discovers his addiction to the pills has turned Wyatt dangerously psychotic, she flees with the twins. As you'd already expect of him, Wyatt wages a clever vicious publicity war on his fugitive wife, painting Dawn as an unhinged, post-partum threat to their babies.. With the entire country now on the lookout for her and the twins, the odds couldn't possibly be more stacked against her.
And that's where the real psychological tug=of-war (and all the nasty fun) begins as Wyatt and Dawn's competing stories vie for media attention.......all leading to an exciting wrap-up that we knew was on its way as sure as the sun shines in the morning. I realize that while 'The Perfect Home' is not the first thriller to skewer celebrity darlings, I found it by far the most fast paced, sharply written and entertaining of the bunch. Terrific beach read, but I'd advise don't even wait for the beach.

*I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.*
Dawn and Wyatt Decker are the hosts of a hit home improvement television show. Dawn provides the perfect balance of level-headedness to even out Wyatt's showboat, over the top tendencies. Wyatt is the star of the show while Dawn gives feedback and tries to rein Wyatt in a little bit. But Wyatt wants more. More fame, more money, more everything. Dawn is already feeling the strain of the show on their marriage. They both want a baby, but for two completely different reasons. Dawn has always been maternal and wants to add to their family, while Wyatt is thinking about how to achieve a perfect image to give their ratings a boost. When Dawn and Wyatt fail to get pregnant, Wyatt turns to illegal fertility drugs from Germany. These drugs begin to change Wyatt's personality but they pay off when Dawn gets pregnant with twins. But Wyatt's behavior becomes even more erratic and when Dawn finds Wyatt's new plan for how to drive the ratings up involves harming their twins, she knows she needs to protect them. Dawn decides to take her babies and try to escape her husband but Wyatt turns everything around into him being a victim and Dawn being a kidnapper. With Dawn as the number one fugitive in America how does she manage to keep her babies safe? This book did start a little slow for me but I soon was sucked into the story and couldn't wait to find out what happened. Thank you to NetGalley, Daniel Kenitz, and Scribner for this ARC. Publishing date is January 7th 2025.

So I pretty much could not put this book down. I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish in one setting. I loved Dawn and I relate to her feelings of betrayal by Wyatt. All of the characters were well developed and the storyline kept me engaged.

* I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.*

Dawn and Wyatt’s home renovation reality show is good, but Wyatt wishes it was better. He wants more. More fame, more money, more from life. This, along with the couple’s struggles to conceive, has Wyatt losing his mind and himself.

They do end up able to have children, but it gets to the point where Wyatt is willing to do anything to get what he wants. Scheme, lie, cheat … even cause a tragedy. Dawn discovers what Wyatt is up to and she packs up the kids and runs. Wyatt uses this as an excuse to go on national television and paint HER as the villain in their story.
He is so charming, who wouldn’t believe him?

Told from both perspectives, this story is definitely worth the read!

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book.

Dawn Decker and her husband Wyatt are the hosts of the #1 rated home improvement show on TV. Well, actually, Wyatt is the STAR, with Dawn on hand to rein him in a little and give sly feedback to the cameras. But Wyatt wants more, while Dawn is already chafing at the loss of privacy their reality stardom brings. And most of all, they want a baby, but for different reasons: Dawn has always wanted to be a mother and pass on the wisdom she gained from her mother, but Wyatt sees having a child as proving they are the "perfect family" and need to be even more famous.

When Wyatt proves to be unable to get Dawn pregnant, he turns to an unproven and illegal drug from overseas, with some disturbing side effects. But the drug works, and Dawn gets pregnant - with twins! But Wyatt doesn't "exactly" wean himself off the drug, as he promised, and his erratic behavior becomes even more erratic. So when Dawn accidently finds a precise and well-drawn-out plan on Wyatt's computer that he thinks will give him the publicity boost he so desperately wants, she panics. Because the plan is to drown their newborn babies and bask in the sympathy!!

So she flees with the twins, with the help of some friends, who turn out not to be so friendly and NOT on her side!! She is soon the #1 Most Wanted fugitive in the country and Wyatt is getting all the support!! Finally, some people DO come through for her, but it is an iffy situation and not easy to solve.

I received a free copy from NetGalley. Very she said/he said, it is a good reminder that what you see on TV/social media is not the full picture in real life.

Thanks to NetGalley for my ARC
3.5⭐️

This one started off slowly for me. I wasn't really invested in the characters or the plot. Around the 50% mark, everything picked up, and I flew through the ending. I enjoyed seeing how much celebrity status can alter our opinions of people. It was fun reading about their home renovation show. I had a good time.

1⭐️ Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for an advanced copy of The Perfect Home.

Dawn and Wyatt are somewhat celebrities with a Home Renovation show called The Perfect Home. They are also struggling with infertility and Wyatt decides to take matters into his own hands with an experimental drug and it works and Dawn becomes pregnant with twins. But life is definitely far from perfect when Dawn finds out that Wyatt has a different plan for them.

I was not a fan of this book. I did not like the main characters and the whole plot seemed very far fetched and unrealistic. This book was just not for me.

Dawn and Wyatt are one of America’s favorite couples. Stars of the reality fixer upper show The Perfect House they seem to have everything… except a child. When fertility issues arise Wyatt decides to take a medicine that promises success but is banned in the United States because of the severity of the side effects. While the medication works, Wyatt’s personality changes so much that Dawn is suddenly faced with having to take her babies and try to escape from her husband all while America roots for her husband.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. It was incredibly engaging and I really enjoyed the characters for their imperfections and complexity. The story was fast moving and the ending was satisfying. It was somewhat predictable but not in a disappointing way at all.

Thank you to the publishers and to Netgalley for allowing me to read this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion. If you are an HGTV fan, you may like this read, which focuses on a married couple who film a reality TV show renovating and making over old spaces. Sounds like a show you know, I bet. The reality show in this book is definitely not “real”, as they describe all the reshoots and potential issues that are invented to keep the audience engaged, and the perspective of the public on this couple and their young family may not be rooted in reality, either. How much truth does the public really know about reality show stars vs. how much they think they know? I thought about the public perception of celebrities a decent amount while reading this book.
The couple in the book recently gave birth to twins after some fertility struggles. A foreign supplement not approved by the FDA was used, and there seems to be some lingering negative side effects. Balancing their jobs and the twins is a bigger task than the couple first thought, and the couple’s communication struggles are affecting their home and work lives, which seem hard to separate considering their reality show.
The blurb for this book compares it to Gone Girl, and there are some similar plot points. But I think if you head into reading The Perfect Home with the expectation of the excitement and surprise elements of Gone Girl, you will be disappointed. While there are some thriller elements, this book lacked the “thrill” factor to be truly engaging. I kept reading until the end because I wanted to know how it would wrap things up, more like a mystery than a thriller, but I didn't care all that much about the main or secondary characters, and almost all of them were unlikeable. If you need to like the characters, I don't think this is a book for you.

Gone Girl meets home improvement show was a combo I didn't know I needed until I heard about this book... what a fun and original thriller. It was fast paced and really engaging.

I wanted to love THE PERFECT HOME, but this is not for me. I think this will work well with readers who enjoy a more straightforward, not very gory thriller. A unique premise with the reality TV spin.

This book gave a very good portrayal about how everybody’s truth is different. And how someone can lie to protect themselves and the world will believe it. It broke my heart when Wyatt portrayed Dawn to be this terrible parent so he could look better. And there’s really men out there who do that. They will crush anybody they can for fame and appearances.

There were a lot of elements that seemed like they would work in this book. Dawn and Wyatt are HGTV-esque reality tv stars. They want to have a child. Some of the measures that Wyatt takes to approach his infertility are questionable. I think the blurb of this book gives too much away. How the story unfolds was a bit too unbelievable for me. The dual POV has some redeeming qualities but I think it would have been fine if it was all from Dawn. I kept reading mainly because it was a quick read and I wanted to see how the ridiculousness unfolded. Comparing it to Gone Girl was certainly a stretch!

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

What a fun twist on a domestic thriller. I thought this was really fresh, unique and thoroughly engaging from beginning to end.

This was an interesting book. I have to say I was expecting way more with how they said it was like HGTV meets Gone Girl. I don't really see it, the GG part anyway. There weren't any surprises, but all in all, a good read. I love the concept, the writing was great.....I'll look forward to more from this author.
Thanks to netgalley, the publisher and author for the chance to read this ARC.

Reality TV is not the same as real life.

Husband and wife team Wyatt and Dawn Decker co-host a successful home renovation show , "The Perfect Home", on Home and Lawn TV. Theirs is the most popular show on their network, but in the world of celebrities they are closer to D-listers than they are to A-listers. Which is fine with Dawn....they have earned a lot of money, have a beautiful home in Tennessee and are able to afford the best of care for her mother Harlene May whose health is in decline. Wyatt wants more, and has the vision boards and lofty goals to go along with his pursuit of success. The one thing in their life that has been eluding them is having a baby....Harlene May desperately wants a grandchild and Wyatt and Dawn are more than happy to oblige, but their efforts have not born fruit. When they finally went in for testing they discovered that the problem lays with Wyatt and his low sperm count, which makes the super-achieving Wyatt feel inadequate and sends him off to Google his way into an answer. He lands upon a solution, a male fertility pill not cleared for use in the US which claims to have incredible results....but also bears the risk of some dangerous side effects. Before long Dawn finds herself the mother of twins and the wife of a man who has completely changed, and not for the better. To the world he is still the handsome, charming man over whom female viewers swoon, but to Dawn he has become distant, impatient and possibly very, very dangerous. To TV viewers Dawn has always been the somewhat tart, eye-rolling wife who rains on sweet dreamer Wyatt's parade, so when the marriage difficulties become public almost everyone is immediately on Team Wyatt. Even Dawn's closest friends seem to believe Wyatt's version of events. But Dawn is fighting not just for her own life, but also for her twins'....and its never wise to bet against a mother.
Dawn and Wyatt narrate the book in alternating chapters, so the reader hears each of their versions of the truth and has to decide whom they choose to believe. Has Dawn. abandoned by her father as a young girl and a recovering alcoholic, snapped under the stress of caring for newborn twins while dealing with the loss of an important person in her life? Is Wyatt suffering from the negative side effects of the supplement he took and gaslighting Dawn? Who can be trusted and who in their lives is on whose side? As the story unfolds the reader learns more about the couple, what they have overcome in life, how they met, and how they must now deal with the ugly side of fame. Was their Perfect Home ever truly perfect, and can it be saved? This is a fast-paced thriller with an intriguing plot that has enough twists to keep the reader guessing until the end. The characters aren't heavily nuanced, but each has a story to tell, as do several of the side characters. Readers of authors like Darby Kane, Alafair Burke and Alex Finlay might want to give this a try....I would rate it a solid 3.5 stars rounded up to 4. My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner Books for allowing me early access to a copy of this dark portrait of a marriage gone awry in exchange for my honest review.

2.5 stars - Domestic thriller set in the world of home renovation TV? Yes please! While I was hooked by the premise of The Perfect Home, unfortunately I was let down by the execution. The characters were unlikeable and their behaviors were extremely questionable. I did however enjoy how the author brought attention to the fact that the media plays a huge role in how we perceive and “side” with celebrities, especially in he said/she said situations.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an ARC through NetGalley. Pub date: January 7, 2025

.5 unique plot stars

I went into this one without reading the blurb, which I highly recommend! Too much is given away in the preview!

At first, I thought this was going to be a reality TV/influencer book, and while that is the backdrop, it really had a unique plot and characters I was not expecting.

Dawn and Wyatt Decker are the married couple starring in “The Perfect Home,” a reality TV show about home renovations and some disasters. Wyatt started solo, but after he met Dawn, he brought her on the show, and she got plenty of female fans. She’s down to earth, and Wyatt is the handsome TV star.

Wyatt is definitely keeping some secrets, and I don’t want to give them away in my review. Let’s say he makes some poor choices, leading to a fugitive situation for Dawn and their twins. An unlikely person rescues Dawn, and the plot twists keep coming. My advice: Don’t trust anyone!

I enjoyed getting both Dawn's and Wyatt’s perspectives in this one. It did get a bit popcorn-thriller-y at the end, but I was entertained. I will definitely be open to reading more from this debut author.

This is a great "what might be behind the scenes" both in reality show world and in your friendships and even your marriage!

I love a good reality show - and like to think what the real reality might be. This was a really good page-turner, thriller, and mystery all in one book! Would love to read more about Dawn Decker!