“Christopher and Hannah are a happily married surgeon and nurse with picture-perfect lives. All that’s missing is a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, turns up at their hospital, Christopher forms an instant connection with her, and he convinces Hannah they should take her home as their own.
But Janie is no ordinary child, and her damaged psyche proves to be more than her new parents were expecting. Janie is fiercely devoted to Christopher, but she acts out in increasingly disturbing ways, directing all her rage at Hannah. Unable to bond with Janie, Hannah is drowning under the pressure, and Christopher refuses to see Janie’s true nature.”
As I was reading this book, I kept notes on my phone for this review because I just have so many feelings and thoughts. A few were good thoughts, but mostly it was just things that frustrated me.
I’ll start this review by mentioning my feelings towards one of the main characters, Christoper. Basically, Christopher sucks. If you want to read about a super naive, idiot then you’d probably love this book because that’s exactly how Christopher is. You’d think he would be smart with him being a surgeon but you’d be wrong. Throughout the whole book, Christoper repeatedly ignores red flags and ignores his wife. There’s a specific incident in the book regarding a lost phone and it actually made me want to scream and Christoper. It also made me feel sorry for his wife, Hannah.
Hannah’s character was much better than Christopher’s. Although Hannah had her flaws, it felt as though these added to her character’s likability rather than making me want to put the book down like I did with Christopher. I just wish Hannah’s character was slightly more developed. She felt a little bit flat and uninteresting.
Now, let’s get to the reason that this book was a flop for me. There wasn’t an ending.
That’s right, that book just completely cuts off and it feels like the author just couldn’t be bothered writing anymore. The Perfect Child actually had me gripped at first which is why this isn’t a one start book for me. However, I was very quickly disappointed with the end.
I didn’t expect the book to have a happy ending, but some kind of ending would have been good. The book left me with so many unanswered questions that it made me think we would be getting a second book. But according to google, we aren’t.
If you want to read The Perfect Child then I’d definitely recommend looking up trigger warnings because this book was extremely heavy and dark.
My rating: ★★☆☆☆
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Have you read The Perfect Child? If you did, what did you think? Do you have any book recommendations for me that sound similar?
Positively Eleanor 