Blog Tour (Part 2) – Her Perfect Life – Sam Hepburn

BLURB: A brilliantly twisty psychological thriller for fans of I Let You Go and Behind Closed Doors.

How far would you go to create the perfect life?

Gracie Dwyer has it all: the handsome husband, the adorable child, the beautiful home and the glittering career. The perfect life.

Her new friend Juliet doesn’t exactly fit in. She’s a down-on-her-luck single parent with no money and not much hope.

So just what is it that draws Gracie and Juliet together? And when the cracks start to appear in Gracie’s perfect life, can both of them survive?

It was really very late Monday night when I finished this one, so I thought I’d ponder my thoughts on the book, then write up most of my review yesterday, and finish it today.

So we have two women, who couldn’t be more different. They had in fact met six years earlier, when Gracie Dwyer met Juliet at a forum for women starting up in business. At the time, Gracie was impressed by Juliet’s PR skills, and took her card, more or less promising to employ her on any PR campaigns she might need help with. Seeing how hugely successful Gracie has become, Juliet blames her for her own lack of success, as she sees how well she could’ve done as the PR part of the team keeping Gracie’s work running smoothly. Her empire by now encompasses a bakery, tearoom/restaurant, with another on the way, cookery books, and TV series. She’s also waiting on the results of opinion polls commissioned by a US TV company on her shows, which would mean colossal amounts of money. So Juliet – somewhat unfairly, as you can’t win ’em all, and nobody owes you a living – blames Gracie for all her money problems, and the fact she doesn’t have the perfect life Gracie appears to. She doesn’t really do herself any favours, as she drinks too much, making a fool of herself in public, and smokes constantly (no wonder she has money problems!), as well as being engaged in a furious battle over Freya’s custody with Ian, her ex.

However, she manages to ingratiate her way into Gracie’s life, mainly as Gracie feels sorry for Juliet’s daughter Freya not having the same opportunities as Elsie, her (step)daughter with Tom, whose first wife died when Elsie was 10 months old, through an allergic reaction to a wasp sting. While Juliet’s at Gracie’s – whilst staying over after an accident – she does her very best to dig into Gracie’s life, figuring no-one can be as squeaky clean as the persona Gracie presents, with no skeletons in the closet. Her plan is to leak any “skeletons”, making it look as though someone from her current PR company is responsible, then ride to the rescue, saving the day.

Scattered throughout the book are old diary entries from someone called Pauline, but we’ve no idea who this is – whether it’s Juliet or Gracie, with one of them having changed their name, or another character we’ll meet later in the book. What is apparent is that when the diary was written, Pauline wants money, and gets involved in clinical trials to get large amounts of money, very quickly.

To go much further would take us into spoiler territory – but what we end up desperate to know is this: is Gracie really just a family-loving cook who’s struck it lucky in the food world? (For some reason, I totally pictured Kirstie Allsop as Gracie; with a house full of Cath Kidston aprons and tea cosies and tablecloths, etc, etc, and her daughter wearing Boden clothes – you know the type!) Or is Juliet (“one of your waifs and strays,” complains Tom) on a hiding to nothing, looking for skeletons that don’t exist?

I got some of the story bang on, but later on Sam Hepburn really shocked me. It takes quite a while to build to the conclusion, which I thought was a teensy bit far-fetched, but hugely enjoyable at the same time, provoking lots of gasps of “no way!” from me. Perfect if you’re still (like me!) slightly obsessed with “domestic noir” psychological thrillers. And I’ll be intrigued to see what Ms. Hepburn comes up with next.

Recommended.

This book is out tomorrow and is currently £2.99 on Kindle.

With thanks to Harper and NetGalley for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.