The Perfect Stepmother: A totally gripping psychological suspense thriller

I was so engrossed in The Perfect Stepmother I never noticed my OH spilling red wine down my shirt … until he tried to dab it off with a bit of damp paper towelling. One of the beautiful twists in this story is that you find yourself rooting for the person you least expected to be, as does one of the main characters. To name names would be to spoil it. What a cleverly woven plot! At a certain point, you feel you know what the secret The Perfect Stepmother carries is, but actually you don’t. I loved the build-up of hostility in Lily towards a woman stepping into her dear lost mother’s shoes far too soon after her death, marrying her father and quickly winning the affection of her five year old sister, little Emma, who so needs a mummy. Lily’s story has a naturalness to it that’s totally relatable to. She’s left home. She has a lovely boyfriend and a life of her own, but of course she is going to be protective of her vulnerable father and little sister. They’ve all lost a pivotal person in their lives to breast cancer. The question is, is Lily too protective? I really had to know how this would play out. I have to say that the author handled the subject matter with complete sensitivity – also making the reader think of those little things one might do to make a sufferer’s life a little easier or happier. To The Perfect Stepmother herself, I wasn’t sure I could quite believe it, but here’s the thing, I did. Utterly. The ending was ‘perfect’. I have to say Gareth came through for me one hundred percent. He didn’t fall in love too easily. He fell in love. He trusted his instincts. This is a thoroughly engaging story with lots of juicy twists to keep you reading and one I would highly recommend.

An enjoyable story, written in an easy to read style that you don't have to concentrate on. It's one of those books you can read in a day without thinking too much about it. The plot was decent and there were enough twists thrown in to keep in interesting. I would read more from this author

This psychological thriller follows Lily and her new stepmother Maria.Lily is upset as her Dad has moved on only a year after her Mum died, so she tries to dig into Maria’s life to see if she has anything to hide.Maria runs a successful beauty salon and gives free beauty treatments to cancer patients; she has a past but is trying to make amends.When Emma, Lily’s little sister goes missing all secrets are revealed in the race to find her in time.What is Maria hiding? Who has Emma?There is plenty of suspense and secrets throughout this psychological thriller, and it is told by both Lily and Maria through different chapters. You first read about Emma’s disappearance and then you go back to find out what has happened to lead up to this terrible day.I really ended up feeling sorry for Maria and thought what she had done to amend for her past was amazing.I can understand Lily’s upset as no one wants to think of a new person replacing their mother as it must be heart-breaking if you are still grieving.Overall, a suspense filled psychological thriller where a hidden past comes back to haunt this family.

Not A BAD story, though the writing irritated me throughout.The writer seems to be heavily dependant on her word counter as SO much of the text is unnecessary. Writer – please note, sometimes less is MORE. We don’t NEED to know the colour or fabric of a garment if it doesn’t add to the story, anymore than we need to know the other irrelevant domestic details that are constantly added. A lesson in tenses also wouldn’t go astray, ‘what happened the year before’ reads so much better than ‘what happened a year ago’. It all makes the text so conversational, as if the writer is relaying the story to a friend rather than trying to write a serious novel.The cliff-hanger chapter endings also grated, as the chapters didn’t seem long enough to warrant them. The writer seemed to spend the majority of the book trying to build a level of suspense that wasn’t equalled in the quick telling of the what actually happened, due to repetition, repetition and dare I say, it even MORE repetition.The writing was technically okay, (the writer obviously uses a spell checker connected to her word counter) and I can only imagine how long she spent poring over the draft before release, but if I were her, I’d give her next work to an experienced beta reader (or at least invest in a talking word processor so she can hear how it sounds to others ears).Character wise, I wanted to slap Lily throughout, having no empathy for her whatsoever and think the long suffering Seb should have left her years ago (or should that be ‘years before’?)Not a terrible read, but the story could have been told in far fewer words in a much more beautiful way. Three stars given for the premise of the idea, the lack of typos and being bothered to take it to press, but it didn’t light up my life.

I found this an enjoyable 1st read from this author - not "omg I want to read it again" but enjoyable enough to want to read more by her. some parts of the story line didn't quite gel as I think manslaughter rather than murder might have been more appropriate, but not bad enough to make me stop reading.

Have just read all Karen Kings thrillers and they are extremely enjoyable books, they really keep you interested all the way through to the very end. They do always seem to take on the same format, but not in a bad way. This book is really worth 5 stars and all at only £1.99.

Interesting

Must read

Original plot. It seemed to drag in the middle for a while, but well written and exciting otherwise.

There was enough twists and intrigue in this book to keep me interested. The plot was good and the characters believable. It wasn’t too predictable so would be happy to read another book by this author.

Good book