Her Perfect Family

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The secrets make you wait for them to get worse, more interesting, worth the kind of events that occurring – and spoiler, they aren’t worth it. But when she stumbles and falls on stage during the ceremony, a beautiful moment turns to chaos: Gemma has been shot, and just like that, she’s fighting for her life.

Of course it could be that I read too many books about dysfunctional families so don’t realise how little pressure is required to bring someone to tipping point. I also thought some of the transitions from flashback to present, or viceversa felt abrupt and choppy. I guess I would have expected once secrets started being exposed, everything would have followed like some sort of waterfall, just tumbling out after each other. Seventeen-year-old Tarryn is dabbling in a seedy online world; her older brother, Eli, has dropped out of college and refuses to tell his parents why; and Thomas and Viv have their own secrets that began as harmless fun and relief from the pressures of everyday life, but have grown into something darker and more dangerous. Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original.We know that Sadie has an ulterior motive and at the beginning I was sympathetic towards her because I believed she was escaping an abusive relationship. When a single night with Frenchman Luc Valentin ends in a pregnancy Shari Lacey thinks she’ll never see the cool Frenchman again. The family installs surveillance cameras but they show nothing but grainy images of shadowy figures in hoodies. Only one of the characters was relatable to me, but I could sympathize with all of them and the personal demons they face, not to mention the one they are facing together. The narratives provide a much-needed access point to allow the reader to delve into the back stories of each of the characters, and their thoughts and feelings as the plot progresses.

The plot goes backwards and forwards piecemeal but without being disjointed to intriguingly fill gaps in the plot jigsaw puzzle. Viv is an interior decorator, and she got her start by helping her husband, Thomas, sell houses by staging them. The difference between the public, and the private face of a family is endlessly interesting to me, and I found this deep dive by Matthew Hill into just what has gone on to lead to the point of attempted murder fascinating. It was great to be back with familiar characters, particularly PI Matthew Hill, who is one of my favourite crime series protagonists. I do like multiple narrators if the author can make them all sound like different people — or objects; I’ve read books in which an object narrates.But something about the holiday home stirs dark memories for Hannah… When she finds dead creatures on the doorstep and hears mysterious knocks at the door, Hannah can’t help wondering whether someone is messing with her—or whether the past she’s been running from has finally claimed her sanity. Learn nine essential ways to detox your mindset, feel lighter and more energised, to live a happier and more fulfilling life.