Having previously enjoyed two books by J.P. Delaney I was not sure about this book in the first few pages, whether it was my sort of book. I very soon realised it was probably the best of the author's books so far, very cleverly set out. In the numerical chapters Abbie refers to herself as You; in the spelt out numbers (ONE, TWO etc) the employees of Tim's company observe Abbie and her relationship with Tim and what goes on that leads to Abbie's present existence, following Abbie's disappearance. The concept of robots and AI (artificial intelligence) is explored. Danny's autism and how the family cope with it is fascinating and it wasn't until the Acknowledgements that I appreciated J.P. Delaney's obvious understanding of the condition. This is an excellent psychological thriller with several twists that I really didn't see coming. Fascinating reading. Four and a half stars for me.
Many thanks to Netgalley/J.P. Delaney/Quercus Books for a digital copy of this excellent title. All opioniions expressed are my own.

The Perfect Wife is the second book I’ve read by J.P.Delaney and although it was ok but it wasn’t as good as The Girl Before.
This if I’m honest was a book I struggled to get into, the book was too long and dragged in parts so it never shouted “read me!” like a lot of books do. Yes, there will be a lot of people who really enjoy this book and will hate that I’ve given it 3 stars but I have to be honest.
The two main characters were Tim and Abbie, one human one a cobot but both unlikeable. Tim is head CEO at a computer tech business and is helping form an artificial intelligence android version of his dead wife, Abbie. The mystery is where is his wife, is she dead or alive? The cobot Abbie looks identical to her and has the human Abbie’s memory’s uploaded to her in the hope that she will be able to find human Abbie. The chapters are told in before Abbie went missing, so human Abbie and after by the cobot Abbie, this I found confusing at times.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Quercus Books for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

The Perfect Wife was a controversial read for me as I like JP Delany’s books but don’t like sci-fi and usually struggle with second person narrative. Well, it certainly messed with my head! Whilst I found it difficult to come to terms with the whole concept of AI and completely suspend belief, it did make me think and question some preconceptions, which is a true sign of a good story. I love that every JP Delany’s book is different and as you start reading them you never know what you are getting yourself in for but can certainly count on it to be gripping, thought-provoking and original. I cannot wait to see what the author has next in store.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

I hadn't read any reviews before I requested an advance copy of this book. A few pages into this book I thought to myself this book is not for me! But I was definitely wrong!! Tim an amazingly intelligent techno company owner decides to build a robot of his missing wife Abbie. The book is written mainly from her perspective. Abbie the cobot was built to have empathy which makes her more human-like.. when Abbie arrives home for the first time she is introduced to her autistic son Danny. During the book Abbie the cobot tries to unravel the mystery of Abbie's disappearance while also trying to be a mother to Danny and a wife to Tim.. Sometimes while I was reading I felt Abbie the cobot was human and the author did such a good job of making her character so real! The reader is brought on an exciting path with Abbie the cobot investigating Abbie's disappearance with what memories have been uploaded and her last movements. The twist at the end is brilliant and not what i was expecting at all!!

I have read JP Delaney’s books before and enjoyed them.
This was no exception.
Writing in short chapters it makes the book fast paced which I love.
It was easy to follow and a little different from previous books.
I enjoyed it

JP Delaney’s novel The Perfect Wife is an unnerving, skewed story of grief, our obsession with perfection and that with work, AI and our digital footprints, relationship double standards, and conflicting child-rearing approaches.

JP Delaney takes us to Silicon Valley in his latest novel and where better to explore the line between what’s human and what machines are capable of, where machine learning can help improve our understanding of ourselves and where it falls short. It’s the perfect technology sandbox for a writer who is adept at exposing what lies behind the perfect facades we think we see, and for delving into the darkest corners of our minds and behaviour.

JP Delaney shows us how quickly lines (and boundaries) can blur and where difficulties in not only navigating, but also in regulating the use of AI and controlling our social media footprint may lie. He highlights how blinkered grief, work and obsession can make us, how dangerous they can be when they run (almost) unchecked. He also pits two parents against each other, each with a differing view on how to raise their autistic child and some scenes dealing with controversial teaching methods made for especially uncomfortable reading, which I've no doubt was intended.

I always feel a creeping feeling of unease while reading JP Delaney’s books and that’s strangely heightened here. Abbie’s confusion surrounding her accident, the gaps in her memory, and the troubling feelings she has – for her husband, son and her sister, in particular – all contribute. I couldn’t help but feel a real sense of the jeopardy she is in and rail against the unfairness of her situation, while also finding it odd to feel so strongly about her.

If you’ve read any JP Delaney books, you’ll know that The Perfect Wife here is a misnomer; in reality, she’s as flawed as any other construct or human counterpart. But that does mean she’s also capable of surprising us and it’s this which lends the ending its humanity and hope for the future, whether of AI or humans is for you to decide. It’s another excellent, twisted, thought-provoking thriller from its author.

I requested this book having read "The Girl Before" by the same author expecting another fast paced thriller, and whilst it is that, it is considerably more - part thriller, part science fiction. As someone who would never generally choose to read science fiction, I was initially unconvinced that this would be a book for me. It took me a little while to get my head round it, but once I did it became an entertaining, thought-provoking and original read.

The main character, Abbie, is married to Silicon Valley CEO Tim and together they have an autistic son. Abbie wakes in hospital with no memory of what has happened - it transpires that she disappeared five years before and her husband has created a "cobot", a companion robot, of Abbie.

What the book does very well is blend the elements together - in an overpopulated genre, Delaney brings additional layers to the domestic thriller, raising some thought-provoking issues around the issue of artificial intelligence, as well as bringing personal experience to issues surrounding bringing up an autistic child. As a result the book draws you in and I thoroughly enjoyed its twists and turns to its conclusion.

I'm not sure that the description of this book as a psychological thriller is completely accurate.

It's an interesting story but there are too many themes within it and at times I found the jumping in time line a bit confusing. I'm not sure if it was a murder mystery, futuristic Sci Fi thriller or love story.

For me, definitely not as good as The Girl Before.

Even if you don't look at the book cover, you can always tell when you're reading this author's novels, by the original ideas it contains, the creepy, menacing undertone, and the importance of technology to the story. The only negative is that the ending doesn't necessarily reflect, the careful suspense building of the previous chapters.

'The Perfect Wife', is a true mix of genres. A psychological thriller, set in a science-fiction world, with mystery, suspense and family drama. The story is told from different points of view drawing you in from its traumatic beginning.

The protagonists are unreliable, and many of the characters are hard to empathise, but this doesn't matter. As the story unravels and the disclosures from the past, illuminate the present, you keep reading because you have to know what happens next.

Even though most of the characters lack redeeming features, they are realistic, despite, the setting and ethos of the story being hard to believe. Whilst, I don't like everything about this story, it is compelling reading.

Breathtaking, disturbing and original, this is a reading experience that shouldn't be missed.

I received a copy of this book from Quercus via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

An entertaining thriller if you let it take you along for the ride. 3/5 stars.

This is a page-turning thriller which would be an ideal book to take with you on holiday. If you read it quickly, focussing on the plot and seeking to know what will happen next, I'm sure you'll find it an entertaining mystery with sci-fi elements and a great way to pass a few hours. Each short chapter attempts to set up a cliffhanger to carry you across to the next and most of the time these are entirely successful.

I must also praise the author for the brave and highly-effective use of the second person singular as the narrative voice in one of the story threads and then the first person plural in the other. Both of these choices work really well, reflect the degree of disassociation the AI cobot feels between its new and former identity and sets things up nicely for the reveals at the end.

The problems for me come from overthinking things! The more you reflect on the set-up and the ins and outs of how the cobots would actually work - and perhaps I do this because I've read quite a bit of sci-fi - holes in the plot start to appear. Also, the characters aren't especially likeable, and if you stop to dwell on this it is quite off-putting.

I also felt the end was sadly rushed. I thought this was a shame because there was a sense of great momentum buidling towards the conclusion, so for the last few chapters to pass in an under-explained and under-explored blur was a wasted opportunity when they could have rewarded the reader for their investment in the story with a far more satisfying pay off.

And finally, and I know this probably won't occur to many readers, I take issue with a few of the things that are said about autism in The Perfect Wife. I note that the author has used his own experiences with his son when creating the character of Danny. But, given the author has such personal experience of autism, it surprises me even more that the book contains a few unhelpful generalisations which do nothing to dispel misconceptions about ASD. The worst, in my opinion, is the reiteration of the idea that autistic people have no empathy/are incapable of empathy. I'm not going to go off on one here as to why that's not the case, but if you're interested, there's a useful short article about it here. Anyway, I do appreciate this is a personal gripe which is unlikely to irritate most readers, but it did reduce my enjoyment of the book as a whole as it was something I couldn't get past.

Overall: follow the pace set by the short chapters and don't think too much about how the cobots are supposed to work, and you're sure to find The Perfect Wife an entertaining thriller.

The protagonist in this book was an artificial intelligence robot called Abbie. She is uploaded with original Abbie’s memories, and she feels like a human. And that is where it doesn’t make sense to me. Sometimes Abbie is very human-like, the way she thinks and the way she behaves, and sometimes she is a simple machine, and my brain admires and despises her at the same time. :D I really liked other characters in this book though. I think the real Abbie, her husband and all background characters are really well crafted and very intriguing. I don’t really like reading books about disabilities, but I really liked the way the author delivered Danny’s character. It was insightful and I learned a lot about autistic children.
The narrative of this book had me intrigued, I really wanted to find out what happened to the real Abbie. I liked the twists and turns that the author incorporated throughout the book. It was very clear from previous novels, that the author loves IT, but I think in this book he overdid it, and it feels more of a Sci-fi than an actual psychological thriller. The narrative was told from multiple perspectives, one being an anonymous employee, who was telling the real story, and I think that was a genius move. The anonymous narrator’s parts were the most interesting ones for me.
The writing style was gripping and intriguing. The atmosphere of the book keeps changing, depending on the narrator and I really liked that. The chapters were short and the pages just flew by. I did enjoy the robot’s investigation into what really happened to Abbie, but I think the ending of the book was really poor and left me disappointed.

Ummm… What did I just read? This book was not what I was expecting! What an original story idea!

Having loved Delaney’s previous books The Girl Before and Believe Me I knew I was going to be in for a treat, but this book was…different. In a good way – just different. First of all, it very much blurs the lines between thriller and sci-fi. I’m not usually a fan of sci-fi, but in this book it totally works. Delaney is a master writer, and he does a great job of setting things up in a realistic (if that’s possible for sci-fi? lol) way. Every twist and turn was perfectly executed, the themes are wonderfully explored (hello book clubs!) and Abbie was an exquisitely drawn character.

When Abbie goes missing, still not found after five years, her tech-genius husband, Tim, recreates her as a co-bot (companion robot). But the more Abbie finds out about her life, the more she begins to question everything she’s being told. And so she decides to find out what happened to the real Abbie.

Original, clever and intriguing, I couldn’t put the book down because the story itself was so unique. I did find the use of second person extremely distracting at first, but I got used to it and realized at the end why this was a necessary storytelling tool. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the book since I read it!

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy of The Perfect Wife in exchange for my honest opinion.

As usual I’m way behind with my reviews and as usual I had forgotten what this book was about when originally requesting it! I’m glad I did though as it was an unexpected pleasure. At first I did not like the tense [some of it] it was written in, I found it very confusing but I got used to it and eventually realised the why. It wasn’t perfect (haha) but it was certainly different and held my attention well. Think Stepford wives meets I Robot with a sprinkling of Sleeping with the Enemy and you’ve got yourself a cracking little psychological thriller. JP Delaney is climbing up the ladder of my favourite authors. My thanks to Quercus and Netgalley for and ARC in return for an honest review.

** SPOILER ALERT** I would have liked to know who the ‘unknown employee/narrator’ was!

Abbie doesn't understand why she cannot remember the accident her husband Tim says happened 5 years ago but then how could she when she isn't the 'real' Abbie. This is in the present tense with flashbacks as she does have some memories and her personality is just as the previous Abbie would have but she doesn't know what happened to the original wife and as the plot gets more intense I had no idea who to trust or whether her or Tim's intentions were to the benefit of their son. Not everyone thinks Abbie is great and its unsure who is revealing this so it makes the story all the more interesting. I was very surprised at who was actually narrating and as I thought I had the answers I needed something else was revealed that I hadn't even thought of. This is a great read and keeps you on your toes and totally runs through your emotions.
Thank you to NetGalley for the copy of the book.

Having read the previous books by JP Delaney I was thrilled to get this one and was really looking forward to reading it.

Unfortunately it just didn’t work for me, it’s difficult to give a full review on what I didn’t like as it will give away plot spoilers I jut think this story just didn’t work for me personally. The flipping back and forth was more distracting than helping with the story. I did have to know how it ended though. So carried on until the end. I just found some of this a little far fetched. Data protection etc being a hot topic at the moment as well.

I would like to thank netgalley and the publishers for giving me a chance to read this ARC and give an honest and unbiased review.

Having raced through his previous two novels under this pseudonym, I was looking forward to reading this new offering. An interesting amalgam of subjects – AI and advancing technologies, “cobots”, autism, infatuation and a murder mystery to boot. It sounds a bizarre concept, but it works well. I was hooked almost immediately with the fast-going pace. Novels about AI seem to be gaining popularity in the mainstream. A quick read with some thought-provoking topics. I suspect that the portrayal of Danny’s particular manifestation of autism will be a sensitive issue for some, however from the afterword it’s clearly a subject that is close to the author’s heart as he has personal insight into the various forms of autism and therapies available. I predict it’ll be another bestseller. I predict it’ll be another bestseller.

First up a huge thank you to netgalley and Querus for the ARC. I'm a huge J.P Delaney fan so was super excited to get an early copy.

This is the 3rd psychological thriller from this amazing author & each one gets better & better.

This novel is complete rollercoaster ride that will have you on the edge of your seat and breathless by the end. Gripping is an understatement.

Centred around Abbie and the past 5 years. Written in 2 narratives, one is Abbie in the present day and another is a filler of the past 5 years.

I found myself slightly confused at point when it jumps around the fact that there are 2 main characters with the same name but once I'd got completely immersed I was fine.

A brilliant, twisty, captivating novel!

This book is just brilliant! Honestly, there are not enough words to describe how good this book is. The book is about Abbie and her struggle to cope in the present five years after an accident. JP Delaney writes from two perspectives. One is narrative that fills in the previous to the present and the second is that of Abbie. Such a rollercoaster and very unputdownable!

The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney, is the third psychological thriller that has come from this stunning author. I was lucky enough to request the book and was so pleased to find out that they had let me have the ARC for an honest review, so thank you to NetGally and Quercus.

What a page tuner! I literally couldn't stop reading it, straight from the start the book grips you with its creepy and eerie writing. The characters in the book were likeable, I mostly liked Abbie and her young son Danny.

The book focuses around AI-Abbie and her current state in life and how she got there, as the story unfolds its clear how mess-up things out. Put it this way, if you love futuristic things, technology or even the TV programme Westworld, then you'll love this read.

In places, the book does get slightly confusing with flitting from the past and present, whilst being narrated by a few characters and there being two main people of the same name., though once you get used to it, then it's fine. The ending took me a little while to get my head around it, but once I did...wow. That's all I can say.

After devouring The Girl Before and Believe Me, JP Delaney is back with another brilliant and twisty novel that literally kept me on the edge of my seat. Weird and dark is one way to describe it, brilliant is another, utterly captivating is another one.

JP Delaney mixes artificial intelligence and obsession to create a mystery thriller set in Silicon Valley, the world’s capital of technology. Abbie Cullen is a beautiful and smart artist. Tim Scott is the founder of Scott Technologies, an innovative start-up. Tim and Abbie meet, fall in love, get married, and have a child. It’s the perfect love story, right? However, nothing is perfect in their love story and, as the author narrates Abbie and Tim’s romance from the beginning to the present day when Tim’s love leads him to use technology to create the perfect wife, I couldn’t help but wonder: was Abbie and Tim’s marriage as happy and perfect as it seemed?

Tim is considered a genius, driven and brilliant. Like all the male protagonists in JP Delaney’s novel, he is also obsessed. He is looking for perfection and, for him, perfection is embodied in Abbie. However, Abbie is a drug addict, a free spirit who doesn’t like to be controlled so Tim uses technology to turn her into the perfect woman, the perfect wife he’s been looking for. What started as a story of grief, great love, and second chances, turned into a psychological thriller about obsession and perfection.

The story is original and thought-provoking, full of intrigue, family drama, and suspense. Some of the story is hard to believe and yet there are themes that rise a few moral and ethical questions about our use of technology, artificial intelligence, data rights, and consent.

For me, THE PERFECT WIFE is JP Delaney’s best novel so far. It’s riveting, twisty and the jaw-dropping ending completely took me by surprise, and now I am already looking forward to the author’s next novel. A must-read not to miss!!!