Loved this book, almost as much as I love Emily. She really has got her plot twists down to a perfection. She always writes such relatable and realistic characters. Kind of like a person you would meet walking down the street.

Emily writes at such a great pace too, there isn't a lot of info drop and back story to her characters, making them very easy to binge read!

This book was a pleasant escape, with a truly crazy ending. It would be a great book for the beach, but we can all enjoy it this summer from wherever we end up staying or going.

Ward was a famous author who seemingly dropped off of the face of the Earth after her teenage daughter goes missing. Bree is a journalist-type who met Ward that same night, and now wants to find her write her true-crime story.

I couldn't really understand either main character's motives in this one, even though it's mostly their dialogue with other people, you still don't get a sense of why any of these people did/are doing anything. There are a lot of men that are entwined in this book, and although they all seem innocent enough, they did put a decent idea in my head as I was reading about who can be trusted - which made it fun. I thought that it would be a slow-burn thriller but I really never got a "burn" or a "WOW" moment. It was an interesting read since it does go back and forth between Bree and Ward's POV's.. so that kind of has you waiting for something to happen. It has a decent twist, but a little too foreseeable to me, and I'm not totally sure WHAT to think about the drop off of an ending. (Although it was probably the most chilling part of the book)!

Thanks to NetGalley, Gallery Books and Emily Liebert for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is one of my favorite reads of 2020!! It’s soo good and you most definitely won’t want to stop until you finish it all in one sitting! Emily is highly one of my go to authors when I want an amazing book! She out did herself with this one!!

I'm a fan of domestic suspense novels, but unfortunately Perfectly Famous is not a winner for me. I simply could not connect with Bree and her motivation for tracking down Ward, especially when her own daughter, Chloe, needed her. And I grew tired of the many phone conversations between Bree and her best friend, Maggie, which did not move the plot forward at all.

The book started off strong but I felt the story fell apart towards the end. It wasn't a badly written story but it didn't blow me away. It felt more like a family drama and not a mystery.

Take a reclusive author, the mysterious abduction of her daughter, an ambitious suburban housewife, mix in a gruff newspaper editor and a group of loyal friends from high school and you have Emily Liebert’s delicious mystery Almost Famous.

Bree Bennett gave up her career as a TV producer to retire to Fairfield, CT to become another suburban housewife spending her day in yoga wear shopping for things she doesn’t need. After her divorce, she is hired by the town paper to write local human interest stories. She has something else in mind. Ward DeFleur is a famous local author who stopped writing after her daughter Stevie’s kidnapping and presumed murder. A caretaker lives in her abandoned mansion and no one has any idea where Ward has gone. Bree, mother to a daughter Stevie’s age went she went missing, becomes obsessed with Ward and wants to do a multi-part story on the mystery surrounding her. In a parallel story, encouraged by her friends, Bree begins to date again. After some very funny failures with online and blind dating, she is attracted to the dependable Scott but tempted by the charismatic Ethan.

Bree’s search for Ward collides spectacularly and dangerously with Ward’s attempt to stay hidden. There are many surprises here and the totally unexpected ending predicts a second mystery. That abrupt ending is the reason my rating is 4 stars. Almost Famous is well written and plotted with believable characters. It’s suspenseful with touches of humor. I can’t wait for the Emily Liebert’s next book.

Thanks to NetGalley, Gallery Books and Emily Liebert for this ARC.

Thank you Netgally and Gallery for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

How important are book endings for you? For me they hold the power to make or break a book.
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I had read a previous Emily Liebert book, Pretty Revenge, didn’t love it, but liked it enough to give her another shot.
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This cover is amazing and it sounded really good. So I figured why not?
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Perfectly Famous was a great book the first 3/4 of it, I loved it and it kept my attention. Then the last 1/4 of this book had me thinking what am I reading? It just completely fell apart for me and it took this from being a great read to an ok read.
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Going into this one I had seen a bunch of complaints on the ending and I’m going to have to agree with those complaints.
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Definitely check this one out if you want to know what everyone is talking about! And maybe you will like the direction the ending goes in!

Perfectly Famous has two great main characters, Ward and Bree. Even though their lives intersect briefly at a book signing at the beginning of the book, they later become entwined when Bree decides to write a feature article about Ward's disappearance from the public. Secrets are uncovered and people's true selves are revealed.

This was a story full of surprises and an twist at the end that I didn't see coming. I knew that there was at least one bad person in the story, I just wasn't able to figure out which one it was going to be. And the ending made my jaw drop. Seriously, what just happened?

I read a couple of Emily's early books but not anything recently. I love the direction she is taking with her writing and I definitely need to go back and read the rest of her books.

I really enjoyed this suspenseful mystery. It was well written and although I sort of figured out the mystery of Ward there were enough red herrings to make me keep second guessing myself. It's a quick read and I felt like the end left it open for a sequel, which I would definitely read.. I will be reading more by Emily Liebert. Thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC.

This was an OK mystery/thriller. It would have been better had the ending been less “dramatic” and the plot been more plausible. I still don’t get why some random person would go on a quest to find someone they met for 10 seconds. Just didn’t seem realistic, but the writing was good and I did move through the story pretty quick. Chloe was annoying and I’m thanking my lucky stars I don’t have children!

I received an advance copy. All thoughts are my own.

Wow! Twists and turns in every direction right up to the very end.
The characters are easy to like and all very interesting. Nice mix of male and female too.
I know some people don’t like books that switch viewpoints, but this one is very well done. Chapter headings ID the viewpoint, so it’s easy to follow.

Thank you Gallery Books for the free Netgalley copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This is my first book by this author, but I’m no stranger to seeing the gorgeous covers of her books all over bookstagram. I snagged an egalley of this book when I saw it available as “read now” on netgalley.

It was super binge-worthy right from the start. (Even though it felt like it took me ages to read, because I was reading 500 other things at the same time. 🤦🏼‍♀️😂) Ward’s sections were my favorite to read so the fact that we often got multiple chapters from Bree between Ward’s, kept me going.

There were plenty of characters that were unreliable and made you wonder if they were really who they said they were. For a while I was definitely convinced one of the main characters was actually someone else.

The end is where the author lost me. The last 20 or so pages felt very rushed and out of no where. I was almost able to overlook that and enjoy it for what it was, but then that last paragraph... I’m all for WTF endings, but this one was even too much for me. I think it’s definitely an ending that readers will either love or hate and unfortunately it just didn’t work for me. I look forward to giving Liebert’s other novels a try in the future.

Ward DeFleur is a best-selling writer. Each book seems to do better than the last, and her newest is no different. The first book signing of Mysterious Stranger has fans lined up just for a chance to get her autograph, maybe a photo. But when Bree meets Ward that night, all she can do is burst into tears. Ward is kind to her, but shortly after, Ward has to leave her own book signing. Her teenaged daughter Stevie had been abducted and brutally attacked.

After a year, Bree is finally getting her life back together. The breakup of her marriage had been difficult for her emotionally. So much so that she broke down in front of author Ward DeFleur at a book signing. Bu she’s feeling much stronger now. Although her teenage daughter Chloe is angry with her (what teenage daughter isn’t angry with her mother?), Bree is determined to get back out there. She has an interview with a local newspaper, and her friend Maggie is setting her up on a date.

But Bree can’t stop thinking about Ward. While her daughter had been rescued from her attacker, she had died in the hospital soon after. And then Ward disappeared. The rest of her book tour had been cancelled. She’d written no new books. Bree even tried talking to Ward’s publisher and her agent, but she got nowhere. Emails to Ward had gone unanswered. Calls no longer went through when they tried her cell phone. She just vanished. No one knew where she was.

But Bree is a journalist. She decides to keep digging, wanting to pitch it to her newspaper editor as a possible series on true crime. So she keeps digging. Bree finds out Ward’s real name. She finds a handsome, charming brother of Ward’s. And a source even tells her where she may be living now. And although Bree’s friends and family warn her about the danger, she refuses to listen and keeps digging.

But does she dig a hole she can’t dig herself out of?

Emily Liebert’s Perfectly Famous goes along like a house on fire. Alternating between Bree and Ward, this thriller builds in intensity and complexity for most of the book. It’s a quick and easy read, the pages going by like butter. I really loved this book, most of the way through. That ending though. There are a couple of scenes late in the book that are disarming and unsettling, and not in an enjoyable way. It’s unfortunate, as I was there for the ride for a good long time. I was just sad at those last couple of disappointing twists.

I’m not sorry that I read this book. It’s an interesting story and a lot of fun to spend time with, for the most part. But the ending doesn’t live up to the promise made to us for 90 percent of the book.

Galleys for Perfectly Famous were provided by Gallery Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.

This book was an interesting read. I enjoyed reading it, but it lost something in the end. It left me confused and wishing it was different. I will read the author’s next book and hope it will be more solid beginning to end. Thanks to the publishers and netgalley for the advanced copy.

From my blog: Always With a Book:

This is the first book I've read by Emily Liebert and it certainly won't be the last one I read. She has such an engaging writing style and I was hooked right from the start!

This is a fast-paced thriller which makes for a quick read. I read this in one day as I just could not put it down. I was equally invested in both characters and needed to know how things would turn out for both of them. I enjoyed all the twists and turns this book took...as I didn't see most of them coming. It was addicting and the suspense and tension were building at just the right pace. But then we get to the ending and I felt like it went a step too far. There was just one twist too many.

I was really enjoying this book up until that ending. Maybe I didn't always agree with all the decisions that the characters made, especially Bree, but I still admired her dogged determination to find out just what happened to Ward. And I was rather curious about Ward...just how long would she stay hidden and would she ever go back to writing? Throughout the book, the twists kept me hooked and I liked that I didn't see them coming. It made me even more eager to see just where things were headed. But then that ending...WTH??? I could have done without that last scene.

I'll still be reading more from this author as I really like her writing style. This is definitely what I would call a popcorn thriller - it's a fun, easy read that's completely binge-worthy.

Perfectly Famous by Emily Liebert is a thriller that started off with such potential. It wasn't particularly well-written, but I was entertained by it for about 70% of the story. By the last few chapters, I was struggling—not just with whether or not the choices the characters were making were believable, but whether the last chunk of the book had been edited or reviewed at all. The final page included the worst (and most unnecessarily dramatic and random) ending I've read in years. If I had been reading a paper-edition of the book, I would have thrown it across the room—instead, I sat wondering what on earth I had just read. Since we're still a month away from the publication date, I'm hoping it's not too late for those final pages to be ripped out of the book before it heads to stores.

I wasn't a huge fan of Ms Liebert's prior novel but this one...this one!!!

Yeah, to say I really liked it is an understatement- other figuring things out (pretty much)and being disappointed with the end but that's ok because, yeah,it did work.

Ms Liebert has written a clever fast paced book.I didn't really like either Bree or Ward BUT this made the book even better for me.

WHAT A RIDE!!!

The Basics:
Six months ago, Ward, an author who is kicking off a massive book tour, receives word that her daughter is missing, and the news quickly gets worse. However, moments before receiving the worst blow a mother can suffer, she comforts Bree, a recently divorced mother who is trying to reclaim her life. Presently, Ward, unable to shake her grief, is off the grid, and Bree, hoping to jumpstart her career as a journalist and to adequately thank Ward for helping her in her own time of need, decides to find Ward and write her story.

Simply put, this book is a page-turner. Each time a new character is introduced, we readers get an anxiety bump because we don’t know whom to trust. Is one of these people responsible for the death of Ward’s daughter? If so, which one? I had to keep reading to find out!!

Beyond the mystery, this book nails two of the biggest fears in women’s lives: 1) What if something terrible happens to one of my children? 2) What happens if I get divorced, my child no longer needs me (or even likes me), my career played second fiddle to my family and now I’m left without a real contribution to the work force, and subsequently I become irrelevant? The emotions behind these explorations are real in this novel, and they’re handled expertly.

As a little perk, we get this interesting dynamic in which Ward handles and analyzes what happened to her daughter as a mother but also through the lens of an author, and that was really interesting to read and to ponder. It provided Ward with a unique perspective that I very much enjoyed.

So, yeah, I highly recommend this one. From start to finish, it’s a good time. Oh, and that ending!! I’ll just say, “WOW,” and call it a day. Enjoy!!

Really wanted to like this one but it seemed like a typical thriller... unfortunately the ending was just a little much for me and I found myself rolling my eyes. This won't be a thriller that I am recommending.