This book is actually 3 stories in 1 book. The 3 Imperfect Women have been best friends since college days. Each one has a (very long) chapter describing herself and her frame of mind.
The book starts out with a murder - one of these women has been murdered. She had had dinner with one of the friends and was going to meet her lover, David.
I thought that this book was like reading a soap opera - there was a lot of repetition, and it dragged on and on. None of these women seemed to have a moral compass - every man (including her best friend's husband) was fair game. I would have liked more background on how these frenemies ever got together because I honestly can't see what they had in common, and noticed that the man swapping began early in their friendship. These 3 women were completely self absorbed, and irritating. They constantly made poor decisions without looking at the consequences.
Mary was the saddest character with an intolerable situation made worse when her husband quickly developed a debilitating disease. This disability appeared within a few months of the murder but was completely unrelated to it) about the time that Mary was becoming more independent and thinking about a job which would use her education.
I thought that Eleanor (who opens the book with her story) seemed pretty independent, and altruistic but also had her share of secrets and lies.
Nancy supposedly had "the perfect life" married to a successful human rights lawyer, with a teenage daughter who was bright and beautiful (like her mother). Things on the exterior were totally different behind their closed doors (of course we never know what really goes on behind closed doors). I honestly never knew what attracted her to her lover, especially when we found out who he was.
I think this book could have benefitted from starting with the murder (as it did) but weaving the character development and story line to make the reader appreciate what the women were really like and what drew them to each other, and maintained their friendships through 20 some years. In the presentation of each woman's story in a single chapter, I felt that they were each boring, self centered women and I could care less what happened to them.
I was given a eARC of this book through NetGalley and the MCD publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Actual Star Rating - 3.5

Ugh. I really really wanted to love this one, but it just didn't hit the mark for me. It's not that the book was bad, because it was actually quite dark and entertaining, but I don't think I was personally in the right headspace at the time.

Araminta did a marvelous job of crafting extremely interesting female characters - with a lot of secrets and lies. I think where I fell out of love with them was the fact that everyone was sleeping with eachother's husband's! It just made me feel a little icky. I wasnt super invested in what happened to the characters in the end as well ... and it felt a bit rushed at the close.

I'll absolutely read another book by Araminta in the future. I know a lot of people who like this genre will love the book and I would definitely recommend to people who love a good psychological thriller.

3.75* from me making it a very good read.
The first book for me by this author. A UK author.
A story of the long standing friendship of 3 women from each of their points of view in 3 different sections. It is well written.
Each have their hidden secrets, desires,disappointments,guilt and self destructive behaviour.
As the title suggests all imperfect, non particularly likeable. It has a real feel about it.
It makes you think if only the friends hadn’t kept so many secrets their lives could have been so different, but then we’d have no story 😂
Listed as a mystery thriller but has more of a chick lit feel to it for me.
I liked how the turn of events are revealed at the end.

This book is literally PERFECT. I really enjoyed Our Kind of Cruelty and I'm shocked at how much more I liked this book? This book goes into women's identities in such a deep and real way. I was highlighting sooo much in this book and I feel like this book explained feelings and experiences I've had in a way I never could have articulated. I loved the structure of the book, how we get three sections for each women as opposed to alternating POV chapters. I loved this story. Everyone should read it!

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book. A book about friendships, a possible murder, sex and even more lies, is my type of TEA!

Nancy, Eleanor and Mary have been best friends for years, they have had their challenges and like most friends they all grow up and some might drift away for reasons known and unknown, but the secrets between this circle of women is something that made me a little uneasy,. I am not going to lie.

This book had a lot going on and this is something that I loved, the mystery of Nancy’s death, and the secrets of an affair, and us not knowing anything until the very middle, when we get to know more about Nancy, and her relationship with her husband, and then who her real lover is, and who he is connected to, is CRAY!!!! And lets not forget how every person in this book is a key player to everything that’s going on, especially the pat one person you don’t expect, this book was great with the twists and the turns. The ending was a little slow for me, I expected it to be more of a jaw dropper like this whole book has been from the beginning.

3.5 imperfect stars!

I am so torn on how I feel about this book.

On one hand, I loved the conversation this book had on feminism, and being a woman. BUT on the other hand, I felt like this was just so slow and long.

For a 304 page book, this felt like it took an eternity for me to read.

This is being marketed as a mystery/thriller. It is not. There is a mystery element to this in the sense that there is a murder, but I would argue that this book is in fact, literary fiction.

This book is a social commentary on women and relationships: both friendships with other women, and women's relationships with men.

There are three very different women in this story:

Woman #1: Perfect, gorgeous housewife that has the perfect husband, kid and life. Everyone envies her life, everyone wants to be her.

Woman #2: Poor, exhausted, stay-at-home mom who has nothing in life outside of her children. People feel sorry for her because she has nothing but her kids, and can do nothing without her kids and her husband is a POS.

Woman #3: Single, childless, career woman. She's got no man in her life and no children, therefore she has nothing. Her life is meaningless because she hasn't done her womanly duty of having kids.

I loved the commentary on these three very different woman, and I, myself could relate on so many levels. I found myself highlighting so many passages in the book. The conversation/reflection on what it means to be a woman, a mother, a wife, and a friend in this book is so good. Hall has captured that so perfectly. However, I do think it's important to note that this book is pretty much a commentary on middle-class white women.

So while I am glad that I read this, I wouldn't say I loved it. I liked the commentary, but as I mentioned earlier, it was just so...boring at times? I mean there was a murder and multiple affairs, yet it felt like nothing happened.

I think if you go into this thinking you're about to read a thriller (me), you will be pretty disappointed. BUT if you go in knowing this is literary fiction, I think you will ultimately like this.

A big thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC and wanting my honest opinion!

Imperfect women, indeed.

And let's not forget their imperfect husbands, who were just as vile as their wives.

It took me a full week to read this book. In 'Bridgett World,' do you know what that means? Imma tell you.

It means this book was B.O.R.I.N.G.

I had zero desire to get back to it once I'd stopped...it just wasn't that interesting. Told from three points of view, Eleanor, Nancy, and Mary, it's actually divided into three parts...one for each woman. I typically enjoy that technique, but for whatever reason, it simply didn't work here.

I usually enjoy stories like this--women in their forties dealing with all of life's ups and downs. In this instance, the women were so yucky...with so few redeeming qualities...I simply didn't feel compelled to learn more.

There is a small twist at the end...but it's not really a twist, as it was pretty obvious from the start.

Bottom line, I probably wouldn't suggest this book to my friends.

Available now!

My sincere appreciation to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for my review copy.

Ehhh. Or as my son would say, meh. This books sounds exciting. Friendship, love, murder. Instead it was just a bunch of people I neither liked nor understood finding out stuff after one of them is murdered. No one was likable. No one's motives or actions were really logical or understandable. I feel more and more that soap operas are being named thrillers to sell them. I wish publishers and book sellers would stop that.

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

One premise of Araminta Hall's horrible yet lovely Imperfect Women is that women absorb tragedy so others don't have to. Best friends Nancy, Eleanor and Mary each absorbed plenty as life took them down unexpected paths. Twenty-eight years after their friendship began at Oxford, Eleanor's phone wakes her at 4 a.m. It's Nancy's husband, Robert, concerned she never came home the night before.

Rather than worried, Eleanor is irritated. She alone knows that Nancy is embroiled in a year-long affair she's been trying to end. To keep Robert from involving the police, Eleanor comes clean, sure that Nancy is just off with her lover. Then Nancy is found dead on the path by a river bridge, a large wound on the back of her head.

Hall's unwinding of the mystery behind Nancy's death is so masterful the whodunit becomes a backdrop to the women and their plights. As in her prior novel, Our Kind of Cruelty, Hall's skill is highlighted in the inner workings of her characters. The author takes a different angle on the multi-perspective, multi-timeline theme; her approach serves to focus marvelously on each woman's internal struggles and her view of the others. Eleanor takes readers through Nancy's death and its aftermath, and Nancy jumps back to describe what led to her affair and death. Mary's section provides answers about Nancy's killer, and how Eleanor and Mary might move forward with the understanding that goddesses are false and they are entitled to live life to the messy full as imperfect women.

STREET SENSE: I know we don't have time for every book and often make decisions based on past reads, but this book served me up a huge helping of "Don't always write an author off after one shot." When I was assigned this book I groaned a little because I was not a huge fan of Hall's debut, which garnered a ton of pub and praise. I thought her character work was great and the premise fantastic, but I just never got it. This sophomore effort really knocked me back and I have to give Hall credit for taking the character work to the next level while also banging out a really meaningful story. The differential made me like this book all the more. I'll definitely be in for Hall's next offering.

COVER NERD SAYS: I like it. I'm a sucker for birds and while the palette is stark and starts to lean into Florida-esque territory, it stops just short of that read. I love how the branches just barely make it to the page. To be honest, I can't even remember now if the coloring or crows connect with the material itself (I read it some time ago), but I like this cover regardless. (That's my brain failure, not a book/cover failure, by the way.)

After "The End of Cruelty", I'm a bit disappointed with this one. It's about friendship of 3 women, Nancy, Eleanor, Mary which filled with betrayal and lies. Araminta tried to present a few twists along the storyline however before it hit the twists, I am able to predict each of them before hand which made this story being bland for me.
2.5 stars that's what i can give for this one. Thank you Netgalley for an electronic ARC for this one.

Such unkind people the three main characters are. But its not just to others, they put themselves down as well. Eleanor, Nancy, and Mary are best friends and have been since the first week of Oxford. When Nancy’s battered body is found, there are plenty of suspects, including her two friends. The story is told in sections, each narrated by one of the women. But the murder isn’t the real story its just the runup for the HUGE TWIST at the end of the book. The reader will fee satisfied when the book is read.

Firstly I want to thank Netgalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Araminta Hall for providing me this copy in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed the story for the most part though I wouldn't classify it as a thriller because I found nothing thrilling about it...I actually would lean more towards a dramatic soap opera with all the lies, secrets, and deceitfulness they portray.

The characters were human in that we all have flaws and are not perfect and I related to that side of them but still there were the times I wanted to give them a smack or shake and wake them up. I had no real deep feelings towards any of them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is although I enjoyed reading Imperfect Women I felt more like I was watching a mindless television show play out before me where I already knew what was going to happen and who did what and to whom.

An examination of relationships and whether what people project to others is reality. For me, the main characters (Nancy, Mary, and Eleanor) all had moments where I loved them and then moments when I hated them especially as I figured out the "secrets" that each were holding onto in their lives. The plot had some moments of suspense and mystery but I had figured out the main question of the affair before the end due to some clues that were given. I voluntarily reviewed a copy of this book thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author.

Absolutely superb. You become totally engrossed in this thriller of a woman hiding many secrets behind her perfect persona. Eleanor and Mary are just as embroiled as they struggle with their grief and questions about themselves. Pick up this engrossing winner of a book and buckle in for the ride of your life. Happy reading!

Imperfect Women by Araminta Hall is her followup novel to her book, Our Kind of Cruelty.

"Nancy, Eleanor and Mary meet in college and quickly become best friends. 30 years later they are still friends but when Nancy is found murdered, all of the remaining relationships become entangled. Who killed Nancy? Was it her secret lover? Who was he? Why did she keep it a secret?"

The story is told from the perspective of the three friends - First Eleanor, then Nancy and Mary. Lots of bad decisions from all of the characters in the book. Lots of commentary on the different expectations on men and women in the workplace and the home. You will probably guess the secret lover and the killer.

An interesting ending from Hall. I like an ending that's a bit morally gray.
If you liked Hall's first book, you'll probably like this one. Another interesting read from Hall.

Eleanor, Nancy, and Mary met at university, became friends, and became frenemies in a way that none of them really understand. There's so much jealousy here! Eleanor is in love (and having and affairs with) Nancy's husband Robert, who is not, btw, a prize. Nancy's having an affair with David. Mary's husband Howard is awful. Then Nancy is murdered and all the secrets start to spool out. None of these women are especially likable, to be sure, and the title is perfect- they, like all of us, are imperfect. It's what they've kept from themselves, as much as what they kept from each other, that's interesting. Wisely, Hall gives us all three women's point of view- starting with Eleanor, moving on to Nancy, and then to Mary. It's more interesting way to handle this sort of story than the usual alternating back and forth between characters and time and place. There's more to solve than Nancy's murder but no spoilers from me. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. A good read.

Imperfect Women is a dark, twisted psychological thriller--and my favorite kind! It looks at why and how we are who we are, who we create, and has a lot of things to say about relationships among women. Araminta Hall's first novel, Our Kind of Cruelty, was such a strong debut, and I think Imperfect Women surpasses it. Absolutely riveting, and very highly recommended!

The lives of three college friends intersect in unexpected ways after one gets killed. This is one of those books that sucked me in and kept me reading, though I couldn't really pinpoint what about it was so compelling. Themes of friendship, marriage, and regrets that come with choices not taken. Do you like unlikable characters? Here you go - a book full of them!

It's been a while since I read a thriller! The last crime book I read was The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and it was really good! So I was hoping this one would surprise me!

Unfortunately, it didn't: I guessed who the lover was, who the killer was - even if I didn't have all the details I was just surprised by the ending!
Still, this book is a 5-star read. So why?

While reading Imperfect Women, I couldn't stop thinking some scenes, sentences, characters' impressions were true. These women could be our neighbours or our friends. They exist in every one of us, in a way. What they do isn't perfect, isn't good even, is even wrong sometimes - they won't be likable for some readers -, but I still felt close to them, I still grew attached to them. In a way, I didn't like this book because of the mystery/crime, I liked it because of the way it portrayed women, their struggles, and the way they can't understand each other and be understood by their relatives, be they male or female. They all got their personal hell and have to fight alone because of their guilt and their fear to lose their closest friends. It felt viceral sometimes and I ached for them. Nothing is simple, people aren't what they seem, we can never know what someone is living through in their head.

I didn't know it beforehand but I guessed it in the beginning: the book is divided in three parts, each focusing on one of the three friends' point of view.
My favorite part is Nancy's, for reasons I can't explain without spoilers.

Even if I guessed who did it, this book was still gripping and made me doubt sometimes! The ending really surprised me though! It was hard to read and heartbreaking, but there were still hope in the end.


So, Imperfect Women is a great read, captivating and genuine.

Imperfect Women was a very slow paced whodunit thriller. The book was heavily focused on character descriptions and development. By the end of the book it leaves you to believe any one of the characters could have committed the crime but there is a twist. I will say, I loved the author’s previous book, Our Kind of Cruelty much more but I did enjoy the author’s writing style and feministic prose in Imperfect Women.