This was a story over two time lines, where a troubled women takes on other personas in a search to improve her life. Her life spirals out of control and there is an unexpected twist in the tail.

Gripping, gritty and addictive, Nuala Ellwood's The Perfect Lie ticks all the boxes for an engrossing psychological thriller.

This book captured my attention from the very first page with a complex, intriquing character as the protagonist, a well written storyline and a twist you don't see coming. I could not put it down. Highly recommended.

The Perfect Life is a dual timeline read that takes a while for them to meet but is worth it.
Vanessa craves the perfect life especially after her mother died while she was young leaving her to grow up at her sisters and husbands house. Vanessa meets Connor and and things move very quickly, so quickly she looses her best friend forever. As time moves on Vanessa is left at home in the evenings whilst Connor works on an important project at work. It is during this time that the perfect life comes to a head with Vanessa whiling away the hours hunting for the perfect house that is way out of their budget. Vanessa steps it up and starts to arrange viewings and goes under different names until one of the houses owners is found murdered and Vanessa becomes the main suspect.
This was a book that took me a few chapters to get into but once I did I found this a dark read that I couldn’t put down. There was a good mix of characters I liked and some I instantly loathed which always helps. The ending EPA’s definitely something I didn’t see coming.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Penguin UK for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

It was OK. I loved "Day of the Accident," so I was excited to read this book. Unfortunately, this book just wasn't for me. I was confused through much of the book, with all the different flashbacks and timelines. I didn't like any of the characters and I found the story so convoluted. Could all of this stuff happen to one person? There were so many twists and turns and strange things happening. I could see what Connor was doing from a mile away. Vanessa ignored every red flag, even the ones that were flashing right in her face. I would never have guessed the ending. It was so strange. Vanessa has a way of attracting the crazies.

Recommend giving the book a try, it just wasn't for me. I'm definitely in the minority for my thoughts on the book. I look forward to reading more books by the author.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Penguin General UK - Fig Tree, Hamish Hamilton, Viking, Penguin Life, Penguin Business, Penguin through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

We meet Vanessa just at the time that everything seems to be unravelling. Her life in chaos, and everything around her broken. Yet, as we journey back in time it seems that it wasn’t always this way and this is the draw that had me turning the pages long after I should’ve, night after night.

How can a life, The Perfect Life, descend from something that is so idyllic to the utter chaos that now permeates everything that Vanessa touches? The juxtaposition between the Now and the Then is utterly fascinating, I found myself a little bit in love with Vanessa’s former life which is tantalisingly revealed in snippets. Her happiness at these times spills from the page and only serves to heighten the complete desolation of her current situation. With strong and clever characterisation Ellwood deftly brings Vanessa and her story to life. And, what a story it is!

Right from Ellwood’s brilliant debut - My Sisters Bones, she has always had the ability to turn everything you believe on its head in an instant and The Perfect Life offers more of this, in bucketfuls. I had the highest of hopes for it and it didn’t let me down, it maintained an almost constant presence in my head whenever I was doing something that prevented me from reading it.

The conclusion is dramatic, unpredictable and everything I wanted it it to. The Perfect Life is a perfect summer read, trust me - but maybe don’t trust Vanessa...

This was a strangely formatted book in that there were various timelines which were interspersed with a children’s fairytale. It had a bit of everything: death of a parent while still in childhood, low self esteem, gaslighting, rape, abortion, murder, strange obsession of viewing dream houses and relationships between boyfriend/girlfriend, sisters and best friends. Because of all this I felt the book should have concentrated on one or two of these major issues. The ending was for me a little too contrived.

Vanessa has always found it easy to pretend to be somebody different, somebody better. When things get tough in her real life, all she has to do is throw on some nicer clothes, adopt a new accent and she can escape.
That's how it started: looking round houses she couldn't possibly afford. Harmless fun really. Until it wasn't.
Because a man who lived in one of those houses is dead.
And everyone thinks Vanessa killed him...

I have previously enjoyed some of this author’s work and was so excited to be invited on the book tour for this book.

I started reading this book and at first, i was confused about what was happening with the different timelines. This was strange for me because I usually love this book format.

However, once I got over the beginning chapters, I fell in love with the book.

This book made me question on several occasions, just how far I would go for the perfect life and do I actually have the perfect life already?

Seeing Vanessa’s world crumbing around her, it brought it home that we are all so desperate for the perfect life, but where do we draw the line?

The book was extremely dark and manipulating in places and I loved it

That’s my first book of August finished

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book.

This is the story of Ness. Ness is in her early 30’s and shares a flat with her best friend Lottie. She has a job that she loves and her big sister who she meets up with regularly.
We find out that despite her happiness, her mum died suddenly when she was young and she sought solace in the series of books she read as a child.
The book is written as a dual time frame of then and now and it seems to make perfect sense with it all fitting together nicely.
We follow Ness as her life falls apart after she meets a new man and believed that he was as head over heels in love as she is, so much so that she leaves the comfort of her best friend to move in with him and then dreamt of owning their own place. All is not as it seems and after falling out with her best friend, gaslighting and giving up her dream job, she seeks solace in looking at lovely houses beyond her budget and allowing herself to dream.
This is a page turner full of murder, gaslighting and stalking that kept me wandering how and who right to the end.
With thanks to NetGalley for this preview read. #Netgalley

The Perfect Wife is a psychological thriller that deals with several topical issues. The main character Nessa comes across as quite needy and vulnerable, despite having a successful career in the beauty industry. It’s when she meets and falls in love with her partner Connor that she slowly begins to unravel and her past experiences return to trouble her. The subject of domestic abuse is handled sensitively and subtly, illustrating how a partner’s behaviour can incrementally change someone’s perception of themselves.

Although it's a tense storyline with some unexpected twists,

My thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Books for the opportunity to read this book.

I really enjoyed this. This is a good book to read for anyone suffering with anxiety or depression. Can see it being a big hit.

Thankyou to netgalley and the publisher for allowing me a copy of this book to read. This is the first book that i have read from this author and i did like it, I liked the character of Vanessa and how she used escapism;pretending to be someone else to make herself happy.

it was a little all over the place, in the present and the past which i wasnt a fan of but overall it was a good plot and a good read,

Without realising she is in a controlling relationship, 32-year old Vanessa moves in to live with her boyfriend, Connor, therefore losing her best friend of 14 years. To escape the stress of life, she views houses that she can't afford, giving a fake name each time. This almost becomes an addiction.

When a famous author who Vanessa loved as a child dies, she is arrested as a suspect. She has been caught at his house, on a viewing, at the exact moment he was murdered.

It is a good book with an unexpected twist at the end. Vanessa is a likeable character and the reader would feel compassion for her and understand why she does what she does.


Thank you #NualaEllwood and #netgalley for this book. I really enjoyed it.

This is an interesting story about how people cope with problems or anxiety, in this case it is a woman in her thirties. She does manage to find someone who appears to be the perfect man, but he's a bit too good to be true and his flat is a bit too small. So she drifts off into a fantasy world where she creates another persona and, in character, views big houses that fit in with her idea of the perfect life.

This would be a good idea but it is very similar to a character who appeared in the television series Breaking Bad. In the programme and in this book, the women take a souvenir from each house they visit. The undoing here is that the owner of one of the dream houses is found dead and the house viewer (the protagonist) is arrested on suspicion of his murder. This links to the second fantasy: the childhood world created by the dead man, who was the author of a popular series of children's books, which the protagonist loved as a child. This is reminiscent of A.A. Milne's stories about Christopher Robin and the Hundred Acre Wood.

The story is told in the first person, which gives the impression of an unreliable narrator as she tells her tale via two timelines. I like how it is from her perspective as it's easy to see the transition from a healthy well balanced woman to the disturbed individual she becomes. Fear, paranoia, helplessness and confusion take over in this tale of suspense, albeit rather slowly. For the majority of the book the domestic story runs alongside the house visiting side and murder plot line as two separate stories that actually are not connected. I was intrigued by the house viewing fantasy and the book would have benefited if that was the main focus instead of the domestic side - relationships of this type are plentiful. There are a couple of far-fetched aspects but this is quite a good read once it gets going.

A very enjoyable read. It was interesting to read the two threads and to witness Vanessa's gradual breakdown and how the two threads came together at the end. I thought the introduction of one of the villains towards the end was a bit random but I could forgive that and otherwise would have no criticisms of the book and I would recommend it.

Like Vanessa, I love looking at houses online, imagining where I’d like to live if I won the lottery and money was no object. Unlike Vanessa, I don’t book myself in for a viewing. I can see why she does though. Pretending to be someone else, even if just for a little while, is very tempting. Especially when your world is falling apart, which Vanessa’s definitely is.

I found myself as fascinated by Vanessa as she was by the houses she obsesses over. As The Perfect Life bounced back and forward from the ‘now’ to the ‘then’, I wanted to understand just how and why things had fallen so badly apart for her. As least, I wanted to at first.

I really enjoyed the first two thirds of The Perfect Life. I liked how the ground kept shifting and the story kept moving in directions I didn’t expect. I liked Vanessa, and disliked her boyfriend. I wanted the best for her. Then, there was a twist I didn’t see coming, and just didn’t work for me. There was one too many villains and an outcome that felt forced. I went from not being able to put the book down to having to force myself to pick it up and finish it.

I’d be interested to know if others who’ve read it felt the same way, or if it was just me? I don’t know if I’m being too picky? I do know that this was a good but not great read for me, one I’m not sure I will be recommending to others – sorry 😦

A gripping read that is so addictive you’ll struggle to put it down!

This is the first book that I’ve read by Nuala Ellwood and it definitely won’t be my last, I devoured this book in just two days! As much as I love reading, I can be very easily distracted, but this book held my attention from start to finish!

We follow Vanessa in this story as she falls in love and moves in with the man of her dreams. Happy in life and happy in her job, you’d think she had it all. Sadly, not everything is rosy for her, but wait, she seems to have found a way to cheer herself up…

We’ve all dreamed about living somewhere bigger and better, we’ve probably all looked online and imagined ourselves in that pretty cottage by the sea, or that luxury townhouse with an indoor pool. For most this remains a dream, but Vanessa takes it one step further and books appointments to view these properties. Initially, she believes she could almost afford them, but her obsession gets a bit out of hand and before long she is looking at properties that would require a decent lottery win.

You could describe what Vanessa is doing as harmless, but when someone ends up dead and she is the prime suspect, things don’t seem so harmless anymore!

Fast-paced and wholly engrossing, the chapters alternate between the past and present, filling us in on events from Vanessa’s life and leading us to that fateful day and beyond. In a way two storylines are running through this book, they don’t quite connect as I thought they might but I’m not sure that they need to.

My only slight critique is that you won’t see one of the twists coming, normally that’s not something I’d be critical over, but this one wasn’t possible to work out at all. This didn’t spoil my enjoyment though, of what is a great psychological thriller!

A cleverly written story with great characters and suspense galore!

Thank you to Nuala Ellwood, Penguin & NetGalley for my copy of this book.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

Vanessa Adams likes to pretend. Since the death of her mother when she was young, she likes to escape into other worlds to find happiness. When Vanessa meets Connor - she thinks she has found her forever, the man who will make her happy always. However, when life gets stressful, she puts on a different outfit, adopts a new personality, and looks at homes that are way outside her price range. It is like a high to her. In one of these homes, the homeowner is dead and the police suspect Vanessa of killing him.

This story was difficult at times. I did not mind the Now and Then aspect of the book; however, the author incorporated a children's book and hard large pieces of dialogue from those books. I would get lost in what was from the book and what was the storyline of Vanessa's story. The wrapping up of the story, everything makes sense and is woven together, I just got lost in the weaving at times.

I have been a fan of Nuala’s work for a while now. I have read and thoroughly enjoyed every book that she has released to date. When I read the synopsis of ‘The Perfect Life’, it certainly sounded like it was going to be an intriguing read and then some. Well I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘The Prefect Life’ but more about that in a bit.
I found Vanessa to be an intriguing character and then some. Initially I wasn’t quite sure how to take her and I admit that I was a bit suspicious of her. The more of the story that I read, the more I felt that I understood Vanessa. I knew that there was more to her than met the eye and I had the feeling that things weren’t what they initially appeared. I did think that some of her behaviour was slightly odd to say the least.
I was drawn into ‘The Perfect Life’ from the very first word on the very first page. It was as if the book had developed a hold over me and it was a hold that I wasn’t willing to break. I was intrigued by the story and by the characters. I had a suspicion as to how the story was going to pan out so of course I had to keep reading to see if I was on the right track or if I had wandered down the wrong path entirely. The pages were turning so quickly it was almost as if they were turning themselves and the page numbers became a blur. I finished reading the book in just under 6 hours which is pretty good going for me. I found ‘The Perfect Life’ to be a gripping read, which kept me guessing and which kept me on the edge of my seat throughout.
‘The Perfect Life’ is superbly written. The author certainly knows how to grab your attention from the start and draw you into what proves to be one heck of a story. Nuala has one of those writing styles that is easy to get used to and easy to get along with. For me, the story hits the ground running and maintains a fairly fast pace throughout. The story is written using two timelines. One is a timeline describing events as they happened in the past and the other timeline describes events as they are happening in the present. The timelines interlink really well and the story flows seamlessly as a result. Reading ‘The Perfect Life’ felt like being on a scary and unpredictable rollercoaster ride with more twists and turns to it than you would find on a ‘Snakes & Ladders’ board. I felt as though I was part of the story and at the heart of the action, which is all thanks to Nuala’s very vivid and realistic storytelling.
In short, I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘The Perfect Life’ and I would recommend it to other readers. I will certainly be reading more of Nuala’s work in the future. The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a very well deserved 5* out of 5*.

Having survived adversity at an early age, all Vanessa wants is the perfect life. She has a brilliant sister and best friend, her perfect job and now she has met the man of her dreams, why not look for the perfect house? Except perfection isn’t possible as Vanessa will see when a house viewing results in a dead body and she becomes the chief suspect.

“The Perfect Life” is a great addition to any psychological thriller collection. It captured my attention within the first couple of pages and held it to the end. I really like the writing style which got my engaged in Vanessa’s story. The alternating chapter set in the past and present illustrate how Vanessa’s life has been systematically destroyed. It’s a creepy and unnerving read full of red flags. It’s got a strong and the persuasive message about the dangers of seeking and creating an image of perfection. The novel comes to a close with a satisfying ending. Nuala Elwood is definitely an author whose books I would read again.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest opinion.

Vanessa likes to spend time being someone different to herself and enjoys viewing houses of her dreams that she can't afford in a million years. What started out as harmless fun becomes sinister when one of the owners is found dead and Vanessa is considered the main suspect.

Told using a 'then' and 'now' timescale and format, the characters in The Perfect Lie are complex. In the 'then' chapters, Vanessa's life appeared rosy and perfect, with those in the 'now' sections giving rise to a much bleaker time. The flow of the tale is good, progressing with some unsettling and menacing occurrences as Vanessa’s world crumbles. The author had me wondering whether Vanessa was to be trusted or not; her feelings are very well described and you get a sense of her inner turmoil and panic. In this novel about confidence and control, the ending is twisty and a good one.

Disclosure: Thank you to Penguin UK for providing a digital ARC of The Perfect Life by Nuala Ellwood, via Netgalley for review. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.