King continues to explore psychological ,
There is a real sense of threat until the twist was
Revealed and though I felt one or two of the twists were not entirely surprises, there was enough going on to keep me reading. It's interesting to see Karen trying a new genre and those who are used to her romances might find '

The Perfect Stepmother was a fast paced thriller with some great twists. I had some suspicions about how it would play out and I was on the right track but not exact, which kept me wanting to turn pages fast to find out.

Karen King did a great job developing characters that were easy to bond with and easy to believe in their pleas to either prove their innocence or someone else’s guilt.

Maria wasn’t the typical crazy character that you loved to hate or suspected of anything malicious which I believe was Karen King’s intention. By keeping all of the characters in the realm of “normal”, she created a storyline that made me keep guessing until the end.

Bravo! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lily is devastated by the death of her mother from cancer. But she is shocked, angry and upset when she discovers her father Gareth is dating her late mother's beautician. Lily doesn't trust Maria at all and is convinced that she is not the perfect woman she appears to be. Then Lily's little sister Emma disappears...
The Perfect Stepmother is a thriller with a strong emotional thread. Our sympathies ally us with Lily due to her grief and yet Maria drops hints that she has trauma in her past. I found that I was suspicious but also wanted Maria and Lily to find contentment so they could peacefully coexist in Gareth's life.
The narrative is delivered from Lily and Maria's viewpoints. It begins with Emma's disappearance in the prologue and then tracks in a linear fashion from when Lily found out that Maria and her dad were in a relationship through to the police hunt for Emma.
Both women are portrayed sympathetically and it was easy to understand both of their perspectives. There are plenty of clues that Maria has kept secrets but the truth is not revealed until three quarters of the way through the book. Lily obviously feels heartbroken that her father has replaced her mother so quickly, yet Maria has to live in the shadow of the woman who preceded her.
I did need to suspend my disbelief a little for the final quarter of the book as the truth of Maria's past and Emma's disappearance is revealed. The action ramps up as events occur rapidly to an exciting conclusion.
The Perfect Stepmother is an enjoyable thriller that gradually builds tension.

Another great read from Karen
Keeps you definitely engrossed from the start.
It is told from multiple points of view.
Will have you guessing till the end.
Thanks NetGalley

I really enjoyed the premise of this story, just found the flow a little stilted throughout the book.
It was as though the writer needed to just add a character half way through and just created a whole new thread within the book to explain where they had come from… by the way this is my boyfriend…..
with a little editing and a few additional lines earlier on would flow better.
The end seemed a little rushed too, would have preferred it to have been more thought out.
Overall a good story idea, just needs a little more on the execution side.

I would say this is more a suspense thriller. And a very good one at that!

Fancy having a grown daughter then twenty years later you have another daughter, talk about starting all over again.
Having Lily the eldest daughter turned out to be a blessing for little Emma because sadly her mother died. Devastating for the entire family unit.

Lily has Seb. They live together but Lily is always there for her Father and her little sister.

Moving on…..
Her Father marries again, therein lies many problems and not just the obvious.

I love that I was so eager to find out the new wife’s secret it held me in the palm of its hands.

I thoroughly enjoyed this.
Towards the ending I was so engrossed I didn’t go to sleep, I needed to finish it.

What a lovely man Lily and Emma’s dad was. I felt for him many times within this story. I visualised each one of them. We became close.

The last chapter though….well, sort of an epilogue……sent chills……

Is this leading to more or just a spine tingling chilling end.

First book by this author and it did not disappoint. This book took off from the beginning and kept at it till the end. Written by different point of views mostly Maria and Lily as well as the mystery person. Follows the progress of a new family as well as a tragic past leading up to the highpoint in which all is revealed. The book I found was a page turner and provided a good plot, the characters were likable. This is a contemporary, suspense-filled mystery which starts with the disappearance of a child, five year old Emma, then goes back to events leading up to kidnapping. Lily’s parents had a happy marriage and were overjoyed by the birth of Emma, some twenty years after Lily. However, their idyllic life was torn apart by their Mum’s battle with cancer and it is almost a year after her death that the story starts, when her Dad informs Lily that he intends to marry someone who cared for her Mum, Maria. Lily can’t say why but she just doesn’t trust Maria, even though she seems to love both Lily’s Dad and her young sister and treats them well. This is a story of secrets, lies, revenge, mental illness, grief and family. It is an enthralling read, a real page turner that has so many surprise revelations to keep you guessing right to the end

Thanks to Bookouture and Netgalley for this Arc in exchange for my review. To be published June 17, 2021.

Karen King has done it again with The Perfect Stepmother! Grief is a living, breathing entity and is experienced by different people in different manners. Lily has lost her mother to cancer, and now, her father is involved with and ready to marry Maria. However, Lily is upset—not only by how quickly things are progressing, but also because she has this “feeling” that Maria is not what she appears to be.
This story is well written and will keep you guessing up to the very end. The characters are well rounded, and their personalities shine through in the story giving you a very good sense of who they are. You will find yourself torn between the main characters while trying to determine what is what and who is who. This is a thoroughly enjoyable suspenseful read that will keep you turning the pages until the very end. Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the opportunity to review this book.

The Perfect Stepmother by Karen King is the third book I have read and it was a great family read which was filled with lies, deceit and mistrust. Plus, it had lots of twists and turns, especially when this book had a great ending!

The story is mainly about two sisters Lily who is the eldest and Emma. Lily’s little sister Emma goes missing from the back garden who was under supervision of her new stepmother Maria. Their biological mother died of cancer and not even six months after her death, Lily finds out her dad has been dating her mother's beautician Maria
Lily thinks it’s to soon for their dad to start to see someone especially as her dad's wants to marry Maria that same year and she does not trust Maria.
Maria is on edge all the time and has started to receive threatening messages through the letterbox, she’s scared that her past will catch up to her

What is Maria Hiding?

Who has taken Emma? Has she been harmed in any way?

OMG What a book!

I highly recommend this latest book by Karen

Thank you to the publisher Bookouture, Karen King, and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

Lily just lost her mother to Cancer a year back and now her Father is already seeing someone else. It is shocking indeed when Lily finds out who that woman is. It is maria, a good friend of her mother.
Lily's father is sure that he is in love and wants to get married. Eventually much to Lily's distress, her father does end up marrying Maria and start a new family with little Emma (Lily's sister)

Maria seems perfect. She runs a high-end salon, but provides free beauty treatments and care to cancer patients once or twice a week: that is how Maria came to be Lily's mother's friend. Maria also raises funds for various charities. However, Lily is not convinced. maria is too perfect. There must be something wrong with her and Lily is hell-bent on finding it; more so when Emma goes missing.

i don't think the author meant Lily to be the unlikable character, but that is exactly what she was. Every other page we see her raising the same concerns again and again. If I were Seb (her boy-friend), it would have surely got to my nerves. One way or the other she has to paint Maria the villain but in doing so the entire plot and story line becomes bleak and repetitive for me.

This was such an interesting premise, the character's bickering and poor execution made it a below average read.

Love pad this book. I will add it to my classroom shelf.. I will be on the lookout for more books by Karen King.

The blurb caught my interest. It was an ok read and I read it pretty quickly and I enjoyed it. The storyline doesn’t stand out from many others I’ve read but it still had my attention to see where it was going and how it played out. The pace was a little slow and there wasn’t much of a build up of suspense or intrigue but it had a nice sentiment to it all the same. It was a nice easy read.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for the opportunity to read and review this ARC that was published on the 17th of June.

A great story. I actually felt sorry for Maria. She had paid a hefty price for a crime. She helped a lot of people to atone for her sin. It is easy to see how it happened to her. She was very young. It was hard for Lily to come to terms with a stepmother so soon after her mother died. But you could see she really loved her dad and sister. I really enjoyed this one.

There is nothing bad I can say about this book. The fact that I have been just as impressed by this book as I have this author’s romantic fiction books, shows that Karen King is clearly just a multi-talented writer.

This book has everything I look for in a domestic suspense novel. The story is told from multiple perspectives, and the timeline is altered in order to ensure maximum build up of tension and suspense.

There is also a wonderful mix of characters. There are victims, an innocent child, the ‘Stepmother’ character whose obsessive, careful and secretive behaviour causes you to become increasingly suspicious and unnerved.

Last but not least, there are the unpredictable twists and turns, as well as the explosive ending that you won’t see coming.

Overall, a gripping and satisfying read that I have devoured from start to finish. I would definitely recommend this book to fans of Jill Childs, Arianne Richmonde and Shalini Boland.

The Perfect Stepmother is, as the title suggests, a family drama merged with a psychological thriller by British author Karen King. It starts with Lily, heartbroken by her mother’s passing less than a year ago after a terrible battle with cancer. She is trying her best to hold her family together, often pushing aside her relationship with her fiancé to be there for her father and five-year-old sister Emma. But then her father announces he has fallen in love with Maria, and they rush to get married, and Lily isn’t happy. She fears her new stepmother is manipulating her father and hiding secrets from them all. She is frightened for her little sister’s safety. And it turns out, she’s right. Maria is hiding something. And that secret comes back to bite, with Emma going missing. Is Maria to blame or somebody else? The Perfect Stepmother kept me intrigued from start to finish, with its characterisation, family dynamics and twists all easily overcoming the, at times, somewhat stilted dialogue and narrative. I’ll be keen to read more by the author.
Advance review copy received with thanks from Netgalley and the publisher.

This was my first book by the author, Karen King. It honestly had me from page one. There was something off from "Maria" from the get go. She erased her path from 10 years prior and no one knew why. She married her husband after losing his wife after a battle with cancer and daughter Lily had every right to be suspicious, especially after in the preface of the story, her sister Emma is kidnapped.

This book will take you on a rollercoaster of a ride and flip flops on time lines. You will not be disappointed!

Maria is happy, she is newly married, but always looking over her shoulder? Why? Lilly, her stepdaughter doesn't like her, but then, blaming her for Emma's disappearance doesn't feel right. What is Maria hiding? Where is Emma?
Nice thriller, thank you Netgalley for this ARC.

The Perfect Stepmother tells the story of Lily, a twenty something having to get used to a lot of changes in her life. Her mother died a few years ago, and her father (unexpectedly) brings home Maria, and abruptly announces that they’re getting married. Lily knows Maria, a hairdresser that helped Lily’s mother feel more beautiful when she was going through her terminal cancer, so she had a lot of questions for her father, and is completely distrustful of Maria and her intentions. When Emma, her young sister disappears while in the care of Maria, it leads the family down a path of secrets and paranoia that put all the relationships to the test.

I greatly enjoyed this book! While I went into it thinking it was going to be a typical domestic thriller, it definitely has a class of its own. Most thrillers have a clear “bad guy” but this one doesn’t. That being said, it’s really unclear if Maria is a victim, or what her intentions are. All is revealed in the end, and everything falls into place, but there is a lot of guessing by the reader about what actually could be happening. The book starts worth the day that Emma disappeared, and then jumps back to the months and weeks leading up to the disappearance. Great storytelling. I couldn’t find any major flaws with this book, and enjoyed it highly. Definitely recommend!

Thanks to Bookouture, Netgalley and Karen King for the opportunity to read and review this book. An intriguing book of an adult daughter who is suspicious of her fathers new love interest. When her mother Ruth dies of cancer Lily is worried her father has moved on too soon. Has he. The book keep me turning the pages. I really enjoyed this one.

If the definition of a psych thriller is that it keeps the reader guessing until the last pages, then this one definitely qualifies.
The book starts with a tragic event and then immediately goes back in time to the months prior, working its way back to the present event, which occurs roughly halfway through.
It’s interesting, because the backstory section seemed much longer in the actual reading of the book. I was surprised when I went back to the book to check for this review.
I guess that’s a testament to the writing, that something was actually more condensed that it originally seemed to be.
Anyway, the author does a good job of sowing the seeds of doubt about Maria (the title stepmother) right from the beginning. Whether it is from Lily’s (the adult daughter) point of view or a well-placed reaction or thought from Maria herself, there are hints at the underlying secret throughout.
Lily was well-written and the perfect foil for Maria’s secrets. Were Lily’s reservations about Maria legitimate or was she still grieving over her mother’s death? This wasn’t heavy-handed or overdone, but just enough to cast doubt on Lily’s motivations.
Maria is the embodiment of “if someone is too good to be true….” But the author didn’t make that obvious either. Was she as bad as she seemed to think, or was she being targeted for some unknown reason? Again, lots of little clues but no clear path.
When answers to the questions are slowly revealed, the full backstory becomes apparent, and the author wisely still leaves it up to the reader to determine the fault in the matter. I particularly liked that the author allowed the reader to draw their own conclusions.
A couple of twists felt heavy-handed and I’m not sure they were worthy of the story as they were more contrived than the main current. And the end felt a little cartoonish.
But I did like the growth in the characters – there was a depth to both Maria and Lily that showed their progress as individuals and in their opinions of each other that made them more human.
Also, on a possibly odd note, I really liked Seb. I kept waiting for him to be a typical throw-away character or to be a cad in some way. I won’t say why I liked him, but I want to thank the author for writing him the way he was.
As mentioned, the author does a good job of keeping motivations and reasons for events hidden until just the right moment, which keeps the reader turning pages – making it a great beach read to pass the time.