A delicious thriller about a home renovation reality couple gone wildly wrong, The Perfect Home is one of those books you sit down to read and whip through. I'll look forward to whatever Kenitz has up his sleeve next.

3.5 Stars
A good popcorn thriller! I stayed up until 1am to finish this book. A very quick and engaging plot. I really enjoyed the backdrop of a home renovation TV show. It was a unique and fun premise for the book.
The few issues I had were due to my own personal taste. I thought the emphasis on an illegal fertility drug was unnecessary. The story would have been more effective without trying to explain away behavior.

Additionally, a few characters' actions made zero sense. I was disappointed with the easy resolution for some relationships.

There were a few subplots I felt ultimately took away from the story and fell in no man's land - they weren't explored enough but they also were referenced too much.

While not the most likeable characters, this book kept me turning pages, mildly entertained me, made me roll my eyes more than once, moderately satisfied me. Granted, I am not a fan of reality tv so perhaps if you are, this book might hit stronger for you.

While I didn’t find all of it realistic, I did appreciate the general thriller aspect of the book. I could see this one being a major beach reach next summer and a book club pick.

A bit of a slow start for me, but about halfway through I was hooked. Many layers to explore! I'm glad I stuck around and was satisfied with the ending !

I really liked the premise of this novel. There was lots of tension and foreboding all set against the backdrop of shiny reality TV. What the public see and feel they know about a reality star is sometimes very different from the person they are. Wyatt may be a reality TV icon who is loved by thousands of adoring fans but it is his prickly wife Dawn who is the better person behind the scenes.
Unfortunately all the characters were very one dimensional to me. Wyatt’s POV didn’t evolve into mania and confusion, yet we were expected to see that was happening. Dawn was annoying and clueless. Not enough back story and character development. We needed to know more about Dawn to understand her friend’s actions. There was no depth. That is why I have given this 3 stars.
Thanks Netgalley for the ARC.

Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for a chance to read “The Perfect Home” as an advanced readers copy.
This one started out slow for me. At one point, I almost considered not finishing it but decided to push on. I am so glad I did. By the end of part one, I was properly intrigued. Parts two through four just kept getting more intense to where I couldn’t put it down. Then part five came and wrapped everything up just a little too neatly for me, but I did enjoy this book very much.
I will be ordering a copy of this book for my library. I have quite a few patrons that will enjoy it too!

The Perfect Home was anything but! Instead it was true house of horrors as featured in this surprising and very scary story. Layers peel back in surprising detail as the reader is swept into the madness. Could not put it down!

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I'm not a huge fan of reality TV and consider my actual experience of working with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to be one of the worst professional experiences of my life, but the premise of the story (Fixer Upper meets Gone Girl) was a good enough hook to bring me in.

Dawn is a reluctant reality TV star--her husband, Wyatt, is the star. She's the wry, sarcastic eye rolling woman and he's the charming, aw shucks kinda man. He gets the fans, she gets his fans calling her a bitch. When they start trying to conceive, they find out that Wyatt has low sperm count and after a lot of persuasion, he convinces Dawn to let him use a fertility drug from Germany that is guaranteed results. She agrees, as long as he promises to carefully wean himself off it.

Well, he doesn't wean himself off, his behavior changes. While they have a successful pregnancy (twins!), he's not quite himself. When she reads something alarming that he wrote, she takes the kids and bugs off. From there, we find out just how depraved Wyatt is and how much he pretended to be the charming aw shucks kind of man Dawn and their fans fell in love with.

Dawn makes mistake after mistake, though. And Wyatt is the star so is able to use media coverage to make himself look like the damaged one. And the fact that Dawn has no one in her corner until a mystery man from her past show up is ridiculous. Alice's behavior doesn't track--any woman would tell you that. And the end result with Victoria is frankly preposterous. I also wish we had gotten more detail about the mystery drug and the side effects that made it so important for Wyatt to wean himself off it. I'd also like to hear more about Wyatt's strange behavior because while disturbing, it felt like the two instances came out of left field. We needed more backstory there.

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribner Books for the ARC.

This is the first book that I have read in a long time that did a great job at maintaining a steady level of tension throughout. My heart was pounding in parts. It’s about a couple that are on a reality home repair show. The husband starts to become obsessed with gaining popularity and things take a turn. Highly, highly recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the advanced reader copy.

Any book that uses Gone Girl as a comp has some big shoes to fill and unfortunately, The Perfect Home didn't quite live up to them. The premise--that a woman who is the other half of a reality TV show couple finds that her husband has become potentially murderous after she gives birth to their twins and goes on the run to keep them all safe--felt fresh enough with the addition of being part of an HGTV type reality show. Some of the "twists" felt a bit forced for me, which made the ending lose its punch.

This book didn’t appeal to me in the least. Talk about a bunch of whiny characters in a trite plot. I read about a third and didn’t finish. I’m sure it’s the book for many other.

The description of this book sounded great, but it really fell short for me. the characters were hard to like, and I couldn't stay invested in the story. There were many times the book would give you everything you wanted from a thriller but then other times it seemed boring and not realistic. If you enjoy popcorn thrillers that have goofy characters and not much back story, I do think you would like this book. It wasn't horrible but just not my cup of tea. Thaks you netgally for the ARC.

I loved this book and devoured it in two days. It has so much to say about the world we live in right now and what some people will do to become famous and stay there or grow even more famous.

Dawn is a young woman who is swept up in the life of Wyatt Decker, a home improvement guy on cable TV. She is happy behind the scene but when she goes on camera and rolls her eyes at something Wyatt said, the chemistry blossomed on and off the screen. They marry and have this big beautiful home but are unable to conceive so Wyatt turns to a drug he can only get from overseas.

When things go sour in their marriage (I won't give away story) they are both struggling to know who are really their friends and who are just hangers-on. Using the media in this day and age is a talent and we see it played out by both Dawn and Wyatt. I definitely sided with Dawn throughout the book but I could see how Wyatt was able to charm others and convince them that he was just the best.

There are twist and turns and some surprises. I can't say enough good things about the book but I will say I don't think I would have the forgiveness in me that one of the characters had! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

The description says this books is Fixer Upper meets Gone Girl. Unfortunately, I found it to be neither of those to things. This book had a great start and a lot of potential, but just didn’t come through.

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for this ARC, for an honest review. #netgalley #theperfecthome
Publish date: 1-07-25

Humourous, fun start but as the story continues, it looses some momentum and then takes quite a twist. It’s well written with detailed, descriptive passages and interesting character development. It pokes some holes in the facades created by TV things aren’t really ‘perfect’ in real life; everyone has a different definition of what ‘perfect’ is.
Not my favourite read but I’m glad I persevered to the end so that all the pieces of the story fell into place.
2.5 rounded up to 3
Thank You to NetGalley, Scribner and Daniel Kenitz for the invitation to read a widget of this book.

This story centers on a power couple who are behind a leading shelter reality TV show and what could go wrong. If you are a fan of such shows you might enjoy the novel, which chronicles the decline of their relationship when the husband plans on getting rid of his family in the quest to garner more fame, more power, and more money on his own. Twin babies are involved, an affair happens, and the wife reunites with her long estranged father, all in the quest to figure out the shifting reality -- in this case, their actual lives -- rather than what is depicted on screen as they renovate various homes around the country as the cameras and scripted witty banter roll. Having been through a divorce from my own cheating spouse, I still found this novel interesting and engaging, and the exploration of the shifting understanding of marital trust worthy of the author's treatment.

Dawn and Wyatt Decker were home improvement reality show stars. Dawn was the reluctant star and Wyatt was the personality of the show. He was also having an affair with her friend Victoria. They wanted to have a baby but they were challenged by his low sperm count. He decided to use an illegal supplement that she was not really in favor of. But he told her that he would consult his doctor and she reluctantly agreed. Within a month she was pregnant with twins. It was decided that he would slowly wean himself off of the supplements, but instead he flushed them down the toilet. After she had the babies he became someone she didn't recognize. He was irritable, moody and he even threatened her.

One day she found his tablet and saw where he had written a script whereby he was going to drown the twins. It frightened her so much so that she took the twins and left the state. Wyatt capitalized on that and went on the air accusing Dawn of being an unstable alcoholic. He accused her of kidnapping the children. Basically, he destroyed her reputation.

While she was on the run, the owner of the Airbnb where she was staying called the police on her. Her stepfather, Tim, who was a PI, showed up and rescued her. They ended up going back to Tennesse. Dawn went to her friend Alice's house, the only friend she felt she could trust.

While Tim went to the golf course to distract Wyatt, Dawn went to their house to retrieve the tablet. Later on that evening, while Dawn was sleeping, Alice kidnapped the twins and returned them to Wyatt along with his tablet. It seems she had bought into his lies. Dawn was devastated. The only thing she knew to do was to turn herself in. That's when all hell broke loose.

I thought the author was an excellent storyteller and I was impressed by the believability of the characters. It wasn't difficult to guess the ending but how it got there was another story. I'm glad I read this book. I was well pleased with it. I gave it five stars.

This book is being promoted as “Fixer Upper meets Gone Girl” and I found it nothing like either one of those titles; there was no fixing up and there wasn’t a girl that was gone. I have no idea whose idea that was but it wasn’t a good one. This book was okay as far as popcorn thrillers go but I don’t think it was supposed to be a popcorn thriller. It was like the book had a split personality. At times it was an action-packed he said/she said and it was over the top and then at other times, it was trying too hard to be serious…And it got really repetitive. I don’t watch home improvement shows so I wasn’t disappointed that there wasn’t much of that in the story, I just wanted something with a little more UMPH! I do give props to the author for the unique premise, his execution fell flat though.

Over and over again we are reminded of his handsomeness and her not being a beauty. The characters were more like caricatures and the males’ behaviour was just too far out there for my taste. I didn’t like how the female was treated like a second-class citizen and she let them all do it. They both irritated the hell out of me. The female’s so-called friends or anything but, and there wasn’t one character that had any redeeming qualities whatsoever. The only character I did like was the mom and even she hurts her daughter with her lies in the end. I did like how the author showed how reality TV and the media can twist a person’s perception of another human being, but other than that this book is a no-go for me.

This is a suspenseful psychological family drama. I love a good family drama, and boy did this one deliver in that arena. I love books about reality television because they really highlight how fake it all is, and that was certainly the case here. I felt so bad for Dawn because she was clearly struggling and then she had no one she could turn too in her time of need. It pulled at my heart strings. Her husband, Wyatt, is just horrible. Which, honestly, I am naturally inclined to dislike people with that name based on my own prejudices and that is exactly what happened here. However, he truly is a horrible character, and that is apparent fairly early in the book. The suspense in this book was so well done! I loved it and I sometimes struggle. Even though this wasn’t a true thriller in my opinion, it still had a fast pace. I ended up reading this book in one sitting over the course of a few hours because I just didn’t want to put it down. However, in the end, I wish that the ending would have been slightly more satisfying.



Be mindful of triggers in this book as it does heavily focus on infertility and the struggles that can be associated with pregnancy and childbirth.