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The Perfect Wife

Written by: JP Delaney
Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld,Graham Halstead,Euan Morton,JP Delaney
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Publisher's Summary

The perfect life. The perfect love. The perfect lie. From the best-selling author of The Girl Before comes a gripping new psychological thriller....

“Mind-bending...Delaney takes domestic suspense beyond its comfort zone.” (The New York Times Book Review)

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Public Library A Cosmopolitan New Must-Read 

Abbie awakens in a daze with no memory of who she is or how she landed in this unsettling condition. The man by her side claims to be her husband. He’s a titan of the tech world, the founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most innovative start-ups. He tells Abbie that she is a gifted artist, an avid surfer, a loving mother to their young son, and the perfect wife. He says she had a terrible accident five years ago and that, through a huge technological breakthrough, she has been brought back from the abyss.

She is a miracle of science.

But as Abbie pieces together memories of her marriage, she begins to question her husband’s motives - and his version of events. Can she trust him when he says he wants them to be together forever? And what really happened to her, half a decade ago?

Beware the man who calls you...

The Perfect Wife.

Praise for The Perfect Wife

"A twisty, completely original psychological thriller that grabs you from the start and doesn’t let go until the very end." (Karen Cleveland, New York Times best-selling author of Need to Know)

"Seriously, amazingly, awesomely brilliant...speculative fiction mixed up with a mind-bendingly twisty psycho thriller! I devoured it." (C. J. Tudor, author of The Chalk Man)

"A tour de force...The Perfect Wife is a chilling and uniquely disturbing twenty-first-century twist on the unreliable narrator that makes for a compulsive and deeply thought-provoking book. It asks troubling questions about selfhood and ‘souls’ and what makes us human, and plays them out in a compelling psychological thriller." (Cara Hunter, author of Close to Home)

©2019 JP Delaney (P)2019 Random House Audio

What the critics say

"The Perfect Wife blew my mind! What a wonderful and unique thriller. I haven’t been able to put it down since it arrived, and now that I’ve finished I can’t stop thinking about it! Those last lines...wow! JP Delaney has outdone himself with his latest dynamic, razor-sharp, and thought-provoking thriller. The Perfect Wife is a cutting-edge suspense novel unlike any you’ve read before.... A must-read!" (Mary Kubica, New York Times best-selling author of The Good Girl)

"Readers...will be rewarded with a fresh take on the domestic thriller that will leave them satisfied." (Booklist)

"Puts - almost perfectly - a high-tech spin on the stories of Frankenstein and Pygmalion with a tinge of the Stepford wives.... The intriguing plot leads to a chilling and surprising finale that perfectly caps The Perfect Wife." (Associated Press)

"Artificial intelligence might seem like a risky plot device, and the premise of the novel itself is tricky at best, but Delaney pulls it off brilliantly, with an intoxicating knack for suspense. This is the kind of novel ugly words like ‘unputdownable’ were invented for. With the tale of Abbie, Delaney delivers a sharp reflection on misogyny.... With every thriller must come a dizzying plot twist and an unforeseeable denouement, as is definitely the case here.... Everything about The Perfect Wife feels earned and satisfying.... This journey is a captivating, deeply engrossing one." (The Independent)

What listeners say about The Perfect Wife

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Astonishingly ableist re: autism?

I honestly couldn’t even finish this book; the amount of harmful autism rhetoric was pretty rough. Anyone who has spent any time in disability activism knows that Non autistic people being obsessed with “curing” autism leads to really bad and abusifs dynamics.

Virtually every single disability organization run BY and for autistic people recognizes ABA as literal abuse, yet so much of this plot involves praising ABA for making Danny (the autistic child) more “normal.” This is like if autism speaks (a very damaging organization) wrote a thriller.... pretty gross. I’d skip it.

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Good story but a bit strange

The premise looked great... but it was only just OK for me. It starts off interesting but just went a bit flat somewhere in the middle. I think it was the POV that bothered me. I just couldn't get into the characters.

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Boring

Easy to listen to....boring.
The idea of artificial intelligence was cool but story ran dry lost interest. Anything you thought was exactly how you predicted.

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  • Janine Abreu
  • 2019-08-08

VERY GOOD and INTERESTING

This book should come with a warning... once you start you will not be able to put down before you reach the end.
This is seriously the best book I have read in a very long time...
I look forward to reading more books by this author

31 people found this helpful

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  • emily stark
  • 2019-08-15

Just so so.

Okay ish book, I didn't realize how sci fi it was, primarily focused on AI, not a terrible story but not my cup of tea.

29 people found this helpful

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  • Sandra Crews
  • 2019-08-13

Really fun read!

When I started this book the premise turned me off and I returned it. Then I thought I’d give it a chance. It was really fun and I couldn’t put it down. I would wake up in the middle of the night and turn it on and listen for a while until I fell asleep. Give it a chance. Well done.

28 people found this helpful

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  • Patsyzip
  • 2019-08-19

Outstanding.

gives a vivid compassionate window into autism. the character development and plot development are absolutely wonderful. nothing is predictable in this book except what you're supposed to think is going to happen. And then it doesn't. You will not be disappointed.

24 people found this helpful

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  • Shanna
  • 2019-08-08

Great book!

At first I was unsure about this book. I have a daughter on the spectrum, so when autism is the topic I'm always on defense. I'm glad I stuck with it, this turned out to be a good book.

22 people found this helpful

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  • Barbie Housewright
  • 2019-08-10

Loved this book!

I devoured this audio book during a long business-related drive. I won't soon forget the story or the depth of its characters. I was captivated beginning to end.

21 people found this helpful

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  • Cheri
  • 2019-08-19

Don’t give up too soon...

I was seriously tempted to return this for about the first couple of hours. I’m SO glad I didn’t!

The story is very much an original tale, but it had the domestic drama I have enjoyed in books like ‘Gone Girl,’ ‘The Other Woman,’ and the like. I was very satisfied and am glad I listened. A reviewer before said they didn’t see the last 30 minutes coming; neither did I and it was a really good ending.

18 people found this helpful

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  • Ruth Myers
  • 2019-08-20

great

loved it, kept my interest, good reader, liked their voices, could not stop listening at the end

11 people found this helpful

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  • Corinna
  • 2019-08-20

Interesting premise

This wasn’t what I was expecting and so I was pleasantly surprised with the twists & turns.

10 people found this helpful

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  • Joy
  • 2019-09-24

Worth the credit

Within the first 30 minutes of this book I thought I wanted to return it. I was a little put off about the content. Then I recalled reading another reader's review who almost returned it as well but decided to keep on listening, I thought I would give it another hour and I'm glad I did. This actually was a good story so if you buy this book, give it a chance because there is merit to the story.

4 people found this helpful

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  • Hendry C.
  • 2020-08-31

excellent

I throughly enjoyed this book, it was well read, made to be believable and interesting.