Review: 'Her Perfect Life' by Hank Phillippi Ryan
Pub. Date: 9/14/2021
Publisher: Macmillan-Tor/Forge; Forge Books
Everyone knows Lily Atwood—and that may be her biggest problem. The beloved television reporter has it all—fame, fortune, Emmys, an adorable seven-year-old daughter, and the hashtag her loving fans created: #PerfectLily. To keep it, all she has to do is protect one life-changing secret.
Her own.
Lily has an anonymous source who feeds her story tips—but suddenly, the source begins telling Lily inside information about her own life. How does he—or she—know the truth?
Lily understands that no one reveals a secret unless they have a reason. Now she’s terrified someone is determined to destroy her world—and with it, everyone and everything she holds dear.
How much will she risk to keep her perfect life?
As I mentioned in a recent review, I have been reading more thrillers about social media stars in which the tension between the (im)perfection they project and their reality is what drives the suspense. What fascinates me about these stories is that everyone's idea of perfection looks slightly different. It all depends on the audience you're trying to reach, for example. Maybe being perfect means admitting to your flaws and embracing them wholeheartedly. Or maybe it means pretending to have the cleanest diet or the cleanest house or, in Lily's case, a spotless past. Often, however, this perfection is entirely a surface thing, a projection supported by the work of a group of other people. Once multiple livelihoods depend on your perfection, a kind of pressure builds up which can quickly become toxic and lead to ruin. I have found this kind of tension and pressure fascinating lately, as it leads me to look for truth rather than for lies in a thriller. It was with this hope that I read Her Perfect Life as well. What kind of let me down about this book is that the perfection kind of remains present in the main character. While she has her flaws, technically, it didn't feel to me like there was a real edge there.
Lily Atwood is a star and so her life needs to be perfect. Fresh of winning an Emmy for her investigative reporting, thanks to tips from an anonymous Mr. Smith, Lily is on a high. But there are things in her past she is trying to keep hidden. Like the father of her adorable daughter, Rowen, and the disappearance of her sister, Cassie, decades back. When mysterious messages begin appearing that hint at the reason behind her sister's disappearance, and when Mr. Smith becomes a little too involved, Lily finds her perfect life under threat. Also not happy about this is her producer, Greer, who has always been in the background and needs Lily to remain perfect so she herself can remain her producer. As things begin unravelling, the narrative jumps back and forth between Lily and Greer's point of view, as well as jumping to the past to figure out what happened to Cassie. It's a lot and most of it is fun. But oddly enough I didn't really find myself really connecting to any of the characters. Lily was too clean, despite some dark edges, and Cassie too much of a teenager for me to really see them as fully-formed. The one character I was really intrigued by was Greer and I kind of wish the novel had been told purely from her perspective. As Lily's producer, she is fully reliant on Lily's image remaining perfect, and Greer's desire to remove obstacles, combined with her simmering dislike of Lily herself, was really intriguing! But I didn't get enough of that to really satisfy that craving.
This is my first book by Hank Phillippi Ryan, although I have seen plenty of her books around and had an eye on quite a few. While I wasn't entirely here for the characters in Her Perfect Life I was absolutely intrigued by the complexity of her plot. We're moving backwards and forwards in time, there are plans upon plans, secret partners, potential conspiracies, and more. The pace throughout Her Perfect Life is pretty snappy, to the point that I am not entirely sure how much time actually passes during the whole story, but that did help keep the tension consistent. I also very much enjoyed the way Ryan described the settings and action, which did really help me picture the novel's events but also, quite often, added a really cinematic vibe to the whole endeavour. I could see this as a TV series! What did stop my enjoyment, however, were the characters, as I mentioned above. I will definitely be giving Ryan's other books a go, however.
I give this novel...
/
2/3 Universes!
While I wasn't entirely blown away by Her Perfect Life I did enjoy my reading experience. This novel goes loads of different places and I didn't see all these different directions coming.
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