Review: The Perfectionists by Sara Shepard

Title: The Perfectionists
Series: The Perfectionists #1
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Publication Date: October 7th, 2014
Genres: Young Adult, High School, Murder, Mystery, Suspense

Synopsis:
In Beacon Heights, Washington, five girls—Ava, Caitlin, Mackenzie, Julie, and Parker—know that you don’t have to be good to be perfect. At first the girls think they have nothing in common, until they realize that they all hate Nolan Hotchkiss, who’s done terrible things to each of them. They come up with the perfect way to kill him—a hypothetical murder, of course. It’s just a joke...until Nolan turns up dead, in exactly the way they planned. Only, they didn’t do it. And unless they find the real killer, their perfect lives will come crashing down around them.

From Sara Shepard, author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Pretty Little Liars series, comes another story of dark secrets, shocking twists, and what happens when five beautiful girls will do anything to hide the ugly truth.

The premise of The Perfectionists had me instantly intrigued. Five girls plan the hypothetical murder of a guy they all hate, and he turns up dead in exactly the way they'd planned, only they didn't do it. That's exactly my cup of tea.

I went into this book with rather mixed emotions. I was excited to see how it would play out, but also quite nervous since I really didn't enjoy how cliché the Pretty Little Liars books were and had heard how similar this book was. With that being said, I was quite pleasantly surprised with the story and thoroughly enjoyed it, despite my numerous issues with it.


The book features Parker, Julie, Caitlin, Ava and Mac who have all fallen victim to Nolan Hotchkiss' shenanigans and all secretly (some not-so-secretly) have a vendetta against him. I'm all for books with lots of female characters (GIRL POWER!) and each of these girls had a fairly distinct personality and storyline. They were all rather likeable and while I did sympathise with the majority of them, I feel like the characters lacked a certain depth that would have allowed me to properly connect with them. One thing I did notice though, is that alike Pretty Little Liars we are given five girls that fall into the stereotypical scenarios such as: a sporty one, one that may or may not have a thing for a teacher, the one with issues at home, the one who has a thing for her bestfriend's boyfriend.

My issue with having such a large number of sixteen year old female characters is that it was at times very difficult to distinguish between them. For the first three quarters of the book I had no idea who was who and I struggled to put faces to names.

The stand-out character for me was definitely Parker. Parker used to be the 'popular' girl, pretty and perfect until some horrific incident left her with horrid facial scars, forcing her to wear a hoodie all the time and fall victim to terrible headaches. I was most fascinated and eager to learn more about her, her past and what exactly the headaches mean. Shepard didn't leave us with much information on her, but she built suspense so well that I am sure she has something big coming in the next book.

One thing I disliked about this book was the character of Ava - not her, but the air about her. Ava is a gorgeous girl who we are told is also very smart. Throughout the entire book she tries to prove her intelligence but is shot down by her own stupid decisions. I don't enjoy being told a character is smart and not being shown it, if they truly are then their actions should prove it.

Most of my issues with this book, stemmed from the usual hallmarks of Shepard's novels. It follows the same formula as her Pretty Little Liars series: a bunch of teenage girls are brought together by some unknown driving force who tries to frame them for something and is essentially a shit-stirrer, and they try to solve it all on their own by breaking into places because the cops don't believe them and they can't tell their parents. Best friends stab each others backs, snotty rich kids rule the school, all the adults are incredibly insensitive, the cops are lazy douchecanoes and we even get a creepy male authority figure (SCORE!). Doesn't this all sound a little familiar? Also, let's not forget how almost all of the adults are absent or incompetent.

I was able to appreciate the diversity in the book though, it's not too often that we get a middle eastern/Israeli main character and it was definitely great to read such a female driven book.
Shepard doesn't shy away from more meaningful topics either, it touched upon issues such as bullying, social class differences, and burgeoning teenage sexuality, not necessarily in-depth but enough that the book wasn't overly picture-perfect.

The plot of the story was decent, that's really all I can say about it. There weren't too many earth-shattering plot twists and it was mostly 'meh' for me. I was hooked though, and I don't fully understand why. I think that alike the Pretty Little Liars TV show, the only thing driving me to continue was to find out who the heck was responsible and how the heck they pulled it off. The plot lagged was quite fast-paced in the beginning but sadly lagged for the majority of the middle before picking up again in the last forty or so pages.

The ending was incredibly abrupt and a HUGE cliff-hanger. We get very little information and essentially no insight to who was responsible and how they did it. Not to mention that surprise betrayal! Yikes. That one really threw me off. I did not see that coming at all. My only other qualm is that I felt like this book was far too much longer than it needed to be - I felt like most of what happened could have been condensed into ten chapters as opposed to thirty-six.

Overall The Perfectionists was exactly what I needed to pull me out of my reading slump - quick, entertaining, and fairly-fast paced. It kept me in suspense and was a great teenage drama with tiny hints of murder/mystery without being too heavy. It shares huge similarities with Shepard's previous novels and is in the same vein as both Pretty Little Liars and the Lying Game, but with its own tricky twists. I'm very intrigued to see what happens next and will most likely be picking up the sequel - Good Girls - when it comes out in June of this year.

3.5/5 keys to my heart!