Perfect Little Children
A Novel
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3.8 • 110 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The New York Times bestselling author of The Monogram Murders and Woman with a Secret returns with a sharp, captivating, and expertly plotted tale of psychological suspense.
All Beth has to do is drive her son to his soccer game, watch him play, and then return home. Just because she knows her ex-best friend lives near the field, that doesn’t mean she has to drive past her house and try to catch a glimpse of her.
Why would Beth do that and risk dredging up painful memories? She hasn’t seen Flora for twelve years. She doesn’t want to see her today—or ever again. But she can’t resist. She parks outside the open gates of Newnham House, watches from across the road as Flora arrives and calls to her children Thomas and Emily to get out of the car.
Except . . . There’s something terribly wrong. Flora looks the same, only older. Twelve years ago, Thomas and Emily were five and three years old. Today, they look precisely as they did then. They are Thomas and Emily without a doubt, but they haven’t changed at all. They are no taller, no older. Why haven’t they grown? How is it possible that they haven’t grown up?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chance takes Cambridge, England, massage therapist Beth Leeson, the narrator of this wildly off-target domestic thriller from bestseller Hannah (The Next to Die), to the posh community where Flora Braid, her former bestie, and family relocated 12 years earlier after the abrupt end of their friendship. When Beth gets a peek at the Braids' new place, she's unsettled, to say the least, to spot her onetime friend and two youngsters, Thomas and Emily, looking as if they had not aged since the last time she saw them 12 years ago. Beth really becomes alarmed when her husband tells her that, based on social media posts, the Braids appear to have been living in Florida for over a decade, after Flora's entertaining but erratic husband launched a successful tech company there. Determined to find out what happened to Flora and whether she and the children are all right, Beth travels to Florida, where she barrels down an ever-darker road to a jaw-dropping denouement but given the flimsy characters and incredible plot, readers may have bailed well before then. Hopefully, Hannah will return to form next time.
