The Perfect Family

May 21, 2018
King’s tense debut opens with a masked gunman bursting into Maddie Castle’s home, forcing her to makes a seemingly impossible choice: she must choose which of her 10-year-old twins, Annabel and Aiden, the gunman will kill. Following the decision and the gunman’s escape, Maddie is a shadow of the woman she was, barely speaking, an outsider in Aiden and her husband Dom’s lives. Maddie’s memories of that day aren’t complete: she frequently forgets large swaths of time, and the guilt of choosing Annabel to die has crushed her. Feeling as if Aiden and Dom are slipping away from her, she begins to dissect her past with Dom and the children in hopes of remembering that day and the events leading up to it. Maddie soon realizes that her family life may not have been as perfect as she thought, and she wonders if she’s actually wandering through life as a shadow of her former self. She begins to question her own existence—contemplating whether her life is just a dream, or the delusional thoughts of her disordered mind. The truth of that horrible day is eventually revealed, but the chaotic finale will stretch reader credulity. King, a psychotherapist, paints a convincing portrait of a woman in extreme psychological distress. This is a suspenseful, creepy novel.