The Perfect Girlfriend - Karen Hamilton Review

“Juliette loves Nate.
She will follow him anywhere. She's even become a flight
attendant for his airline, so she can keep a closer eye on him.
They are meant to be.
The fact that Nate broke up with her six months ago means nothing.
Because Juliette has a plan to win him back.
She is the perfect girlfriend.
And she'll make sure no one stops her from
getting exactly what she wants.
True love hurts, but Juliette knows it's worth all the pain...”

Thank you to Net Galley and Wildfire publishing for providing me with an ARC copy! All opinions in this review are my own.

This was yet another brilliantly realistic psychological thriller! Again, because this is a thriller there’s not too much I can say about the plot without ruining it, so sorry! It follows Juliette who is sure that she is the perfect girlfriend and will stop at literally nothing to show that she is the perfect girlfriend and win back her ex-boyfriend no matter what the cost. The things she does at first are slightly creepy but very realistic and could actually happen if you put enough thought into it and that’s what makes this so creepy! As Juliette escalates in the things she does to prove that she’s so perfect they escalate again in creepy, realistic ways and that’s what makes this so great!

Again, one of the best things about this was that the story was told from the psychotic side and not the victims side. This gave us so much more insight into her reasonings behind her actions and it’s so fascinating to see what goes on behind the scenes. Juliette truly believes that she is in the right and is doing everything to prove that she’s the best girlfriend and the ex-boyfriend is just being temporarily blind to how great she is, and people are dragging him in the wrong direction and he’ll soon see how perfect she is. Using the Airline jobs as a pilot and air hostess really helped make this book come together and was a new and interesting setting for a book that worked so so well!

This another one of those books where you’re not really sure what to make of the main character; you feel sorry for Juliette at first, especially since the book starts with some of Juliette’s background and what happened to her brother. But to me she was obviously delusional and one of the things that got me the most, was that I was sort of rooting for Juliette to be back together with her ex, Nate despite all that she was doing and most of it, if she hadn’t taken it that one step too far, I could see a lot of people doing in normal everyday life which is crazy!

I figured out the twist literally a few pages before it was revealed and it was a well thought-out a rounded twist that made sense and wasn’t ridiculous which again, was great. It didn’t have a solid ending but in a way, it sort of made sense and I wasn’t mad at it!

Overall, this is a great thriller and I would definitely it! It’s being released on March 08^th 2018 and you can find pre-order links below:
Amazon UK: Hardback / Kindle 

Waterstones 
Book depository

Professed - Nicola Rendell Review

 "At a secret masked ball at Yale, Naomi Costa is literally swept off her stiletto-blistered feet by a man with a killer jawline, a perfect body, and an even-better kiss. They bust out of an emergency exit and have axis-shaking sex. He pours whiskey in her belly button and after they run out of condoms, they have to get creative. That kind of sex.
The next day, she learns that he is none other than Dr. Benjamin Beck, a brand new member of the Yale faculty and the hottest thing to happen to academia since… well, ever. She has to take his damned junior seminar to graduate, but it gets worse. He’s also her College Master: her boss, her advisor, her everything. And he’s just moved in, right downstairs.
They can’t stay away from each other. They're either fusion or fission or both. They’re making out in libraries, hiding notes between stones, and sneaking off to nautically themed AirBnbs. Hear that sound? It’s the academic code of ethics going up in flames.
If they're found out, he’ll lose his job and his reputation. She'll lose her scholarship and be forced to return to the life of lobster fishing that she thought she’d escaped.
And they will be found out, yes they will.
So what the hell are they going to do?"

 

This book is currently free for Kindle download on AmazonUK and Amazon US!

I downloaded this to read mainly because it sounded good and was free to download so if I didn’t like it then there was no loss. I’m so glad that I did because I absolutely loved it! This was a forbidden romance book with a student / professor relationship and is the first one I’ve read.

It starts off with a secret masked party which both Professor Beck and Naomi have been invited to and it’s here where they meet, have a night of mind blowing sex and then part ways the next day. I thought that this was a great way for them to meet except this masked party is never explained much past the first chapters of the book and although we find out that Naomi was invited because of her friend Lucy, we don’t ever find out why Professor Beck is invited – especially since it was his first night in town. The only thing I would have changed in his book was their meeting and would have probably been more realistic if they’d met in a club or something similar.

The chemistry between Ben and Naomi was obvious from the start with their night of crazy sex and although they tried to deny it, for obvious reasons, they always ended up finding themselves being drawn back together. They have a lot more lust filled sex in a lot of places; in a park and in the back of Bens car to name a few and this chemistry wasn’t going unnoticed by anyone. Dean Osgood never wanted Ben to come to Yale and a be the Master as Ben is a Bachelor and the previous Master had to be removed due to a scandal. Osgood therefore said that he’d be keeping an eye on Ben and if he sensed any scandal brewing or if Ben is breaking the rules then he’ll be gone. Naomi is also on scholarship to Yale and knows that if her and Ben get caught, that she will be out and lose her scholarship too. Obviously this creates a lot of issues with the chemistry between and the possibility of a relationship but I did feel like Dean Osgood was slightly overdone here and seemed to be on constant patrol to try and catch Ben up to something which did seem unrealistic.

I did struggle to get into it at first due to the Author’s writing style being a bit different to what I’m use to but once I got into it, I just couldn’t put it down. It seemed like every time I had to stop reading it was leaving it some sort of cliff hanger and I just had to find out what was happening next. Despite this, I didn’t feel like they’re were too many unrealistic plot twists. It was just one of those books where you needed to find out what was going to happen next with Naomi or with Ben because you were so invested.

I really wish that there was a follow up book for this because I feel like you get so engrossed in Naomi and Ben’s relationship and their lives that you want to know what happens next. I want to see how Naomi does at university, what happens with her dad and when he meets Ben, what Ben does and how their relationship progresses – especially since Ben is so much older than Naomi, as they will obviously have different 5-year plans and current aims due to their age difference and it would have been great to see how they progressed with that. 

I’d definitely recommend this if you’re a fan of teacher / student romances or even if you just like romances which involve the couple having to have a secretive relationship or must overcome something to be in their relationship. As mentioned above, this is also currently free to download for kindle on Amazon UK and Amazon US so you can always go and download it for nothing an give it go – if you don’t like it then you won’t have wasted any money! 😊

You - Caroline Kepnes Review

 "When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.

There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.

As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder."

This was such a creepy, eye-opening book and I loved every bit of it! It follows Joe, who becomes infatuated with Guinevere Beck when she comes into his bookstore and he takes her name off her credit card and googles her. He manages to find out so much about her just from googling her and looking at her social media and his stalking begins there.

This is told from the perspective of the stalker, Joe and is also written towards the reader and uses “You” synonyms (hence the name I suppose!). This made the book so much creepier as it was actually addressed to you. This mixed with how easy it was for Joe to follow and find out Beck was doing just made this an overall creepy book. He manages to use her social media to track her and her whereabouts which she freely shares and also manages to find out a lot about her from social media which he uses to create contact with her. It really made me sit back and think about my social media and how much has been shared and made me wonder how easy it would be for someone to use my social media to potentially do what Joe did to Beck.

Everything that Joe did he justified including all the weird creepy stuff but it was justified in ways that made sense most of the time and you could actually understand why he was doing what he was doing even if you didn’t agree with him doing it. The twists that happened in the book were very believable and didn’t seem like they were chucked into the plot to try and keep the book going or keep the reader interested.

One of the things I loved about this was that at times, you actually felt sorry for the main character despite the fact that he was the creepy, perverted stalker of Beck. Beck wasn’t entirely likeable either which again was a surprise; because you follow Joe’s perspective and get an inside view of all the creepy perverted things he does to Beck (like watching her masturbate, stealing her underwear and following her around everywhere she went) I figured that I’d spend this entire story feeling sorry for Beck – I mean she is the one who’s been stalked and followed etc; but I found it really difficult to like her! She seemed so stuck up and pretentious and so much of the stuff she does to Joe actually makes you feel really really sorry for Joe and make her seem like a bitch! Because Joe has access to Beck’s entire life, we also get to see how she lives her life and it’s obvious that she is a selfish person who uses people for her own needs and then just leaves them high and dry when she’s done. And ultimately, this is one of the things that end up leading her towards Joe in the end when she has run out of people to use, she finally turns to Joe as he’s fooled her into thinking that he’s just a ‘normal’ guy.

I would definitely recommend this if you’re looking for a creepy “thriller” book to read – there is a second book “Hidden Bodies” however for looking at the reviews for second book, I’m not going to be picking it up – many of the reviews say that it’s very different to You and is no-where near as good so I think I’m going to stop here so as not to ruin it!