Oh my goodness, couldn't put this down! Just when you thought Lily aka Juliette couldn't do any more to entrap the love of her life Nate- she always goes one step further. Her obsessive behaviour dates back to her experiences as a child, the author weaves this tale brilliantly, keeping you hooked and wondering what lengths Lily will go to! An excellent first novel.

An intriguing story about a young woman obsessed with her former boyfriend. Haunted by the death of her young brother when she was a girl and the toxic experiences of her schooldays, the protagonist seeks to win her boyfriend back. Though let down a little by the ending which I found disappointing, this was still an enjoyable and fast read.

Who couldn't be intrigued after reading the description for The Perfect Girlfriend I couldn't wait to start reading and become immersed in Juliette's life. It's safe to say that this story is what you would call a slow burner but I really enjoyed this pace as we really focus on Juliette and her daily life along with her thoughts and feelings. So if you love a story that is character driven then I am sure that you will enjoy The Perfect Girlfriend. There are definitely some intense scenes as I was pulled further into Juliette's story and see her real personality come out to play.

I was left on edge wondering if it would all come falling down for Juliette but also thinking where was everything building to and how would everything end. I felt compelled to see how things would turn out, not just for Juliette but the other people in her life. Karen Hamilton has created a really interesting character and wrote her perfectly where I read with equal parts horror over some of her ideas and actions to almost willing her on in parts that's how involved I became in her story. For me even though I wanted to dislike her I couldn't actually bring myself to fully do this, after all some of the best characters are the ones with flaws. Juliette is certainly a complex character and has some very interesting, alarming even chilling ideas that will leave you hoping you never get on her bad side!

I really had no idea what would happen next and I loved being kept on my toes with some twists woven into the story that I never expected to see.

The Perfect Girlfriend is compelling and addictive with a disturbingly chilling edge!

With thanks to Anne Cater and Wildfire Books for my copy. This is my honest and unbiased opinion.

Grea book, the main character irritates me a lot with all the things she did and kept doing, you keep thinking get over him but she doesn't. However a book that gives you emotions means it's a great book. Well done,

Many thanks for the opportunity to preview this book. It's a tad formulaic and didn't grab my attention. It felt like a bit of a slog to persevere. However, I did and it's not badly written, just not for me.

Thanks again.

This is quite a frustrating book but addictive at the same time.
Juliette is adamant that Nate and her are meant to be together and she goes to great lengths to come into contact with him.
At the start of the story we find out that they have split up but she is certain that if she just gives him some space, he’ll be hers again ....
Juliette is very determined and I found it quite unbelievable at times the lengths someone would go to to get what they want.
As you can imagine her plan doesn’t go smoothly and I’ve read other reviews where they felt sorry for her, but I didn’t connect with her as her plans and ideals were so far removed from anything I would do.
Yes, I could empathise with her at the start when the relationship ended but as for what follows, then no, I couldn’t understand her thinking at all.
This is a real page turner as you are left speechless and desperate to know what on earth she’s going to do next.
Thanks to Headline/Wildfire for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

Flipping heck this was a good one! A psychological stalker story which keeps the reader guessing to the brilliant ending. The book was marvellous in the way it showed the sheer amount of planning that was undertaken by the main character, and the complete disregard she had for anyone or anything standing in her way. Highly recommended.
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Perfect Girlfriend was so much fun to read, I was so caught up in all the craziness, I read it in one-sitting! The events in this one don’t move at a fast-pace, but the plot is so entertaining, you’ll fly through the pages. What I really liked about this novel is, it all centred around Juliette and everyone else were pawns in her master plan; the viewpoints of others don’t matter because Juliette is the perfect girlfriend, and come hell or high water, she’s going to get her man back!

With Juliette taking centre stage, it was essential, not for her to be likeable, but for her character to be interesting, for her to be able to grab your attention and keep hold of it from beginning to end. And wow, the manipulation, the lies, the scheming, the patience – all so engaging! The obsessive nature of her character hits you straight away and makes you excited for what’s to come.

Don’t pick up this book if you’re looking for “seriousness,” this plot goes way beyond the realm of “normal” – this isn’t a novel you read for its believability factor but for its entertainment factor, the wild ride Juliette goes on and you get to experience it right along with her. If you think you’ve ever done anything extreme to get what you want, trust me, you’ve got nothing on Juliette. And what’s so crazy about this novel is, I was actually rooting for Juliette at times, knowing full well how unhinged she was, I just couldn’t help but look forward to her next devious scheme.

Things did get super crazy towards the end, and it was a bit too extreme for me personally, but it was totally fitting to the plot and to Juliette’s nature. Overall, I really enjoyed the dramaticness of this novel, seeing Juliette’s actions and hearing her inner thoughts was so much fun, in a disturbing, yet light-hearted, way.

The Perfect Girlfriend is definitely a standout psychological thriller because it’s so different to what’s currently flooding the market. In a thoroughly entertaining way, Hamilton has addressed themes of love and obsession, grief and loss, revenge and manipulation. I absolutely recommend this novel and look forward to Hamilton’s next book.

This is such a disturbing novel - Fatal Attraction meets Silence of the Lambs - consider yourself fairly warned. It absolutely creeped me out, in the best possible way and I could have kept reading when it ended, and that is my only criticism - it ended leaving me with unanswered questions - like, what happened next?????

The Perfect Girlfriend? If you’re easily manipulated and a bit slow on the uptake, perhaps. Otherwise, unhinged!
From the first time we’re introduced to Elizabeth (who takes to calling herself Juliette later in the book) there’s a sense of things not quite being as we expect. She recounts the events of the day her brother died in quite a detached way, and I’m still not sure to what extent this event shapes her behaviour later.
When we next see her she’s obsessing over her ex-boyfriend, Nate. She monitors him on social media, keeps tabs on shared friends and watches him. This might be seen as something that could feasibly happen if you’re not accepting a break-up. But Juliette takes this obsessive ‘love’ to a whole new level that was audacious in its execution. It became so odd that I felt it was in no way credible and I spent the majority of the book waiting for the police to drag her off.
Naturally, there’s more to this than we’re initially told. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine anyone going to these lengths to resolve past issues. Her evident mental health issues - and the unnecessary suffering she put so many through in her determination to have the happy ending she craves - left me feeling cold.
I’m grateful to a NetGalley for the opportunity to read this prior to publication, and for entertaining me, but this was a step too far in terms of plot to be one I’d recommend to people.

The title of this book led me to believe it was going to be yet another one of the many recent dramas which centre around a girlfriend who appears to be perfect and yet is transpires to be anything but...
However, I was delighted to be very surprised by this book that showed from the outset that this ‘perfect girlfriend’ was anything but and the book certainly stood out from all of the rest with similar titles.
I was intrigued to find out how the story would unfold and just far Juliette would go to demonstrate she was ‘the perfect girlfriend’.
Thanks to GoodReads for a free Kindle copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

After being part of the cover reveal for The Perfect Girlfriend last year, I was looking forward to reading the book. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but let me just say…

…This book blew me away!

I have never sat there in such stunned disbelief, staring agape at my kindle, unable to believe just how twisted this character is. The things she did, the things she planned, all in the name of love… Creepy does not begin to cover it!

I’m being very cautious writing this review. The best bit about the book is that I literally had no idea what was going to come next, if the character(s) were going to get away with it or what the final outcome was going to be. It gripped my attention in a vice and kept tightening the screws. I won’t ruin the reading experience for anyone else.

Juliette is the most messed up, twisted character I think I’ve ever read. I had a very strange love/hate relationship with her. She’s the main character and the view point that the reader follows. She’s not evil, she’s not cruel – not deliberately, anyway – and yet I’m sure her humanity got lost somewhere on the way. I want to say she’s irrational and crazy, but that’s just it…she’s not. She thinks everything through, plans meticulously and plays the long game.

She has qualities (other than manipulation) and she cares deeply (who else takes a spare key of a new friend, just so they can go and tidy the towels while said friend is away?). You can’t connect with her on an empathetic level (at least, I hope for your sake, you can’t!), but at the same time, this is her story and you want to know the outcome.

Like I said, you love to hate her.

It took me a couple of chapters before I really got into the book, as initially you don’t realise what is going on. In retrospect, the gradual unravelling of the scale of what is going on is cleverly done – just as the pace/tension eases up, you find out something else. However, stick with it if you aren’t initially grabbed in chapter one because you are going to be in for a heck of a ride.

The pacing is good and the tension builds. Despite dramatic events that happen at the end of the book, the tension peaks for me a little before that, when Juliette takes things to the extreme in Vegas. It’s from that moment on that I spend the rest of the book in disbelief at how far things are going.

I feel this is a rambling review because I’m trying so hard not to give anything away. My mother had to listen to me ranting every few chapters because I couldn’t work out what was going to happen, or what I wanted to happen.

The Perfect Girlfriend is a mind-twisting, spine-chilling tale of what could happen when love goes wrong. Definitely worth a read!

The Perfect Girlfriend is a truly addictive, can't-stop-reading psyschological thriller! It's actually a fairly slow-moving story but Juliette is such a deliciously devious, complex character that I found myself absorbed in every step of the story. She's a great character because she's not all out 'crazy', she's not a completely awful person, but she has some truly chilling traits which makes her such an interesting person to read about. Sometimes I felt (a little) sorry for her but most of the time I just continued reading on and on, in abject fascination, as things got more and more intense! Therefore you can easily imagine meeting someone like her in real life. In fact, you probably have and perhaps just didn't quite twig...!

As I mentioned, the story is not all action, which I don't say as a negative at all because the pace at which it does move along reflects the mounting tension of Juliette's mood, mind and actions. I honestly can't fault this story; though some parts are a bit more dramatic the character of Juliette is so convincingly odd that I just felt myself believing it all, and it kept me reading on page after page!

I'm pleased to be on board the blog tour for The Perfect Girlfriend today. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater, who invited me to join the tour, and Wildfire and Netgalley for my copy of the book.
Juliette and Nate split up six months ago. But Juliette knows that Nate still loves her: she just needs to perfect her plan to win him back, including securing a job with the same airline. She is the perfect girlfriend and she will prove that to him. But how far will she go to get what she wants?
From the beginning of The Perfect Girlfriend, it is clear that Juliette is far from perfect. She's cunning, manipulative and unfriendly, but somehow I found myself feeling sorry for her, wanting her plan to succeed. This is helped by the flashback scenes in the novel, which give the reader insight into Juliette's past, demonstrating the reasons behind her behaviour.
If The Perfect Girlfriend ​was a flight, it would be a turbulent one with high winds. With every step, Juliette's plan becomes more risky and more extreme, and I was hanging on to the edge of my seat, wanting to find out if she would be caught. At times, her actions seemed a little far fetched, but somehow I believed them, willingly strapping myself in for the ride. It's not a fast paced novel, but the tension builds with every page, and I kept turning pages as it simmered, waiting for an explosion. The explosive ending did not let me down and I found it truly compelling. It will stay with me for some time to come.

This was absolutely brilliant I couldn’t put it down it certainly had the suspense factor and it certainly kept me on my toes.....the lengths she went to ...amazing.
Highly recommend

As awful as it sounds, there was nothing I liked about this story. The main character was pathetic and downright petulant at times, whether that was intentional, I'm not sure; but if it was then good job, because she irritated me from the start. The story itself felt rather disjointed.

Well, this was the book that kept on giving! Just when I thought Juliette had exhausted her list of ways to get back with Nate, up she pops with something that topped the rest. She really was a deliciously created bunny boiler, with bells on top. She really was a psycho and so calculating to have got away with what she did for so long. Not without her mistakes though, she makes a few slip ups along the way but the other characters were so naive and unknowing that she really was aided and indeed enabled along the way. The way she put on all her masks and juggled her lies and deceptions really gave her a juicy role in the most scary way. She was also really rather ballsy insofar as she actually got to play out what I guess would be some things that probably many of us spurned lovers really want to do but don't have the guts and tenacity (and wherewithal) to carry out so, in a weird way, kudos to her. Although, that said, her perception was at times( quite often) really rather skewed.
Plot and revenge and all that aside though, I really enjoyed the glimpse into the life of an air hostess. The training, the reality of what happens behind the scenes, how it all comes together really interested me in a way that I never really thought of before. How the job impacts on life, love and living in ways that I didn't even cast a thought to previously.
Another thing that I really must rave about was the way that Juliette evolved, or should I say devolved, as she started to spiral out of control, especially towards the end. She really did employ all the tricks of the trade to get her man back. Some of which were delightfully evil and conniving; all compelling reading. Several times whilst reading I thought that the book could actually double as a bunny boiler manual and I almost fear that it does at times spell out things a little too much and could actually end up giving people ideas. I guess that's a reflection of how real some of what I was reading felt at times.
My emotions were a little all over the place whilst reading too. I swung my allegiance between characters quite a bit along the way. Where I can't actually condone what Juliette resorted to, the lengths she went to, there were times when action, albeit not quite as strong as what actually happened, was perfectly justified as certain behaviour displayed by certain characters wasn't really the done thing. I definitely admired the way that Juliette retained her sane face for the majority of the book. Hiding what was beneath very well indeed.
All in all, a cracking read that kept my attention well, and me on my toes throughout. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

The Perfect Girlfriend - a fabulous psychological thriller. Juliette loves Nate, she even takes a job to be near him. They are meant to be. The only problem is, Nate broke up with her six months earlier and doesn’t love her.

This book is brilliantly written as Juliette plots and plans to get Nate back. She’s conniving, malicious and dangerous - everything you want in a main character. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley, Wildfire and the author for the chance to review.

Wow,This is one heck of a story with lots and twists and turns. It has been well plotted and gathers pace as it goes on.
Lily is a child who has a past and then this shapes her future.
The cruelty of children is evident within this book and how this can affect someones life in the long term. How can you forget the bullies and how can you get your revenge.
As Lily moves from that persona to the persona of Juliette, she becomes more obsessive and more chilling in her approach.
The ending is not what I was expecting but this was actually good.
A well written debut book.I struggled until 50% as it sort of gripped me but not quite enough but then it did.

Now, I know you hear stories of scorned women going to extreme lengths but my gosh, Juliette takes first place for persistence. Throughout this book I loved her character, I despised her, I was in disbelief, I laughed at her, I felt pity towards her. Honestly, I can’t even say now whether I actually sympathised with her or not. I found her to be so complex, she left me confused about my own feelings towards her. What a character to have written!

In usual circumstances, I would have scoffed in disbelief at some of the antics that Juliette gets up to and found them ridiculous but because of how brilliantly her character was written I was completely invested in her every move. I willed her to do the crazy stuff and then even more psychotic stuff. I felt like I was thriving on it with her.

I questioned myself during this book also. Do I agree with some of things she did? Do I understand why she did them? Do I think her actions were justifiable. It’s not until a day after finishing I’m able to regain some sanity and realise that of course she’s a raving lunatic! But during the book, I was in so deep I can’t believe I even thought she was remotely ok!

So it will come of no shock, that I loved this book. It’s making me smile now thinking about it. It was so satisfyingly outrageous with a nutter of a main character. If you’re into psychological thrillers, you’ll love this. I have to give in to my inner psycho and give this a perfect 5 stars! I can’t wait to indulge on more of Karen Hamilton’s work.