I am one of those readers who takes no issue with setting a book down if it doesn’t appeal to me for whatever reason. I simply mark it as shelved with a little note as to why I wasn’t able to finish it and move on. Every now and then I go back to this list and come away with a book that turns out to be quite good. I am a firm believer that some books have a certain time or place to be read. An example of this would be “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski. This book took over a decade of starts and stops before I was drawn in and then couldn’t put it down.

However, there are books that are truly, for a lack of a better term, bad. By bad, I mean a book that is so poorly written that there is no possibility of the reader receiving any enjoyment from it. Therein lies the crux of the matter. My sole purpose for reading, whether it be fiction or nonfiction, is for the pure and simple enjoyment of it. I love a good, well written book.

So, what in the hell am I rambling on about? Well, I recently finished reading a bad book. I could have immediately shelved it, but instead, I decided to read it. The reason being is that I wanted to write a critical review as to why I thought a book was bad instead of just saying it sucked without any context. The book is “The Perfect Family” by Robyn Harding. She is the author of (remarkably) quite a few books, most of which garner at least 3.5 stars on Goodreads with (at the time of this writing) 50% of reviews being 4-5 stars.

Just for reference, here is a quick summary of the book. The story centers on the Adler family; parents Thomas and Viv, their son Eli and daughter Tarryn. Thomas is a successful real estate agent, Viv is running her own interior decorating business, Eli is a student at a prestigious college and Tarryn is a senior at high school. Outwardly, the Adlers perceive themselves as having it all together; perfect home, perfect yard, perfect neighborhood, perfect cars, you get the point. Inwardly, each member of the family is hiding a “terrible secret” that if found out would ruin the family’s reputation completely. The other hook of the story is that the family is being targeted by unknown vandals who attack the house with eggs, poop and various other shenanigans. The mystery to be solved is who is attacking them and why.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

Immediately, even before starting chapter one, the reader is presented with the dreaded Prologue. Harding’s use of a prologue in this instance is completely unnecessary. She describes a scene which happens later in the story from the point of view of the person attacking the Adler’s home. In my opinion this was a lazy attempt at hooking in the reader. Judging from the writing style in the prologue, I would not have read any further.

The story is told from the perspective of each character with alternating chapters. I love this type of narration, mainly because the author has to create well rounded and detailed characters for this method to work and, in my opinion, great character development is the cornerstone of any great novel. Unfortunately, Harding misses the mark here completely. There is no discernible difference in the characters' voices and were it not for Harding using the character’s name for each chapter, there would be no way of knowing who was doing the narration. For all of the characters to “sound” the same was quite disappointing and really made reading the book a struggle.

Each “terrible secret” that the characters are hiding are slowly teased out during the course of the story. With the possible exception of one secret, the others are quite pathetic and don't warrant the amount of turmoil these people were putting themselves through. However, by this point in the story, having been bored to distraction, I just didn’t care anymore. This book is supposed to be a page turning thriller. Instead it is filled with flat characters and boring narration.

The writing is trite and the repetition of ridiculous details was massively annoying. An example of this is every time someone got out of the shower they had to “reach for a towel from the heated towel stand”. It’s such an odd detail to begin with, but to have it repeated throughout the story was bonkers.

One of my major pet peeves in a novel is when an author tries to interject a little slang or pop culture into the story that they obviously have no clue about. It's cringy and makes you feel like your dad is trying to be hip around your friends. In “A Perfect Family” there is a scene where a bunch of kids are walking towards a skate park. The author writes this gem of prose:

“One of the boys was sucking on a glass pipe as he walked. He handed it to Finn and the group paused while the fair-haired boy sucked in the smoke. It would be weed wax—a potent marijuana concentrate smoked in a pipe. It was not for the novice drug user. These kids were hard-core smokers.”

Wow. Apparently the editor, if there even was one, completely missed this page. For me, this little scene was the best part of the entire book. It still makes me laugh. There are many names for the different types of concentrates and extracts that are available now, but never have I heard of the term "weed wax". Also, wax is most definitely not "sucked" out of a glass pipe unless you were placing it on top of some actual weed then you could "smoke" it. I don't even understand what Harding means by "novice drug user" or "hard-core smokers". The entire wording of the above scene is absurd. If you don't know anything about drugs, do a little research or don't write about it. Nothing would have been lost in the story had those lines simply never been written.

Now we get to the ending. This might be a little spoiler-ish, but honestly, you don't want to read this book, so it shouldn't matter.

Eventually everyone's secrets are revealed and, for the amount of angst and trepidation each character has had all throughout the story, the issues get resolved and dealt with rather quickly. There are no real repercussions for anyone. There are no moments of inner reflection or growth. Everyone just goes on as before. Even the egg thrower is outed to very little fanfare. In fact, the author ties up all of the loose ends so quickly it's almost as if she wanted to get the book over with as much as I did. All of this is bad enough until you get to the last sentence. This last sentence was so contrived, had I been reading a physical book I may have started ripping the pages.

Well, there you have it. If you are a fan of Robyn Harding, I apologize for my brutal honesty, but this book sucked.