Very typical Freida McFadden. The only thing I can say is that McFadden didn’t have her usual, here’s two twists thing that she usually does. Some parts of the book dragged painfully by the way, but for the most part the book keeps moving as we figure out who abducted a young girl and whether the main character Erika’s son Liam was behind this like many in the town think. It’s not her best work, but not her worst.
“The Perfect Son” follows Erika Cass and her perfect family. Her teenage son Liam and daughter Hannah are great. She has a loving husband named Jason who makes a ton of money. Erika doesn’t even have to work (though she does part time work at the local paper). Erika though has a secret, she’s afraid of and for her son. Years ago she found out what he was capable of, and now that a young girl who was last seen with her son is missing, she’s scared that he did something to her.
The book jumps between Erika and police interviews with characters we get to know throughout the book. Some of them are school kids, who know Liam, one was a teacher, etc. You get a lot of information about him and what makes him tick.
We do get some development into Erika, but not a lot. I think that McFadden should have just not even bothered with this one random thing that gets tossed in about Erika’s past. It added nothing and slowed down the book flow.
The book flow though at times is uneven until you get to the end and then it’s full steam ahead with the story. If you are a long-time McFadden reader you can guess at the reveal since this was one of her earlier works and I don’t think she did a great job of tossing out red herrings.
The ending though was a bit of a snoozer, I think you are supposed to feel alarm, but I honestly didn’t.
I read this for Halloween Bingo 2025, “Disturbia.”
