Review: The Perfect Son

The Perfect Son by Freida McFadden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Here we have a book that was, for me, a fairly mediocre read. The characters were standard—and in some cases flat out stereotypic, while the plot just never really engaged me.

Author Freida McFadden is certainly ABLE to write, but her attempt to build suspense was riddled with a fully distracting plethora of obvious red herrings. Any reader of psychological thrillers will see through these misdirects, which at times were almost amateurish and painfully transparent.

Beyond the troubling red herrings, the work also suffers in terms of character development. From the teenage bully to the bookish girl; the Xanax popping overwhelmed parent to the school principal, these characters never rose from the page in a way that made them particularly interesting. Instead of investing in any of them, I found myself mentally leaving the story, angry with the stereotypes.

If you search for the title The Perfect Son, the number of results is almost overwhelming. McFadden’s use of the title, in spite of the commonality, is almost representative of the entire book. The characters, plot development and even the attempts at setting tone, were all basic and, again, common—as if the author was somehow following a prescriptive approach straight out of “How to Write a Psychological Thriller”. All the boxes for necessary elements were checked, but without any flourish or particular creativity.

Three stars for a book that was solid, with a good foundation. Unfortunately the story itself was cookie cutter, lacking any real style to set it apart from a hundred others.

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