Perfect (Flawed, #2)

by Cecelia Ahern

The thrilling, shocking and romantic sequel to the bestselling YA debut FLAWED is finally here. When we embrace all our flaws, that's when we can finally become PERFECT...

Celestine North lives in a society that demands perfection. After she was branded Flawed by a morality court, Celestine's life has completely fractured - all her freedoms gone.

Since Judge Crevan has declared her the number one threat to the public, she has been a ghost, on the run with the complicated, powerfully attractive Carrick, the only person she can trust. But Celestine has a secret - one that could bring the entire Flawed system crumbling to the ground.

Judge Crevan is gaining the upper hand, and time is running out for Celestine. With tensions building, Celestine must make a choice: save only herself, or risk her life to save all the Flawed. And, most important of all, can she prove that to be human in itself is to be Flawed...?

• ISBN10: 1250074126
• ISBN13: 9781250074126
• Publish Date: 4 April 2017
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 7 April 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[readingwithwrin]

"There's the person who you think you should be and there's the person who you really are. I've lost sense of both."
Perfect ending to the FLAWED duology!

Perfect starts right back up where Flawed ended. We have Celestine on the run, Judge Crevan and her whistleblower still going to extremes to find her, along with the same people trying to help her stay hidden, until they can figure out how to take them done.
"Not even justice itself is perfect."
First off I just want to say how nice it was to see this just stayed as a duology and not get dragged out like so many others have. Ahern has done an amazing job of making the two books fit together seamlessly all while, telling a story that is scarily close to our world.

Celestine really grows and changes in this book. She goes from being the girl who keeps her head down and tried to follow her new rules; to a proud and smart young woman. She embraces her new role in taking the Guild down, is able to think quickly and stays one step ahead of everyone else (even the other flawed).

"Arrogance, greed, impatience, stubbornness, martrydom, self-deprication, self-destruction. These are the seven character flaws judge Crevan placed on us.
But Judge Crevan, there are two sides to every story.
When you tell me that I have greed, I call it desire. Desire for a fair and equal society.
When you call me arrogant, I call it pride.
When you say I am impatient, I say that I am daring to question your judgments, which are not law but mere morality courts.
You call me stubborn; I say I'm determined.
You say I want to make myself a martyr; I say I'm showing selflessness.
Self Deprication? Humility.
Self-destruction? What I did wasn't a decision to ruin my life, but a decision based on the belief that what was happening was inhuman."

Yes she does take crazy risks in this book, and convinces others to do dangerous things. However, their things that she is doing as well and she isn't just sending in others alone.
We also finally get to meet Raphael (can we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that a little person was in a positive light!), who is even better, than I ever could have imagined.
Carrick is also finally a big part of the story, and the family that he has always wanted is shown to. We see him interact with others and it also helps Celeste make new friends and start to trust people again.
"It was on a bus that I lost my faith in humanity. It was on a bus that it was restored."

Overall I've really loved this duology, and while I'm sad to see it end I'm glad that ended how it has. Seeing so many people realize things aren't okay, and that even if it means getting in trouble, we have to take stand. These books are so relevant to things that are happening in today society and what could possibly happen in the future. It's a scary thought, but it also shows us what we can do in order to keep things from getting this bad and controlling.

[Leah]

You guys, I may have been a bit sceptical when it was announced Cecelia Ahern was the latest author to turn her hand to YA fiction, but man, has she ever nailed it. Flawed was absolutely fantastic and its sequel, Perfect, was even better! It kinda built on everything from Flawed and just made it that much better. I’ve never read a duology before with so much pace, but Perfect goes by so fast you feel like you should have whiplash from everything that’s happening, I actually lapped it up because I like books that go at quite a clip, it keeps the suspense up and it keeps me reading (I am currently writing this review at 12.30am, which should tell you how addictive this book is since my bedtime is regularly 10pm).

What I liked most about Perfect is that it stands alone quite well. Yes, reading Flawed will heighten your experience, but Cecelia is incredibly thorough with her recap, so you basically get caught up pretty easily. I appreciate that, because a lot of authors rely on you remembering what happened a year ago, which if they know anything about readers (or me, in particular) I forget things the SECOND I finish reading, all the time. I regularly start writing my review and have to go look up who the characters were again. Being back with Celestine was incredible - to think we first met her as this naive girl who thought her life was perfect (HAHAHAHAHA) and that her life was untouchable, to what she becomes in Perfect is mind-blowing but also incredible because her own personal growth was a pleasure to watch. You can literally see her growing into herself as the pages of Flawed and Perfect pass.

Perfect has so much right with it. There are tons of fist-bump moments, where I wanted to leap up from the sofa and scream with joy and excitement and frustration, too. It was like being on a roller-coaster, with ups and downs and plot twists galore, but it’s the kind of read that’s wholly satisfying by the end. You feel like you’ve gotten somewhere when you close the book, that all the anguish and torture of 800 pages was worth it. I love books about girl who become heroes. Katniss Everdeen in particular, who has  been a model of sorts for all these other girls who come and be heroes, and it’s so empowering that they don’t need a man to be saved. (I like when men save the day, sometimes, but I LOVE girls who can kick ass by themselves.)

I really, really loved this duology. I haven’t said a lot about Perfect because I don’t want to give too much away, but it was a brilliant sequel, and I liked that the romance wasn’t this massive thing. It would have been so easy for Celestine to be swayed by love, but it’s almost like a footnote, like it isn’t really that important, that the book still would have happened without it. Cecelia Ahern has done a superb job with her first foray in YA fiction, and man, I hope she keeps writing YA because she’s such a compelling writer. I felt like I really knew Celestine, I could cheer her victories and cry when things went wrong and I just can’t explain how all encompassing this duology was, I read it back to back over three days and it just blew my mind, both books are absolutely brilliant and they go together so freaking well. BRAVO CECELIA.

[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight 3.5*
This was a good follow up to Flawed, which I reviewed here. I suggest if you haven't read Flawed and plan to, you skip this- actually, don't even read the synopsis if you haven't, because it gives away too much. The premise as a whole is still a bit hard to believe, but assuming you've finished the first book, you can probably already look past that. Which I have.

Anyway, the book has a lot of strengths, which I will keep short because again, spoilers. But I think that the commentary it delivers is incredibly relevant- more so even than when the first book came out. It makes you really ponder who you would be in this kind of society, the kind where someone else dictates what is morally acceptable. See how close this is hitting to home these days? Yeah.

I liked that Celestine grew so much during this duology. I also liked that she learned so much. It wasn't just her growth as a character, it was her willingness to change and learn to do better. I also loved the significant role that family played in the book.

My issues were mostly minor. There were a few times when things felt just a tad too easy, especially toward the end, but not so much that it ruined the book. I also thought that some of the drama surrounding the romantic aspects of the story didn't need to be included. They took me out of the seriousness of the situation a bit.

But I was pleased to read the conclusion of Celestine's story, and found her world quite fascinating- and eerily plausible, if not verbatim, at least in concept.

Bottom Line: Solid end to this series that had a lot of really intriguing moral questions and lots of great character growth, from both main and more minor characters.

Copy provided for review

[chymerra]

This is another one of those books that I loved but I really wished that I read book 1 first because book 2 blew me out of the water. I devoured Perfect. I think I read it in a couple of hours after my kids went to bed for the night and when I was done with it, I closed the book and just stared out into space….trying to digest everything that I just read. Yes, it was truly that good.

Celestine was a reluctant hero of the Flawed. When I say reluctantly because she really didn’t want to be a poster child for anything. All she wanted to do, at first, was to just find a place that she could go off grid and hide from Craven and his Whistleblowers. But that just doesn’t happen. Any place that she finds sanctuary in, they always show up. I kept thinking that maybe she had a tracking device or something on her at one point because of how they would always show up. But it was revealed, in most of the cases, that fellow Flawed were calling the Whistleblowers and altering them to where she was. Which was kind of crappy, in my eyes.

I couldn’t stand Craven. He was gunning for Celestine because he thought that she had incriminating video evidence that shows him illegally branding Celestine on the spine without numbing the area first. Then he tries to cover up his crime (because it was a crime) by kidnapping everyone that was there or saw her brand. Like that was going to help everything. And when he does finally get Celestine, what does he do….arranges for her to have a skin graft to cover her brand. Any scene with him in it made me feel seriously greasy and I wanted to shower.

I wasn’t too sure about Carrick at first. Everything he did for and with Celestine ended up serving himself or the political party that he has become attached to. I even began to question if he was really attracted to her or if it was a ruse to get her to join him and help the political party. But, like everything else in this book, not everything is what it seems.

Again, I do wish that I had read book 1. I had a small issue with the significance to where the people were branded. It wasn’t clearly explained in Perfect and that drove me nuts. But it didn’t take away from the story. Just personally drove me nuts.

The end of the book was pretty intense, action wise and I did like that all the storylines were brought together and ended.

How many stars will I give Perfect: 4

Why: Like I said above, I devoured this book in 2 hours. The plotline was great, characters were memorable and I loved the twist at the end of the book.

Will I reread: Yes

Will I recommend to family and friends: Yes

Age range: Older Teen

Why: Some sexual situations, mild violence, and some language

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**

[pamela]

Perfect is the second (and it seems final) book in Cecelia Ahern’s Young Adult Series Flawed.  Everything that made Flawed such a surprise was still there, but somehow Perfect just doesn’t pack the same punch.

Celestine North was the perfect teenager until she runs afoul of the law by standing up for an elderly gentleman on a bus who just happened to be branded Flawed by an all-powerful government entity called The Guild.  Branded Flawed herself for the infraction Celestine finds herself the unwitting figurehead for the movement to destroy the guild.  On the run, with no one to trust, Celestine must find the evidence to clear her name, and stand in defence of all the other Flawed.

There is nothing new or original here.  It’s every YA dystopian novel ever written, all amalgamated in to one.  There wasn’t anything original in Flawed either, but because of the strength of the writing and the narrative style it was easy to forgive.  Perfect has as many moments of tragic, visceral violence as its predecessor, and has just as many truly emotional moments that kept me reading in to the wee hours of the morning.  So why then could I not enjoy this one as much as the first?

Cecelia Ahern made one mistake with Perfect.  She broke the fourth wall.  She made the mistake of using current pop culture references in her narrative which broke me out of my suspension of disbelief and brought the whole plot and concept come crashing down around my ears.

When something is set in a similar society with its own rules and logic I can believe how entities like the guild come to be.  But when an author suggests that this fantasy world is somehow akin to my present, then there had better be some really deep and well thought out world building to make me believe it.  But there wasn’t.  So I didn’t.

As soon as the one flaw comes out in a book the house of cards that was narrative believability came crashing down.  All of a sudden, I was thinking about what was happening in the rest of the world.  Why is the UN not stepping in for human rights violations?  Why on earth would people allow this dictatorship to start in the first place, especially since they still have a democratic voting system and the Flawed are still allowed to vote?  As soon as I was reading a book about my world, and not some alternate fantasy world, the questions just kept coming and coming and the book failed to be in any way believable.

Celestine was still a decent character, but I still needed more development of the satellite characters.  There was a feeble attempt at a love triangle that went nowhere, and Celestine’s relationship with Carrick was just not developed enough to convince me that they’d do everything that they did for each other.

Perfect wasn’t bad, and it did bring the two-book series to an end in a satisfying way.  Despite its flaws, Flawed is still a much better series than Divergent and was really fun to read.  I read the book in a day, because I just needed to keep reading to see how it ends.  No matter what else I say about the book, that’s probably the most important.  It was enjoyable. (If not entirely believable).

Read this review and others at my blog, I Blame Wizards.