The Perfect Girlfriend

by Karen Hamilton

[chymerra]

Throwback Thursday: https://readwithme2018.com/2019/05/23/throwback-thursday-may-23rd-2019/


Juliette is in love with Nate. Does it matter that they had broken up 6 months earlier and Nate wants nothing to do with her? No. Because Juliette has a plan to win over Nate. And she will do anything to stick to the plan and get Nate. Anything.

When I started reading The Perfect Girlfriend, I wasn’t expecting the main character to be crazy. I mean it, she was cray-cray. I loved it!! This is the first book I have read that is told from the protagonist’s side. Again, loved it!! Juliette was the perfect antihero.

I will admit, I did feel bad for her. Juliette didn’t have the best life growing up. She was responsible for her 4-year-old brother at 10 years old. When he fell into the pond and drowned, she was blamed. She became an outcast at school, with kids teasing her or ignoring her. Boarding school was no better. She was bullied by Bella and her friends. Then, she was used by a mystery boy at the one party she went too. All those incidents helped shape her into a stalker. I thought to myself, at different points in the book, what if she got help when she was younger. What if she didn’t go to boarding school. Would she have turned out differently?

Nate bothered me. I couldn’t see what Juliette saw in him. He had zero personality. He was dull. He was “meh“. I didn’t see the appeal. He didn’t even treat her nice when they were dating. At the risk of repeating myself, what on earth did she see in him? Of course, it was revealed at the end of the book exactly what the appeal was.

Same goes with Bella. I didn’t understand why Juliette was stalking both Nate and Bella. Then it was mentioned that they were brother and sister. I then had a “Gotcha moment“. I still didn’t get the whole obsession with Bella until the end of the book. Then I was like “OOOOOO, makes sense now.“

I loved watching Juliette’s stalking escalate. She started small, breaking into Nate’s apartment/logging into his Facebook/getting a job where he worked. She went bigger, putting a spyware app on his phone and computer/showing up at events where Bella would be/bringing friends over to Nate’s apartment. When she went huge, she went huge. I’m not going to say what but I was amazed that she was able to pull off what she did.

Which brings me to the end of the book. I was not thrilled with it. The book was excellent up to the last few chapters. Then it seemed like everything was being rushed. I wasn’t expecting it to end the way it did. Saying that I was underwhelmed was an understatement. It was the ending that lowered my review from 4 stars to 3 stars.