{"id":2565,"date":"2021-07-01T20:04:32","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T20:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2565"},"modified":"2023-03-08T20:05:04","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T20:05:04","slug":"her-perfect-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2565","title":{"rendered":"Her Perfect Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lily Atwood has the titular perfect life. She\u2019s an Emmy-winning journalist, the kind who wants to be hard-hitting but mostly presents human-interest stories from the comfort of a studio. Every evening, Lily gets to return to her designer Boston home to spend time with her daughter, Rowen, the center of her single-mom existence. Some of Lily\u2019s stories, the juicer ones, are fed to the journalist and her behind-the-scenes right-hand, Greer, by a man calling himself Mr. Smith. They\u2019re sure it\u2019s a pseudonym, but are content to idly wonder about Smith\u2019s identity and motives as long as the tips keep coming. Then he starts getting sinister\u2014at least, Lily thinks it\u2019s Smith who\u2019s behind anonymous flower deliveries to her home, though she\u2019s never given him her address. He also seems overly familiar with events at her daughter\u2019s school. Lily is afraid that he may reveal private details that could finish her career, but she soon has far more to fear. An author\u2019s note reveals that Ryan wrote this during COVID, and the feeling of being trapped and at the same time wanting to hide away permeates the novel. The surprises keep coming, and the tightly woven storytelling closes with a deft, satisfying twist. Fans of the author should add this to their library hold lists as it\u2019s not going to sit on shelves.<\/strong> While waiting, they can try Belinda Bauer\u2019s The Beautiful Dead<\/em>, which also features a journalist in peril.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lily Atwood has the titular perfect life. She\u2019s an Emmy-winning journalist, the kind who wants to be hard-hitting but mostly presents human-interest stories from the comfort of a studio. Every…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[57,55,52,51,53,56],"class_list":["post-2565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-domestic","tag-mystery-detective","tag-psychological","tag-thrillers","tag-women","tag-women-sleuths"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Perfect-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Perfect-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}