TL;DR: Did Jeneva Rose actually lie to her readers? I want to know.
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I recently finished Jeneva Rose’s The Perfect Marriage and have been intensely hating it ever since it ended. **Spoilers follow** in case you have yet to read it, but I recommend you don’t.
The main source of my hatred of this book is that I suspect Jeneva Rose has lied to her readers. Instead of having a good ol’ unreliable narrator, we have an unreliable author who lied to her readers.Or did she? Part of why I’m writing this is because I don’t know if she actually did. It just REALLY feels like it. But did she? I listened to it as an audiobook on the Libby app, and I returned it as soon as I finished. So I can’t look back through the book for an answer to this question.
I want to know whether Sarah expressed, in her inner dialogue, such wonderings as who killed Kelly, is her husband a murderer, how can she win this trial, and so on—or if the words she chose for the narration/inner dialogue were cleverly chosen to make us assume she didn’t know such things.
If Sarah, at any point in her chapters, thought/narrated, for example, “Seeing Adam throw the chair had me wondering if maybe he did kill Kelly after all,” then Jeneva Rose lied to her readers. If so, she was deliberately giving readers enough evidence to decisively and assuredly cross Sarah off the list of suspects so that the reveal at the end could be dramatic and unexpected.
If, however, Sarah thought/narrated, “Seeing Adam throw the chair had me wondering if Adam was capable of murder after all,” it would be okay. Sarah’s thoughts don’t have to mean she thinks maybe Adam did it. She just thinks he could be a killer, not the killer.The chair incident is just one of dozens of places where, in my memory, Sarah’s narration squarely removes her from the list of suspects.
At several points, Sarah wonders who the killer is—or does she only wonder who the extra semen belongs to? She wonders how to win the trial—or does she only wonder how to get the trial over soon, and we just assume that she wants to win?
What about the beginning of the book, when her narration declares her love for and trust of Adam, her feelings for him…things that she most certainly wouldn’t be feeling or thinking if, as the last chapter declares, she planned this all out from before the chronological start of the novel? My recollection of those early chapters was that Sarah had no clue—and not only because she cleverly hid those thoughts from us but actively thought their marriage was strong. Am I wrong?
There are many reasons this book is a bit sloppy—I’ve heard there are typos galore, though I didn’t experience that in the audiobook of course. Not to mention the change in eye color, sweatpants that suddenly have a zipper, the absolutely bullshit timeline on forensic testing and trial date setting, and so on.But some of the criticism I’ve heard is a bit off. I’ve read many who say there was no hint that Sarah was the killer. Actually, there was. I remember thinking at one point, “Wait, how does Adam recognize Anne’s handwriting but Sarah, who also saw that note, didn’t?” That thought would certainly have led me to suspect Sarah, but instead I thought, “No, it can’t be her, because her chapters have already proven she didn’t do it.”
Another hint: Sarah wanted to get the trial over fast even though they needed time to find out who the real killer was. She made this mistake over and over, and Matthew even called her out on it.
Another hint: Sarah turned off Adam’s phone service. She got all mad at him for not knowing something, even though she didn’t tell him that fact and the only way he could have learned is from her—and she didn’t answer his calls.
Another hint: Someone came into her house to sleep with her. This was very likely something already going on.
Another hint: Sarah remarks at least twice that she made a vow “until death do us part.”Another hint: Sarah takes the case. The whole premise is how strange it is to represent your spouse, but she stepped in to ensure no one else competently handled the case and ruined her plan to get Adam executed.
Another hint: In the last fourth of the book, give or take, there was a mention that the killer would have needed access to the lake house. I even thought, “Well that’s only Adam and Sarah…but it can’t be Sarah, as her chapters prove, so someone must have picked a lock or something…”
The Bob thing, though, that’s all left field. They even had private arguments that shouldn’t have been happening if they were both in on it.
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Edit: Line breaks
by thektulu7