It’s time for another Freida McFadden read! By now, it’s probably no secret that she’s one of my favorite authors. Her books are fast, twisty, easy to get completely sucked into, and always seem to be exactly what I need when I’m in the mood for a thriller.
This time, I’m reading The Perfect Son, and the premise immediately caught my attention. A teenage girl is missing. Your son was the last person to see her. And even though you’re his mother, you’ve always wondered if there might be something seriously wrong with him.
Yeah. I need to know what happened.
Amazon Summary
Erika Cass has a perfect family and a perfect life. Until the evening when two detectives show up at her front door.
A high school girl has vanished from Erika’s quiet suburban neighborhood. The police suspect the worst. Murder. And Erika’s teenage son, Liam, was the last person to see the girl alive.
Erika has always sensed something dark and disturbed in her seemingly perfect older child. She wants to believe he’s innocent, but as the evidence mounts, she can’t deny the truth. Liam may have done the unthinkable.
Now she must ask herself: How far will she go to protect her son?
My Thoughts
Soooo…I finished this book in two days.
That probably tells you how I felt about it.
The Perfect Son was such a thrilling, fast read. I could not wait to find out what happened to Olivia, whether Liam was involved, and what Erika was going to discover about her son.
And poor Erika.
She would stop at nothing to protect Liam, but in a strange way, she’s also spent much of his life trying to protect everyone else from Liam. She loves her son, but she knows what he’s capable of.
So when Olivia goes missing, and Liam was the last person known to have seen her, Erika immediately wonders if he had something to do with it.
And honestly, how could she not?
The police suspect him. The rest of the town suspects him. Even his own mother suspects him.
I felt terrible for the entire family when people in the community started turning against them. There was graffiti, rocks thrown through windows, harassing phone calls, and people who had already decided Liam was guilty before anyone actually knew what happened.
At the same time, Freida McFadden gives us plenty of reasons to wonder about Liam ourselves.
Some of the things we learn about what Liam has said and done in the past are appalling. And even in the present, there are moments when he doesn’t seem to react emotionally the way you expect him to. His former therapist had even told Erika that Liam couldn’t love anyone and believed he was a sociopath.
So, of course, I kept thinking: He did it. Right?
Except he didn’t.
His dad did.
I did NOT see that coming.
Jason was responsible for Olivia’s disappearance, and thankfully, Olivia was rescued. Erika and her daughter were safe, and Liam was finally exonerated for a crime everyone had been convinced he’d committed.
But that doesn’t exactly mean Liam is innocent.
Liam kills Jason, and Erika does what Erika has spent his entire life doing: she protects her son. She takes the blame and claims she killed Jason in self-defense, even though Liam hadn’t actually killed his father to defend himself.
Once again, Erika is left dealing with the reality of loving a son she knows is capable of terrible things.
And then we get that ending.
Everything seems to have gone back to normal. Erika is home with her kids. Liam is happy. He and Olivia are actually still together.
Maybe everything really is going to be okay.
Then Erika learns that another girl has gone missing near Albany.
And Liam had recently been there with the debate team.
That’s it.
THAT’S WHERE FREIDA ENDS THE BOOK.
Did Liam kidnap her?
Was it a coincidence?
We don’t know!
And I absolutely loved it.
Because after spending the entire book wondering whether Liam was responsible for Olivia’s disappearance, we finally get our answer: he wasn’t.
But Freida McFadden never really answers the much bigger question.
What is Liam actually capable of?
Erika may have been wrong about Olivia, but was she wrong about her son?
That final little bit of doubt was the perfect way to end this book. I finished it with the main mystery solved and somehow still questioning everything.