The Perfect Divorce
49 pages • 1-hour read
Jeneva RoseThe Perfect Divorce
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Background
Literary Context: The Psychological Thriller
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, emotional abuse, and death.
The Perfect Divorce is a psychological thriller or suspense novel. Books categorizable as psychological thrillers have many overlaps with mystery novels. Such stories always begin with a primary mystery, which often involves a murder, disappearance, robbery, heist, or other sensational crime. The investigation of this crime leads the primary cast of characters on either a quest for the truth or a mad dash to escape culpability. The overarching plot line focuses on solving the primary mystery and either implicating or absolving certain characters.
Another key facet of the psychological thriller novel is its reliance on genre conventions, which include plot twists and turns, unreliable narrators, moral ambiguity, complex character studies, and tropes like the intelligent “psychopath.” These conventions are often used to fuel the thriller novel’s primary mystery, heighten the narrative stakes, intensify the narrative atmosphere, and immerse the reader in the horrors of the narrative world.
Jeneva Rose relies on thriller tropes throughout The Perfect Divorce. None of the first-person narrators are entirely reliable because they all cast blame on each other. Sarah Morgan (the epitome of the intelligent psychopath trope) doesn’t trust Bob Miller, Marcus Hudson, or Stacy Howard. Her impressions of their characters therefore cast doubt on the veracity of their first-person accounts. This lack of trust cuts both ways, as Bob perpetually refers to Sarah as an untrustworthy, violent, remorseless psychopath, which makes the reader question the reliability of Sarah’s narration. The same is true of the other characters’ surrounding first-person accounts. Meanwhile, Rose also embraces plot twists throughout The Perfect Divorce, which has a series of unexpected revelations that alter the narrative stakes and keep the reader guessing at who is to blame and who will be the next victim. The Perfect Divorce is in conversation with other contemporary psychological thrillers like Alex Michaelides’s The Silent Patient and Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid.
Series Context: The Perfect Series
The Perfect Divorce is the second installment in Jeneva Rose’s Perfect Series. This novel is preceded by the series’ first title, The Perfect Marriage. The Perfect Marriage introduces the series’ central mysteries, conflicts, characters, and stakes. Although The Perfect Marriage has its own narrative arc, plot line, and resolution, its events bleed into and inform those of The Perfect Divorce.
The Perfect Marriage follows the story of Sarah Morgan and her husband Adam Morgan. The two live a nominally comfortable and happy life together in Washington, DC, where Sarah is a high-powered criminal defense lawyer, and Adam is an emerging writer. One day, Sarah discovers that Adam is cheating on her with a woman named Kelly Summers. Not long after, Adam tells Sarah that their housekeeper found Kelly stabbed to death in their lake house. (Unbeknownst to Adam, Kelly was murdered there after they spent the night there together.)
Sarah is hurt that Adam cheated on her, but she agrees to defend him when he’s accused of killing Kelly—a crime he swears he didn’t commit. Sarah works tirelessly to absolve her husband but to no avail. During the investigation, she discovers that there was DNA from three people on Kelly’s body, a revelation that confuses her. Some of the DNA belongs to Kelly’s husband Scott Summers (who is also on the police force) and some belongs to Adam, but the identity of the third person is a mystery.
The investigation also uncovers new truths about Kelly’s past. She was once married to another man, named Greg, and was accused of his murder after he was discovered dead at her house. She escaped without conviction before moving to Washington, DC, with Scott and starting her affair with Adam. Adam is found guilty and executed, and shortly thereafter, Sarah and her colleague Bob Miller get together. The final narrative sequences reveal that Sarah and Bob conspired to kill Kelly—Sarah as revenge for the affair with Adam, and Bob because Kelly’s first husband, Greg, was his brother.
The Perfect Divorce begins roughly 12 years after the end of The Perfect Marriage. Sarah and Bob are still together. Then Sarah discovers that Bob is cheating on her and files for divorce. She decides to destroy him in the process when the police discover that Ryan Stevens (the former police sheriff) was involved with Kelly before her murder. The first novel in the series provides the impetus for the events of the second, as Sarah and Bob start plotting against each other, terrified that their past crimes will resurface.
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