The Good Girls (Perfectionists, 2)

4 stars to Sara Shepard's The Good Girls, the potentially conclusive second novel in her Perfectionist's series. After reading the debut of the series last month, I was quickly intrigued and needed to read the second novel to learn what happens to the 5 girls who seemed to be hiding something. I picked it up yesterday morning and finished it within a few hours as my Sunday read. It's a fascinating ending and floats a potential opening for a third installment down the line, but it is also good should it just end here at book 2.StoryBook 1 leaves the 5 girls recognizing that the teacher they thought was the killer (who actually enacted the murder plot the girls has dreamed up as a joke) was then murdered himself. Yikes, the teacher can't be the murdered, so now what? Book 2 picks up with the girls each being interviewed by the police to try and piece together what's going on. The girls hold strong and don't reveal all they know hoping to figure out who is doing the killing and making it look like it's actually the girls behind it all. The sub-stories grow more intense and one by one each of the proposed murder victims from the original plot start to show up dead. A huge twist comes into play about 2/3 of the way through this book leaving the reader utterly confused and shocked but in the last 100 pages, it unravels and you realize all that you missed along the way.StrengthsIt's a well-orchestrated plot with so many stories having to collide and so many potential suspects having to be present and concerning. It takes a strong writer to pull off this type of complexity; however, Shepard takes it a whole leap forward with the twist reveal 2/3 of the way through that I kept stopping to think back to the first book and the beginning part of book 2. I swore there were mistakes and it didn't jive, but it actually does... you get so drawn into the story that you may miss the hidden clues along the way.WeaknessesDue to the style and the actual plot/killer, a few things had to be left out along the way. Some readers may be annoyed because they think they know someone but they really do not know them. It's also a bit of a jump to go from what we know to what we actually find out and see it as fully believable. (Trying not to reveal any spoilers here!) In the end, with a bit of disbelief and blinking one eye a lot, I see how it happened. But it went pretty far before someone figure out what was actually going on... I think that's where it gets a bit off track.Final ThoughtsShepard is highly imaginative and really knows how to create different characters and plot lines. For that alone, one should read this book. But given this is her 25+ book, it will eventually start to feel all too similar. I watched Pretty Little Liars so I don't feel the need to go back and read all ~15 books in that collection, but I will probably give another one of her series a chance next year.

The two novels I think were mostly executed really well, the first half of the twist I ended up figuring out, but the second definitely shocked me. I would say I only thought the ending seemed a bit forced (as well as small parts that irritated me but that's mostly personal preference) and a few chunks of dialogue awkward.

Okay, there will be major spoilers in this review because the "twist" is one of many problems with it, but here goes:I don't normally read these types of books, but the first in the series had been suggested by a few people so I went ahead and bought it. Toward the end of The Perfectionists, I had more or less figured out that Parker was Julie, which is just...not how dissociative identity disorder works. Anyway, even though the first book wasn't my thing, I bought The Good Girls because I wanted to know if my suspicions were true.It's just not well-written. The prose is filled with an absurd number of adjectives that serve more to pad word count than to aptly describe things, the characters don't really have personalities (hobbies are not personality traits), and the plot itself could have been solved in like chapter three of the first book if the MCs hadn't been such self-important dummies.A lot of things kind of come across as if the author heard some vague description of what they were and tried to make them parts of a story. Whether it's Twitter, high school politics, how cold it should be in their town on Halloween (note: too cold for people to be swimming), or a debilitating and highly controversial psychological disorder...it just seems as if the author made up her own truth about these things.My main issue with the book does stem from its gross misrepresentation of dissociative identity disorder. The author seems to have taken the Hollywood approach of melding DID with schizophrenia, which simply isn't okay. I would be shocked to find out that she did an iota of research beyond watching Secret Window or something of the like. Mental illnesses of all types are already massively misunderstood by many people and presenting a real disorder in such a distorted way doesn't help with educating anyone about the actual disorder.Anyway, not to totally disparage the author or the readers who enjoyed this book - I am admittedly older than its target demographic. I just didn't enjoy it and am somewhat disturbed that the representation of a psychological disorder passed through an editor of any kind.

This was yet another Sara Shepard page turner, with a twist!!! I don't remember any of Shepard's Pretty Little Liars books ever having a twist quite like this one! My mind was blown! I will not go into detail as much with this book because it will just give away the ending. We left the last book with the five girls being accused of murder. But then things kept happening! The girls made a hypothetical list of people who have wronged them and how they should pay. Someone must have gotten a hold of this list because one by one, the people were being hurt or killed in the exact same way that the girls had described! You want to read this to see what happens, but first you need to read The Perfectionists because this is the sequel to that! Happy reading!!!

I have read most of this authors books and have enjoyed them. While this book was good and I found myself wondering what was next for the characters, I couldn't get over the inconsistencies in the book. One minute the girls are at the police station and the next Ava was saying how the smell of the hospital corridor made her sick. There were several instances like this in the book. I would read more by the author, but wish they would have done a better job editing and proofreading this one. Also, the ending left a lot to be desired and left too many loose ends to be tied up. I do hope there is a follow up.

Amazing condition and came fast

El envío fue excelente y también el contenido del libro es bueno, el segundo libro de la saga The Perfectionist y cumplió con mis expectativas.

Really keeps you guessing right till the very end. This book touches on a very important subject that not many books do. Mental health can be very overlooked and misunderstood in our society.

excelente compra

Loved the book. I am a real Sara Shepard fan. This book always kept me interested and wanting to see what was going to happen next. I have read other Sara Shepard books and have never been disappointed.