Readers Guide for The Perfect Marriage

Check out My Reader’s Guide for The Perfect Marriage with Spoilers and the Ending Explained. This twisty domestic thriller with a legal element reminded me of a favorite book in the very best way! AND then check out my Readers Guide to The Perfect Divorce, the brand new sequel!

Readers Guide for The Perfect Marriage

Table of Contents:

• Jen’s Quick Take
• Spoiler Free Summary
• Positives about The Perfect Marriage
• Negatives About the Perfect Marriage
• Marked SPOILERS for the ending and the ending of The Perfect Marriage explained.

Jen’s Quick Take on The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose

• The Perfect Marriage is a domestic thriller with a legal/courtroom drama element
• The premise is very similar to Presumed Innocent, an old 1990s favorite which was recently adapted by Apple TV
• Published on July 3, 2020 by Blackstone Press.
• I read this book in October 2023.

Spoiler Free Plot Summary for The Perfect Marriage

• Sarah Morgan is a successful and powerful defense attorney in Washington D.C.
• Her husband Adam is a struggling writer who has had little success in his career.
• Sarah thinks Adam is working hard at his writing as he enjoys the peace and quiet of their second home.
• But Adam is really engaged in a passionate affair with Kelly, a local waitress.
• When Adam is arrested for Kelly’s murder, Sarah soon finds herself playing the defender for her own husband, a man accused of murdering his mistress. 

What I Liked about The Perfect Marriage

• The premise is intriguing. A man is cheating on his wife, and his mistress ends up dead. He’s the prime suspect and it’s not looking good. But his wife, a criminal defense lawyer, takes his case. (More on this later.)

• I appreciate a good feminist slant. Sarah is a hard-working lawyer while her husband Adam is a bit of a .. slacker. He says he’s writing a book, but is he? Plus, his mother is a pretty awful person, constantly criticizing Sarah, who’s keeping the electricity on.

• The Perfect Marriage has a good plot with some twists and turns along the way. It kept my attention, even though I had a pretty good idea of what was up.

• There were plenty of suspects.

If you liked The Affair on HBO, this feels similar. In that show, a struggling writer married to a richer woman has an affair with a waitress in the Hamptons.

This book may feel quite familiar to readers of Presumed Innocent, which has a similar premise.

What I Liked Less About The Perfect Marriage

Issue One:

I come from a family of lawyers (and read a lot of legal thrillers) and the legal aspects of this were just too much of a stretch for me. While I am NOT a lawyer, I felt that Sarah had to be a suspect in her husband’s mistress’s murder! I find it extremely unlikely she would be allowed to defend him.

This served as a spoiler for me. Don’t think too hard about it, but if you want to know the ending, check out the protected spoiler below!

Another unrealistic aspect: Adam’s trial all happens in a hot minute. In reality, death penalty cases take a long time to work their way through the courts. With appeals they can take decades.

I can get past that, because being realistic would ruin the story. Sarah and Adam would be in AARP by that time.

Issue Two:

As in most books that are all about the twist, there’s a BIG info dump at the end.

Spoilers for The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose

Of course, Sarah killed Kelly, her husband’s mistress.

Adam is convicted and sentenced to death, and then right before his execution, Sarah visits him and drops her little truth bomb: she did it and framed him.

Sarah is also involved with her colleague Bob (Kelly’s brother-in-law) who was part of the plan all along.

Bob wanted revenge for Kelly cheating on his brother (her husband). Sarah didn’t want to give Adam half of their assets in a divorce. So Sarah and Bob joined forces (the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that) and then fell in love. lolol.

I KNEW that the only reason Sarah would push to defend him was because she was the killer.

Did anyone EVER check Sarah’s alibi? It’s always the wife, right? It felt like it was a bit of a cheat to move right from Adam being arrested to the trial.

Your Questions:

Amanda asks in comments: how did Sarah kill Kelly if she was having drinks with Sarah.

I AGREE!

Toward the end of The Perfect Marriage Sarah clearly admits to stabbing Kelly. All I could find to explain how she managed this is that she says:

“all I needed was a quick detour from the bar at 10 pm and a sharp knife.”

That’s the only explanation I found: that she must have left the bar, killed Kelly, and gone back.

But wasn’t Kelly killed at the lake house? Twice in book one it’s mentioned that the lake house is about an hour from DC.

And Sarah admits to stabbing Kelly 37 times so I have no idea how she was able to 1) drive an hour to the lake house, 2) commit the murder 3) clean herself up and dispose of any evidence 4) drive an hour back to the bar.

QUICK DETOUR??? Make it make sense!

If you loved this, grab the new sequel, The Perfect Divorce. My Readers Guide to The Perfect Divorce is here!

Before you read The Perfect Divorce, here’s what you need to remember:

• Sarah’s husband Adam cheated on her with a waitress named Kelly Summers.
• Kelly’s body turned up in Adam and Sarah’s lake house.
• Adam was arrested and charged with Kelly’s murder.
• Sarah served as Adam’s defense attorney. He was convicted of Kelly’s murder and sentenced to death.
• The Perfect Marriage has an epilogue that takes place 11 years after the trial.
• As Adam is about to be put to death, Sarah goes to visit him in prison and tells him that she knows he is innocent … because SHE killed Kelly Summers.
• She planned the entire thing with Bob, her work colleague. Bob hated Kelly because he thought Kelly killed her first husband, who was Bob’s brother.
• Bob and Sarah became a couple shortly after Adam was convicted. Shortly after that, they had a daughter, Summer (!)

Other facts from The Perfect Marriage That Will Come Up in The Perfect Divorce

• Adam was sleeping next to Kelly when she was murdered. Kelly was drugged (Sarah put something in a bottle of scotch) but Adam’s bloodwork didn’t show any drugs.
• There were three different DNA samples found on Kelly: DNA that belonged to Adam, to Kelly’s husband Scott, and to a mystery person. Sarah finds out that this person was Sheriff Stevens, the guy running the murder investigation, but she does not tell the police this.
• Sarah had an assistant named Anne who knew Adam was cheating and tried to blackmail him.
• Sarah loathes her mother-in-law (Adam’s mom) Eleanor.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave a comment or question. Spoilers are fine!

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