Book 8: Perfect

OK, Judith McNaught’;s Perfect is the last for a while in my romance novel binge. Next be prepared for a lot of series reading, and a bunch of SF and adventure stuff thrown in.

That said, I’m rather ashamed to admit, as a cynical, hardened and sort of worldly person, that I actually shed tears over this book. Tears! I’m tough and hardened that way, and I never never cry over literature or movies (except for this instance and the time I watched Prancer as a kid and bawled my eyes out at the end of that movie.

Anyway, the plot: Julie Mathison is a young, sweet, irritatingly wholesome Texas schoolteacher. Zachary Benedict is a famous movie star who gets convicted, wrongly, of killing his life. After suffering through prison, Zach escapes and ends up bringing Julie along as his hostage to his hideout in Colorado where, you guessed it, they fall in love.

The good: McNaught might strike some readers as excessively wordy, but I found that her wordiness made for a better book as she draws her characters carefully and thoroughly and makes them real. Julie and Zach are a wonderfully realized couple, and the other small-town colorful characters and glamorous Hollywood types with which she casts the book are also vividly portrayed. She also knows how to wring forth all the emotion from the book. And one of Julie’s goals, that of promoting women’s literacy, is very admirable and I respect her for it.
Some reviewers I read on Amazon.com thought that McNaught dropping famous names around was excessive, but I thought it made the Hollywood lifestyle in which Zach lives seem more real, even if the celebrities listed are kind of dated.

The Not So Good: If you look at them too closely, Julie and Zach are a well-realized and vividly colorful female fantasy and a Mary Sue. And there are a few little moments here and there, mainly involving a subplot featuring Julie’s brother, whose ex-wife is trying to get back together with him, where McNaught says a few things about how women should be expected to be good wives that made me grit my teeth. There are also a ton of romance cliches, where Julie’s attempts to be independent and escape from Zach in Colorado struck me as stupid and I knew they’d fail because Zach thwarts them… And I was right.

Overall, though, I was very satisfied with this book. Definitely recommended.

Rating: 90/100