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Picture Perfect Paperback – July 29, 2014
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Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Sara Taylor is a disapproving, exacting mother of seven-year-old hemophiliac Davey, who wears a leg brace and needs a daily dosage of antigen. Her husband, Andrew, is a hen-pecked, absent-minded professor about to testify for the prosecution in a drug-trafficking case. When Davey's aunt Lorrie takes him camping to get him out of harm's way, he inadvertently catches brutal Cudge and his scared girlfriend digging up the body of the man Cudge murdered. In a nasty cat-and-mouse game, Cudge chases the hapless Davey through the woods and around an amusement park closed for the season, while Lorrie, unable to find Davey with the help of the local police, contacts the detective protecting the family during the trial. Meanwhile, icy, perfectionist Sara, the most interesting character, is killed by a taxiing airplane. Although there are some well-paced suspense scenes and telling descriptions, this novel is not a success; the writing is mostly pedestrian and the plot barely credible. Michaels has written more than 50 books (e.g., Split Second), and her fans may seek this one out, but new readers will not find it satisfying. With all the good suspense novels out there, this is not recommended.AMolly Gorman, San Marino, CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Michaels serves up a heart-pounding romantic thriller in which what starts out as an adventure turns into an ordeal. Pediatrician Lorrie Ryan is looking forward to taking her young hemophiliac nephew, Davey, camping while his parents fly to Florida. The family has been under FBI protection because Davey's father is testifying for the prosecution in a case involving a murdered student and a drug syndicate. Lorrie is glad to spend time alone with the boy because her sister seems more mothering of her professor husband than her son, and Davey is glad to be with Aunt Lorrie because she lets him be himself rather than try to conform to his mother's rigid standards. But their idyll is brief: Davey disappears. Lorrie calls the police and FBI agent Stuart Sanders, and she and Stuart unite in their search for the missing boy, who needs his daily injections. As fast paced and exciting as always, Michaels' work offers more thrills than romance this time around. Patty Engelmann
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
More About the Author
Fern Michaels is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Fool Me Once, Sweet Revenge, The Nosy Neighbor, Pretty Woman, and dozens of other novels and novellas. There are over seventy million copies of her books in print. Fern Michaels has built and funded several large day-care centers in her hometown, and is a passionate animal lover who has outfitted police dogs across the country with special bulletproof vests. She shares her home in South Carolina with her four dogs and a resident ghost named Mary Margaret.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By
I.Peters
TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on September 24, 2005
Format: Mass Market Paperback
1 Comment
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This is supposed to be a thriller, and I assume one could call it that, but the story somehow does not come together at all.
This is about a little boy, a hemophiliac, who during a camping trip with his aunt witnesses something he shouldn't have, and from then on is being chased by a crazy killer. This should make for a fairly good and suspenseful read, no? Well - it doesn't.
The title of my review asks whether this author wrote children's books before, and here is why I wonder about that: All the characters stay laughingly one-dimensional, so much so that the entire storyline suffers irreparable harm and suspense just doesn't come. More than once it felt like reading a fairy tale or a children's book where each character is either one thing or another, never complex or conflicted. The mother? A cold perfectionist. The father? The weakling professor. The aunt? The strong loving woman. The FBI agent? The lone wolf. Argh! Predictable, boooooring, and on the comprehension level of a 10-year old.
Also: Never mind that the boy is a hemophiliac! Due to being chased by the crazy killer, he didn't get his life-saving shots. He runs through forests, loses his sneaker, crawls under a fence, survives torrential rain - and apparently never even suffers so much as a potentially fatal scratch. Why the boy was a hemophiliac in the first place when the author subsequently doesn't do anything with this information is anybody's guess...
All in all this book really annoyed me. Sure - not every thriller is a great read, some are better than others, but this one has no character development whatsoever, runs on ridiciulous improbabilities, the outcome is clear from the beginning... Need I say more?
This was definitely the first and last Fern Michaels book I ever read.
This is about a little boy, a hemophiliac, who during a camping trip with his aunt witnesses something he shouldn't have, and from then on is being chased by a crazy killer. This should make for a fairly good and suspenseful read, no? Well - it doesn't.
The title of my review asks whether this author wrote children's books before, and here is why I wonder about that: All the characters stay laughingly one-dimensional, so much so that the entire storyline suffers irreparable harm and suspense just doesn't come. More than once it felt like reading a fairy tale or a children's book where each character is either one thing or another, never complex or conflicted. The mother? A cold perfectionist. The father? The weakling professor. The aunt? The strong loving woman. The FBI agent? The lone wolf. Argh! Predictable, boooooring, and on the comprehension level of a 10-year old.
Also: Never mind that the boy is a hemophiliac! Due to being chased by the crazy killer, he didn't get his life-saving shots. He runs through forests, loses his sneaker, crawls under a fence, survives torrential rain - and apparently never even suffers so much as a potentially fatal scratch. Why the boy was a hemophiliac in the first place when the author subsequently doesn't do anything with this information is anybody's guess...
All in all this book really annoyed me. Sure - not every thriller is a great read, some are better than others, but this one has no character development whatsoever, runs on ridiciulous improbabilities, the outcome is clear from the beginning... Need I say more?
This was definitely the first and last Fern Michaels book I ever read.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By
P. Rodriguez
on February 8, 2005
Format: Mass Market Paperback
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This was my first Fern Michaels book. I saw it on the shelf and had just finished Trace by Patricia Cornwell. I found Picture Perfect to be an ok read. For my first book from this author, I am not sure if I will seek out more or not. Depends on if the dust jacket sounds good. I felt the book built the characters somewhat but the ending was anticlimatic and too abrupt. The District Attorney angle was built too late in the game and who left the answering machine message ransom? It really just didnt all pan out in the end. I felt the ending was tied up too quickly without letting us see and feel all the steps up to the ending...the ending was probably close to what every reader hoped and expected to happen. Just the details were not too clear and not all threads were tied.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By
Christabel
on July 2, 2005
Format: Mass Market Paperback
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Like two of the reviewers below, this was also my first Fern Michaels book. Quite honestly, it will probably be my last. Had I written this review before the last chapter, I would have given it 3 stars and probably read another of her novels. The story was fun, some of the characters were fun and quirky (loved the crazy mother) if not a bit cliched (like the FBI agent), and some of the suspense scenes worked well. But the ending was such a big disappointment. No surprises, rather abruptly ended, like she ran out of energy at the finish line. I wish her editor would have suggested she rethink and possibly expand the last chapter.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By
David Marsh
on November 15, 2005
Format: Mass Market Paperback
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A seven-year-old hemophiliac boy on a camping trip in the woods witnesses a deadly crime, and then in the blink of an eye he's gone, vanished into thin air. If this is how "Picture Perfect" by Fern Michaels began, instead of being a sprawling yarn centering on the boy's pitiful cardboard cutout parents mixed with scenes of the bad guy in a grueling setup lasting 140 pages to the moment of the vanishing, then the reader would definitely have jumped aboard a blistering rollercoaster. As it is, the reader is flagged down and told everything there is to know about the plot, so there are few surprises and not much tension. Imagine a great cake recipe with a chef stocking the best ingredients. The order or might I say incorrect order in which the ingredients are mixed is quite simply the unhinging of the cake, er, book. With that said, Fern Michaels does capture quite a comical interplay between the hulking bad guy named Cudge and his skinny sidekick girlfriend Elva. These oddballs might have you laughing even though their antics are quite disturbing. The boy almost works. If there was more of his story and less of some of the other crap, like his parents and the tenuous gangster subplot they are tied (a real literary embarrassment) he could have emerged a hero. While reading the book I began to think about another book about an eight-year-old in mortal danger, Thomas Perry's "Dance for the Dead," although the latter is truly a thrilling page-turner, and it puts to shame this piece of publishing fodder. Reviewed by David Marsh, Sea Chest books
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By
Turbocane
on March 8, 2006
Format: Mass Market Paperback
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I might dust off my science fiction novel if writing of this quality can make it to the best sellers list. Which book did she write that was a NY Times best seller? The characters are over dramatized and flat. At least this book had a story outline. My husband brought me another called "Vendetta" and it is boring and unbelivable. But I trudge through it hoping it may redeem itself. I would believe she is writing for an adolescent audience but the language and situations are a bit rough for that audience.
I will never read another of this author's books.
I will never read another of this author's books.
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