Jeneva Rose | The Perfect Marriage

Book spoilers ahead–if you haven’t yet read The Perfect Marriage, I suggest you turn back now.

At the beginning of the book, Adam’s mistress Kelly is found stabbed in Adam’s bed at Adam and Sarah’s lakehouse. Adam had left in the middle of the night, not turning the light on and assuming Kelly was asleep. He went back to his and Sarah’s main house and arrived at about 2am, spending the rest of the night there.

Kelly had a past: she had changed her name after murdering her ex-husband and getting off when her current husband Scott, a police officer, mishandled evidence. This is why she was still married to Scott, despite him being abusive. She felt he had a hold over her because he credited himself with getting her case dismissed.

Kelly was pregnant when she died, and Rohypnol was found in her system. Adam was the father of the baby. Kelly’s body was found with three sets of semen found inside her–one was Adam’s but the other two were unidentified (one was presumably her husband’s, but Sarah was hung up on the third sample).

When Scott confronted Adam, Scott insisted that he had never beat Kelly. He said he would never hold what happened with her previous husband against her, and that in fact she had told Scott the same things about her abusive previous husband.

The Red Herrings:

Anne was the one who sent the threatening picture to Adam. Bob was Kelly’s brother-in-law. 

Adam began working with someone named Rebecca who he believed to be a reporter, who said she would tell his side of the story and help him solve Kelly’s murder. Rebecca turned out to be a PI that Scott had hired, and was double-crossing Adam.

The Twist: 

The main story ends just as the foreperson of the jury is about to announce Adam’s verdict. Then the timeline switches to Sarah’s POV 11 years later. Sarah tells us that she did what she had to do to survive. This is the day of Adam’s execution, as his jury verdict was guilty.

Then Sarah confesses to the reader: she was the murderer. She found out about Adam and Kelly’s affair from Bob, who wanted to take Kelly down for murdering his brother. Sarah had snuck out to the lakehouse the night she went out drinking with Anne, who acted as her alibi. She had put Rohypnol in Adam’s scotch decanter to ensure that he was asleep, then stabbed Kelly to death right next to him.

The third set of DNA found in Kelly was a match for Sheriff Stevens, the lead on Kelly’s murder case.

The Ending:

Adam did write his tell-all book before he died. Sarah and Bob ended up together, and got married the day after Adam’s execution. They had a daughter named Summer. As a little side-reveal, Sarah tells the reader that she also helped speed up her mother’s death by overdosing her. Bob and Sarah moved to the lakehouse.