Seems Perfect

A Novel

By: Rebecca Hanover

Narrated by: Jennifer Jill Araya, Emily Lawrence

Driven by past traumas and present hardships, two women face off over home turf in this twisty psychological thriller from Rebecca Hanover, author of The Last Applicant.

Emily Hawthorne lives in the well-heeled Noe Valley of San Francisco…but just barely. With less work than she would like at the yoga studio, a pile of debt, and a fraught past, she can no longer afford her tiny condo. When she meets the charming Penelope “Pip” Stone and her young daughter, also beset by financial woes, she agrees to take them in as roommates.

But Emily’s stroke of luck turns out to be another twist of the knife: Pip is a professional squatter who has no intention of paying rent. And Pip doesn’t want to share the condo.

She wants the whole thing.

Their domestic standoff only intensifies when a downstairs neighbor is murdered. Both women become suspects, not to mention each other’s mistrustful alibis.

Emily feels the walls closing in. Is she trapped with a vulnerable grifter—who, like her, may have good reasons for making bad decisions—or is Pip just a cold-blooded killer?

©2025 Rebecca Hanover. (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Narrators Jennifer Jill Araya and Emily Lawrence perform this complicated thriller about dangerous room shares and hidden personalities.… Narrators Araya and Lawrence capture the timid, confrontation-avoidant Emily and the confident, albeit broke, Pip and her precocious daughter, Sophie. …the performances make the characters sympathetic enough to keep the listener's attention throughout this twisted story.”—AudioFile Magazine

“A deftly crafted combination of psychological thriller and murder mystery, Seems Perfect by Rebecca Hanover is an original, fascinating and entertaining read from start to finish.”—Midwest Book Review

No one is likable

I think that I might’ve liked this better if I didn’t listen to the audiobook. The narrator was good but the main character, Emily, was such a whiny doormat for roughly the first half of the book that it was hard to listen to. I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to be rooting for her but she just wasn’t likable. Neither were any other characters in this story.

Most of the book is written through Emily’s thoughts, which also made this hard to read. There was a lot of overthinking and rambling thoughts and not enough action. I definitely understand why some readers DNF. I almost gave up.

I randomly figured out the story twist pretty early in, but I wouldn’t call it predictable. It was just a feeling I had. There wasn’t any overly obvious foreshadowing.

The story gets better after the first half and I actually enjoyed it once I increased the narration speed.

Aggravating slow with Painful predictability

So predictable! Which tested my patience to limit, the only mystery is how many describing words this author could come up with to say the same things on repeat, this at most should have been a short story. The protagonist was sooooo frustrating, she describes her feelings in these thought monologues that go on and on. I was over this title after the first few chapters but wanted to know the ending. Don’t waist a credit, kindle unlimited has it for free so I didn’t loose out on anything but my time.