Somehow I ended up with an abridged copy of this audiobook. I don't like abridged because I always feel like I'm missing something super important, usually characterization, but this abridgement wasn’t too bad.This story is about a psycho attempting to create a family by abducting women through open houses. It has tones of that horrible triple abduction story in Cleveland, where the monster kept three women imprisoned for his own selfish needs for over a decade. Truly a horrible, nightmarish true-crime. But this book was written years before Castro was exposed as a rapist and kidnapper which makes reading this all the more horrifying. This version doesn’t linger too much on the damage inflicted on the victims and for that I am grateful. I had enough of that after watching Lifetime’s “Cleveland Abduction”. I can’t speak for the unabridged version, however, so beware.When teen Lindsay is abducted, her mother Kara, distraught and heartbroken, takes action. When things go from bad to even worse for Kara she doesn’t dissolve into a puddle of self-pity but keeps on keeping on with the search. As admirable as that is, it felt a little unbelievable and unnatural but I’ll chalk it up to the four hours that were cut from this version and give it a pass. Kara quickly ends up joining forces with a man named Patrick, a widower and brother of a friend, and I found that bit rather strange and unnatural too considering the previous turn of events which I will not ruin.It should be noted that I figured out who the killer was pretty early on. It should also be noted that I am not at all good at these things. I can only assume that it was pretty darn obvious. The narration is done by Dick Hill and Susie Breck. I liked the fact that there were two narrators but Dick Hill’s voices weren’t very distinctive and his males all sounded like the same man, except for the killer. His killer voice was over the top, bordering on silly. Still, the story was definitely creepy and it was a page-turner so I’ll give it a solid 3.5 stars.
I really enjoyed reading this book. I usually read all my books on an ereader but this one I got from my daughter and is a hardcover. It was a wonderful book with all the twists, turns, nail biting, edge of your seat, who done its ever. I expect nothing less from Saul than a wonderful book. In this one you really do get caught up in the lives of Kara, her husband and their daughter who goes missing. Just vanishes into thin air along with two other people. All the kids from school come together to help Kara find her daughter and she feels so alone because her husband and Lindsey's dad is not there. But he has a reason. You will feel so sorry for Kara. She feels that she has lost everything but she still will not give up on finding her daughter alive.Lindsey is a smart and strong teenager who begins to think she will never be found and endures so much. Then an older woman is abducted and there are three of them now. The villain is really very sad. He endured such torture as a very young boy and in a way I felt it was not him there but the crazy part of him only. I had him figured out only in the last half of the last chapter. It did take me a while with this one. I thought it was someone else but then it hit me. I didn't expect it to be the way it was though and there was a lot of twists and turns, edge of your seat and sadness in the story. You didn't know what to expect when Kara kept thinking she was hearing her daughter crying, singing, yelling and just things that a distraught mother would hear if her daughter just went missing and you could not get the police to believe that she had not run away because they were moving during her senior year of high school. But even though in the end all did not go exactly as you might like it was a wonderful book with a wonderful ending. Some people got exactly what they deserved, but others.... not so much. Great book. I love John Saul's books and now can't wait for a new one to come out.. Read if you like scary, not horror but intense scary reading.
What do You think about Perfect Nightmare (2006)?
Hmm. This was alright. Alright in the sense that I cared enough to have something to say about it.I don’t think that the writing was great, or even good. But it was enough to not put me off completely. The concept of a killer that stalks his victims through the real estate ads was clever.But the “chilling” parts were just stupid. That the subjects could smell their attacker. It was just over the top, didn’t cause goosebumps, just reminded me that it was a silly paperback.Also, the reasoning for the way the “baddie” was acting that was kind of just thrown out there in the end… it was quite a good reason. But it wasn’t talked about enough for me to know whether I was meant to feel sorry for him, or if it was just supposed to be known.It had the potential to be a lot better. The end was badly written, too rushed, and the descriptions were silly, and there was a lot of needless bullshit throughout.
—Tory
"Perfect Nightmare" by John Saul starts with a nifty premise. A kidnapper targets victims by stalking open houses and homes for sale on the internet. Great idea, and one that hasn't been done yet, to my knowledge, or done to death (no pun intended). The main and core characters are likable, sympathetic and realistic. You can relate to them and you care about what you just know is going to happen. But starting about midway through the book, I felt that Saul began to lose his focus. Maybe it was the introduction, or reintroduction, of some secondary characters - - mostly thrown in for red herring purposes. But I felt the book lost some of its snap. The seemingly pointless and senseless death of a major character threw me for a loop - - and not in a good way. The "big reveal" at the end of the kidnapper was no surprise, as the signs were much too obvious much too early in the book. The story seemed to end rather quickly, as if Saul himself got tired of the characters and the story. That being said, although I like Saul's other works, I felt this was formulaic (for him) and seemed an almost phoned in effort. For a new writer, or one less prolific or proven, it might come across as a better effort, but I expect more from Mr. Saul.
—Lori
John Saul can't write. He can tell a long-winded story full of cliches and predictable plot devices, but he can't write. I've only ever read one book by Saul before this one, back when I was twelve, and I thought it was okay but that's probably because I was twelve. Saul doesn't know how to write teenage girls, everything that is meant to be witty fails, the flat characters grated into my head until I was ready to quit halfway through, the killer ended up being a jip, and there's an abundance of weak plot twists. I'd also like to mention that the first-person narrative of the killer is terribly written. I'd love to elaborate, it's just that I don't care enough to do that.
—Alex Jimenez
