The Perfect Child

Christopher and Hannah Bauer look like they have it all: he's a successful orthopedic surgeon, she's a devoted nurse, and their marriage is steady and loving. The one thing missing is a child. So when a badly injured, abandoned six-year-old named Janie is rushed into their hospital, and Christopher feels an instant, powerful bond with her, it seems like the family they always wanted has finally arrived.

But Janie is not an ordinary little girl. Her trauma runs deep, and once she's home, her behavior grows stranger and more frightening. She adores Christopher and turns all her fury on Hannah, and the harder Hannah tries to reach her, the more isolated and disbelieved she becomes. Christopher refuses to see anything but a wounded child in need of love.

The Perfect Child is a dark, propulsive psychological thriller told from shifting points of view, including interview-style testimony that hints from the start that something has gone terribly wrong. Lucinda Berry, a clinical psychologist, mines the terror of a family unraveling from the inside, asking how far a parent will go to protect a child, and what happens when love and denial start to look the same. It is an unsettling, hard-to-put-down read about parenthood, trauma, and the secrets a damaged past can hide.