B+
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Perfect Prey by Laura Salters stands out from the psychological thriller crowd due to it’s excellent portrayal of a heroine with a mental illness. Like The Woman in Cabin 10, Perfect Prey depicts a heroine who is unapologetic about struggling with a mental illness (in this case generalized anxiety), who is gaslit because of it, and who perseveres even when she has to overcome the dual obstacles of physical danger and mental distress. The only reason this book didn’t get an A from me was that I felt the mystery element was a little unbalanced.
Carina Corbett and her best friend, Erin Baxter, are in Serbia working on a feature for the magazine for which they are both interns. Both women are attending a music festival called JUMP and are writing pieces on how Serbia is rebuilding its tourism and fashion industries. During one of the concerts the women are at the main stage. Erin excuses herself to use the bathroom and never returns, sending Carina down a rabbit hole of panic and dread.
One thing I really liked was how this novel addressed the fact that women (and men) can have a deep, passionate friendship that isn’t necessarily sexual:
People talk about that high when you meet someone romantically and they change everything, but sometimes you get that in a friendship too.
She [Erin] brought me a coffee that morning. Went to Starbucks early. It was the run-up to Christmas, and we’d been talking for ages about those syrupy lattes that give you more of a high than a gram of cocaine. Gingerbread, extra whipped cream. I still remember how it tasted–warm and sweet and spicy, like my new best friend.
Erin is everything that Carina is not–she’s an extrovert, a magnetic personality, seemingly always in control. Carina is introverted and she suffers from a generalized anxiety disorder that can make it hard to cope with everyday situations, let alone flying to Serbia to write a piece for a glossy fashion magazine.
When Erin goes missing, Carina knows it’s bad news. For the first twenty-four hours she’s given the run around by the local police. After that most people assume that Erin was a fun-seeking twenty-something at a big music festival. She’ll roll out of someone’s bed. Only Carina realizes that this situation is deeply fucked up.
After the police really get involved Carina realizes how helpless she is: in a foreign country, trying to navigate an unfamiliar environment, unsure of how to proceed or how to get help. It’s not ideal for her anxiety.
I’ve coped with off-and-on again anxiety and depression my entire life, and I was struck by how accurate Carina’s panic attacks felt:
I don’t know enough about her love life or her family or her upbringing to apply any context to her behavior.
Oh God, I’m overthinking it. But I can’t stop.
This is too much pressure. Too much weight for one girl to carry. Anything I say right now is going to somehow influence their investigation. What if I get it wrong? What if I fuck it all up?
Like a morbid mother pulling her drowning child from a lake, anxiety lifts me up from my comfortable depressive lull. I gasp. The fresh air is toxic. Everything is heightened. I’m plugged into the waves of crippling fear and sparks of paranoia and overwhelming sense of impending doom.
I think what struck me here was how well the author articulated the intersection between feeling helpless and useless while simultaneously assigning a terrible importance to all her actions. When my anxiety flares up I’m caught between feeling out of control and small, while at the same time feeling like every decision I make or action I take will have life-or-death consequences. I catastrophize. Carina does that as well–a fact that makes her doubt her own judgment and memory when it comes to Erin’s disappearance.
A big part of Carina’s struggle is her fear that no one will take her seriously if they know she’s teetering on the edge of a panic attack. She overmedicates. She tries self-care but finds the situation too intense to cope. It all feels very real and very painful:
I’m angry. I’m angry and I’m frustrated at this stupid fucking illness. If I had a visible ailment–a broken bone or chemo-bald head–people would understand. They’d understand why everything seems so much harder than it used to. But not even an X-ray would show the shitstorm that is my brain, the clusterfuck of thoughts and fears determined to bring me to my knees.
I’m ambitious, dammit. And I’m smart. I’m capable.
I can do it, except I can’t.
I feel this way about my fibro like every fucking day, you guys.
But Carina can do it–she’s our heroine, and she’s stronger than she knows, just like we are. It’s an uplifting book in that way.
Not willing to give up on her friend, and in some cases aided by hyper-vigilance from her anxiety, Carina uncovers clues that the cops miss. She flies home to England, then back to Serbia. She discovers secrets about Erin that make her think her friend was not the victim of a random violent act.
That’s the only part I was kind of iffy on. A lot of the mystery is revealed at the end in a big rush that felt uneven. The clues were there, but there were still a lot of pieces that needed to be put together very quickly.
Also:
There’s not a ton of violence in this book, so if you shy away from gore it should be fine. Perfect Prey relies heavily on the reader sympathizing with Carina and believing her when she says something horrible must have happened to Erin in order to create suspense. It’s not the perfect thriller, but with it’s accurate depiction of anxiety disorders and frank discussion of mental illness and coping mechanisms, it stands out from the crowd.
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I have bipolar so I am always interested in books that have mental illness in them. I will have to get my hands on this book.
“I can do it, except I can’t.”
Painfully relatable for anyone with chronic illness.
Thank you for such a great review. TBR-ing.