Book Title: Perfect Happiness
Author: You-Jeong Jeong
Publisher: Penguin
Number of Pages: 488
ISBN: 978-0143475057
Date Published: Aug. 25, 2025
Price: View on Amazon India / View on Amazon USA
Book Review
“Perfect Happiness” by You-Jeong Jeong, translated by Sean Lin Halbert, delivers a chilling psychological thriller that follows Yuna Shin—a woman obsessed with perfection and willing to destroy anything that disturbs her carefully constructed world. Instead of giving readers direct access to Yuna’s mind, the novel unfolds through the perspectives of three people trapped in her orbit: her second husband Eun-Ho, her estranged sister Jane, and her young daughter Jiyoo. Through their eyes, we see how Yuna’s charm, cruelty, and manipulation take root, shaping a life filled with fear, silence, and disappearing loved ones. The mystery deepens when her ex-husband vanishes after an unsettling family trip, pushing old wounds and buried secrets to the surface.
The strength of the novel lies in its slow, unsettling buildup. Jiyoo’s perspective is especially haunting—her careful movements around her mother, her strange attachment to the “Dad Puppet,” and her memories of that ominous weekend at Half Moon Marsh create a suffocating emotional tension. Jane’s recollections reveal the early signs of Yuna’s monstrous nature, while Eun-Ho gradually realizes the truth he has been avoiding for years. As each character pieces together their experiences, a horrifying pattern emerges: people who threaten Yuna’s idea of perfection tend to vanish. Jeong masterfully uses these shifting viewpoints to show how deeply one person’s obsession can poison an entire family.
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“Perfect Happiness” still succeeds as a dark, claustrophobic exploration of vanity, control, and the dangerous pursuit of flawless living, though the pacing lags at times. It paints a disturbing picture of a woman shaped by entitlement and encouraged by a society obsessed with curated happiness. By the end, the novel feels like a long descent into madness—quiet, eerie, and unavoidable—leaving readers unsettled long after the final page.
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