Future Perfect by Felicia Yap

Today I am delighted to share my thoughts on Future Perfect by Felicia Yap. I loved the author’s debut novel, Yesterday, and so have been really looking forward to reading this one. My thanks to the author and publisher Wildfire for the advance copy for review and to Rachel Gilbey of Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to join in the tour. Here’s what it’s all about:

About the Book

What if today was your last day…

A bomb has exploded during a fashion show, killing a beautiful model on the catwalk. The murderer is still at large… and he may strike again. Yet this is the least of Police Commissioner Christian Verger’s worries. His fiancée Viola has left him. He has to keep his tumultuous past a secret. To make things worse, his voice assistant Alexa is 99.74% sure he will die tomorrow.

Moving from snowy 1980s Montana to chic 1990s Manhattan to a drone-filled 2030s Britain, FUTURE PERFECT is an electrifying race to solve a murder before it’s too late. Yet it is also a love story, a riveting portrait of a couple torn apart by secrets, grief and guilt. A twisted tale of how the past can haunt a person’s future and be used to predict if he will die… or kill.

My Thoughts

This book is possibly one of my most anticipated reads in ages. I loved Felicia Yap’s first book, its originality and style and so I was really keen to see what she was bringing us next. This book did not disappoint. When I picked it up to start reading, little did I know that just a few hours later I would walk away having blasted through the whole thing and been left with a huge smile on my face. Yes, once again this is future set. It is speculative fiction, although not too far removed from our current reality, and it paints a stark picture of what could well come to pass, but it is also a very clever and perfectly plotted thriller that gets the mind whirring from the very beginning.

This is book that is both perfectly me and most absolutely not. It is a fast paced, high tension, psychological thriller with an action twist that is set in the glamourous world of high fashion. Now the tension filled thriller element I am all over, but anyone who know me will tell you I have as much in common with and interest in the world of high fashion as I have football, i.e. none. But that doesn’t matter because whichly the exotic world of Alexander King’s high profile catwalk shows forms a perfect backdrop to this immersive thriller, it is not the be all and end all of the story. The two shows, in New York and London, create a sense of chaos and uncertainty which adds to the tension, but they are merely a mechanism to draw things, and the characters together, as well as bring the novel to a mesmerizing and truly fitting conclusion.

More than just being about fashion, this is a story about technology, about the possibilities of what will come to pass in the evolution of our smart homes, where everything, from our coffee machines, to our lighting and our heating, can be controlled by app. Driverless cars are a technology we are aware of already, and we all know that one simple browser search one moment will lead to umpteen targeted ads on Facebook the next. Felicia Yap kicks this up a notch, examining how far technology can go to replacing and ‘enhancing’ all aspects of our life, including being able to forecast our death … The author’s experience has managed to bring a whole sense of authenticity to the story and

I love the way in which the author creates the tension in this piece, beginning in explosive style that really captures the attention and then holding the reader rapt with a series of deft character observations and twisted storytelling. Told primarily from the points of view of Met Police Commissioner Christian Verger who is tasked with helping find the person who brought such disruption to King’s first show, and Viola McKay, his fiance and good friend to the designer, the story takes two very different paths to the same startling finale. There are other chapters interspersed, ones that will have you puzzling over how they tie into the action, and it may be in ways you are not expecting. I admit that when I twigged what was happening it made me smile and made me realise just how quickly we can jump to conclusions and how it skews what we see and read. Very clever, Very, very clever.

This is a perfectly pitched, murder mystery, with high stakes and excellent character development. It’s a story of technology, but also of humanity and of the complicated nature of relationships – friendship and love – and it is a book which kept me completely rapt from the very first page to the very last. I loved it. So it’s getting one of these.

About the Author

Felicia Yap grew up in Kuala Lumpur. She read biochemistry at Imperial College London, followed by a doctorate in history (and a half-blue in competitive ballroom dancing) at Cambridge University. She has been a radioactive-cell biologist, a war historian, a university lecturer, a technology journalist, a theatre critic, a flea-market trader and a catwalk model. Felicia’s debut thriller Yesterday has been translated into multiple languages around the world. Her second novel Future Perfect will be published in spring 2021.

Follow the tour: