Perfect

Perfect begins with Celestine in her grandad's strawberry fields. At the end of Flawed her mother told her to run rather than being handed over to Bosco Crevan, the leader of the Guild. Celestine knew the risk but she ended up with people she knew. No sign of Carrick. Whistle-blowers hound the farm daily searching for her but Celestine, with the help of her grandad, always manages to hide safely.

Until now. She evades detection and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing finds herself back with Carrick and on the run again. Her grandad is now in custody and Celestine realises this is her life now. Always being on the run. She visits a few people along the way but they always turn out to be bad guys. Even Carrick had a angle on her.

When I read Flawed I mentioned the believe-ability of the dystopian society in the story. It didn't resonate as true. The rest of the world carries on as normal but this 'place' has this 'flawed' system. Early on in Perfect there is even a mention of Michael Jackson and body-popping. Suddenly this dystopian world Ms Ahern is trying to create fell flat to the floor. Why didn't she make the entire world a dystopian empire? The story would have become so much bigger.

The story does involve the characters much more and in depth. You can definitely see where the padding was filled with reminiscences between Celestine and her mother, and with Art. His character becomes a bit more wholesome than the wimpy version from Flawed. Celestine is much more contemplative.

The writing also follows all the right rules. She starts and ends at the same place. There are now characters you want to win and want to lose, whereas Flawed I pretty much hated everyone except Carrick. The gentleness of Celestine becomes more apparent but she is definitely more vocal and confident enough to air her view now. Again, what didn't seem as believable to me was that it was only Celestine who would speak common sense and while what she spoke of was relevant I'm sure others, in our day and age, would have pushed her off the podium to have their say.

Altogether it's a decent enough dystopian story but it flounders with its world-building. Enough to make the society not quite as real as I'd like.