Book Review: The Perfect Home by Daniel Kenitz

Dawn and Wyatt Decker look like they have the perfect marriage to go along with their successful Tennessee-based home improvement reality TV show, The Perfect Home. Wyatt is the charismatic handyman with big ideas, whereas Dawn is the worrywart decorator constantly trying to rein him in. Their chemistry makes for excellent television and, until recently, a harmonious home life.

When their attempts to expand their family in the usual way prove unsuccessful, they soon learn from the doctors that Wyatt has a low sperm count that would make even IVF an unlikely solution. Dawn would be happy to adopt or even use a sperm donor, both of which are suggestions Wyatt finds absolutely crushing:

If Dawn had married someone else, anyone else, maybe she’d be vetting elementary schools instead of spending her mornings in fertility clinics, listening to our specialist verbally spelunk her way through my seminal vesicles and ductus deferens. For most people, children are just the beginning. Mile One in the marathon of having a family. They forget the thousand little miracles that have to take place before the starting line.

 

I’d do anything to get there with Dawn. To step across the starting line together.

And so Wyatt decides to start looking for solutions online, eventually ordering experimental fertility drugs with varying side effects. Though Dawn reluctantly supports him in this, she’s adamant that he follows all the prescribed directions to a tee, in hopes of minimizing any potential fallout. The Deckers are thrilled when they do manage to conceive, but Dawn can’t help but worry about the new edge she’s been seeing in Wyatt recently. He’s become moody and weird, in ways that he either laughs off or just refuses to explain. Worse, he’s becoming downright cruel to her.

The birth of their twins should be a joyous occasion, and for a while, it helps paper over the growing cracks in the Deckers’ marriage. But when Dawn stumbles across a plan Wyatt has for catapulting them from minor celebrities to national stars – a plan that involves an unspeakable and entirely manufactured tragedy – she knows that she has to leave and take the twins with her. 

Wyatt won’t let her go without a fight though, and directs all his charm and media-savvy to win over the public and make her look like the villain of the piece. Will she be able to keep her children safe, or will they be ripped from her and given to a man seemingly more obsessed with fame than with family?

This intriguing twist on Gone Girl features both Wyatt and Dawn’s viewpoints as they engage in a cat-and-mouse game that highlights the almost uniquely American ways in which our society consumes celebrity culture, and how we moralize over family roles and expectations, especially in regard to gender. Reality TV is a particularly excellent vehicle for the dissection of this, as a jaded Wyatt muses on the ways he’s changed his show in order to gain greater and greater success:

Every reality show understands you never go to a commercial break without a twist–uh-oh, is this a load-bearing wall? The dopamine spikes and the carrot dangles. For season two, I ditched the helpful tips, switching to comedy and cliff-hangers. The audience doubled. You started noticing. Then I ditched the comedy and added Dawn, who became our target audience’s perfect avatar: a plain-Jane mold so female viewers could insert themselves into our little American Dream fantasy. I now consider us a form of pornography. There is very little information on home renovation because people are happier as idiots. We are happier with the tricks. There is a place inside every human being, somewhere hidden and primeval, that is disappointed when the magician reveals the invisible thread at his thumb.

 

We get three million viewers an episode now.

Daniel Kenitz does a terrific job using both Dawn’s and Wyatt’s voices to explore the increasing pressures each faces to behave in ways that the public expects. Wyatt has a habit of caving to expectations in undeniably self-destructive fashion, whereas Dawn fights furiously against the negativity. The suspense ramps up as betrayals mount and allies appear from unexpected places, leading to a final, shocking confrontation. This absolute page-turner of a novel will ensure that you never watch a home improvement reality TV show in quite the same way again.