Perfect Neighbors (Pekkanen) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
1. Throughout the novel, Newport Cove’s residents hold their status as one of the twenty safest neighborhoods in the United States as a point of pride. Yet each of the four female narrators feels unsafe in some way, due to the secrets she is holding. Do you think people need to feel emotionally safe in order to feel physically safe, and vice versa?

2. In a series of flashbacks, we observe that Tessa “tried to do everything right” after her baby Bree was born, but quickly “felt as if she was failing her daughter” (p. 22). How does her anxiety about the “right” way to be a mother impact her children and/or her marriage? How have you observed this pressure in your own life, or in the lives of your friends or family? If you have children, how have your beliefs about how to best raise them been affected by the opinions of “experts”?

3. When it comes to her children’s safety, Tessa grows to believe she is paranoid or too sensitive, to the point where she becomes wary of raising an alarm when she thinks something is seriously wrong. Do you think it is generally better to be overly suspicious or overly cautious? What are the drawbacks of each, as portrayed in the novel?

4. Kellie initially thinks that because she and Miller have never kissed, she is not cheating on her husband. Is “emotional cheating” really cheating? Why or why not? How would you respond if a significant other acted as Kellie did? Have you ever been tempted to slip into emotional infidelity, and if so, how did you deal with the situation?

5. “Facebook stalking wasn’t something she was proud of” (p. 280). Was Susan’s Facebook stalking relatable or an invasion of privacy? Is Facebook stalking a normal part of having a crush/getting over a breakup, or is it self-destructive?

6. For much of the novel, Susan feels incapable of letting go of the past, at one point despairing that “sometimes, though, people didn’t adjust” (p. 233) to an ex moving on. In what ways does Susan’s struggle with her divorce mirror the issues her friends are dealing with? What keeps people from moving forward? Looking at these protagonists, where do you see them ultimately exhibiting personal growth?

7. Susan begins dating only after realizing that her son recognizes that she misses his father. To what extent should the desires of someone’s children impact their dating choices—and should a parent end a relationship if her children don’t like it? Furthermore, do you think falling for someone new is a prerequisite to getting over a past love?

8. What did you initially suspect had happened to Tessa and Harry before they moved to Newport Cove? What did you think of the ultimate revelation, and how did it affect your feelings toward these characters? Why do you think the author ended that story line the way she did?

9. “She’d been waiting for it to come, but she still felt zero guilt” (p. 332). Reread this scene as a group and discuss your reactions to this line. Do you think you would have felt the same in Tessa’s shoes?

10. Besides injecting doses of humor into the narrative, what role does the Newport Cove listserv fill? What sense of the community, or of the individual characters, does it provide? Were there any messages in the listserv digests that echoed larger themes from the novel? Discuss a few of your favorite emails.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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