The Perfect Father ~A Book Review~

If you love true crime, then you have to read The Perfect Father! Chris Watts, the man who murdered his entire family, is laid out in this book. You will meet the loving father, the cheating husband, and the withdrawn individual that committed such an atrocious act. I picked up and put this book down more than once. Crimes involving children are hard for me to stomach, but I powered through, as I was interested in the events, why it happened, and the motive that he could have had to commit this crime. His motive? He says he didn’t have one. Read on to get my review of The Perfect Father!

Book Blurb of The Perfect Father

In the early morning hours of August 13th, 2018, Shanann Watts was dropped off at her Frederick, Colorado home by a colleague after returning from a business trip. It was the last time anyone would see her alive. By the next day, Shanann and her two young daughters, Bella and Celeste, had been reported missing, and her husband, Chris Watts, was appearing on the local news, pleading for his family’s safe return.

But Chris Watts already knew that he would never see his family again. Less than 24 hours after his desperate plea, Watts made a shocking confession to police: he had strangled his pregnant wife to death and smothered their daughters, dumping their bodies at a nearby oil site. Heartbroken friends and neighbors watched in shock as the movie-star handsome, devoted family man they knew was arrested and charged with first degree murder. The perfect mask Chris had presented to the world in his TV interviews and the family’s Facebook accounts was slipping–and what lay beneath was a horrifying image of instability, infidelity, sexual ambivalence, and boiling rage.

In this first major account of the case, bestselling author and journalist John Glatt reveals the truth behind the tragedy and constructs a chilling portrait of one of the most shocking family annihilator cases of the 21st century.

Review of The Perfect Father

This book was eerie and full-on creepy!

Chris and Shannan Watts were like most families – hard-working, raising two daughters, and they seemed to have everything going for them. So why did he then turn around and murder his pregnant wife and two young daughters? Shannan had a thriving business and was working to better their lives, although the family was deep in debt. Everything they had was nice, and the price tags that went with it were not small. They had declared bankruptcy once already and were in the process of being sued by their HOA for non-payment of dues. When Shannan came home from her business trip, she was hoping to spend the next weekend with her husband, working on their marriage. But Chris had other plans.

Chris Watts made himself the number 1 suspect through his actions and words on the day that his family disappeared. Throughout the entire process, he was withdrawn, and seemingly unaffected by their disappearance. He was even planning to continue going to work, he said, to keep his mind busy. He did not act like the husband and father of three missing people. He was still talking to his girlfriend on the phone, cleaned the entire house, and spent time giving interviews to new stations instead of looking for his family. But he didn’t need to look – he knew exactly where they were.

This book, was hard for me to read. As a mother, cases with children are always hard to get through, but I wanted to read more about this one. I cried through the scene where he talks about how he smothered his children, and then disposed of them in the oil tanks. I was angry when he very calmly talked about how he had eradicated his entire family – without a single thought to the many lives that he was going to destroy in the process. I was livid when he tried to blame the deaths of the two little girls on his wife.

I loved and hated this book. I hated the reason it was written, but I enjoyed diving into the content and looking at what made this mild-mannered man snap and murder four people.