PERFECTLY ENID
Barbara Monier’s SEVENTH novel
November 18, 2026!! (Amika Press).
PERFECTLY ENID is the companion piece with PERFECTLY HUGO (2025).
In Perfectly Enid, the riveting companion novel to 2025’s Perfectly Hugo, the roles have reversed, but the choices faced by the grieving spouse are unchanged.
What if you could bring back the person you loved most?
After Enid dies, Hugo cannot accept that she is gone. So when he discovers a technology capable of reconstructing the dead, he does the unthinkable: he brings his wife back.
At first, it feels like a miracle.
Enid is there again. Her voice. Her humor. Her memories. Her maddening ability to disagree with Hugo. Their old rhythms return with startling ease. Hugo throws himself into the life they once shared, determined to give them the time they were denied.
But something is not quite right.
Enid remembers some things differently. She asks questions Hugo doesn’t want to answer. She wanders into memories he has carefully avoided. And, little by little, Hugo begins to understand that bringing Enid back may not be about recovering the past at all.
Perfectly Enid is a tender, funny, and ultimately heartbreaking story about love, memory, grief, and the impossible temptation to hold on to someone forever. Because sometimes the greatest act of love is not bringing someone back.
It is finally learning how to let them go.
EARLY REVIEWS ARE UNCANNY!
Reviewed by Manik Chaturmutha for Readers’ Favorite
Perfectly Enid by Barbara Monier follows a widower who chooses to bring his wife back through experimental technology. The title itself becomes a question: can any recreated version of a person ever be perfectly them, or only perfectly remembered? After Enid suffers a sudden stroke and is declared brain dead, Hugo signs on with a company called Assembled Souls, which recreates deceased loved ones as holograms built from their digital footprint. He activates a version of Enid who does not know she has died, and the two settle into an eerie, tender routine of grocery runs, French lessons, and half-planned trips to France, all while Hugo carefully steers every conversation away from anything that might reveal the truth. Friend Alan, letters to a grief counselor named Clarence, and small domestic rituals fill in the edges.
Perfectly Enid by Barbara Monier builds a small, believable world around one unsettling idea, and it earns real credit for restraint. The Assembled Souls contract that opens the book, all legal jargon and cold clauses, sets an eerie tone without overexplaining the technology, letting the emotional fallout carry the weight instead. Hugo is a fully realized, sympathetic narrator, and his slow unraveling feels earned rather than melodramatic. The recreated Enid is written with enough independence and wit so that scenes between the couple read as genuine marriage banter, not a man simply talking to a mirror. Dialogue-driven and conversational, the prose is simple and warm, and it makes the grief land harder than flowery writing might have. Themes of loss, denial, and the difference between remembering someone and freezing them in place come through with real feeling, never once turning preachy. Fans of quiet literary fiction with a speculative edge, readers who liked Klara and the Sun or The Midnight Library, will likely connect with this book.
“What a risky, wonderful piece of artifice.” — JP
“I loved it! I especially loved Hugo’s voice. Yet another wonderful book!!” –JEP
EARLY REVIEWS ARE UNCANNY!
Perfectly Hugo is a gently provocative and emotionally layered novel that explores the boundaries of love, memory, and identity in an age of advancing technology.
Enid and Hugo built a life together—full of quiet joys, deep conversations, and unshakable devotion. But when faced with the inevitable, they make a decision few would dare: to sign with Assembled Souls, a cutting-edge company that offers the ultimate promise—rebirth through AI. If one of them dies, the other can bring them back.
A haunting meditation on the increasing loneliness of the modern world, Perfectly Hugo is ultimately a deeply human love story. Set against the background of a future that may be closer than we think, the book explores the uncertain path between the longing to hold tight and the desire to let go—a path that underpins grief, now brought into sharp relief by new technologies.
REVIEWS OF PERFECTLY HUGO
“In Monier’s novel, a grieving widow grapples with the possibility of life after death.
Enid, who’s nearly 70, is no stranger to grief, having lost her brother at a young age, but nothing prepares her for the death of her husband, Hugo. The two built a quiet life together, marked by pleasant morning coffees and strolls through the local grocery store. As they grew older, however, they came face-to-face with the inevitable: One of them would have to go on living without the other. Hoping to ease their future pain, the couple turned to Assembled Souls—a new artificial-intelligence technology that digitally recreates loved ones after their deaths. Enid was initially uneasy with the idea, but after Hugo died unexpectedly in his sleep, she must now confront the unthinkable. With just a year to decide whether to activate Hugo’s holographic Assembled Soul, Enid wrestles with uncertainty, writing letters to her late spouse, reflecting on their shared past and on her future without him. When she finally decides to bring the Assembled Soul online, she’s struck by how familiar the simulation seems: “He was perfectly Hugo. A shudder went through her. And then another.” Although she’s troubled by inconsistencies in its memory and the impossibility of physical touch, she soon settles into old patterns with the new Hugo. Equal parts heartwarming and bittersweet, Monier’s novel reimagines the universal experience of grief through the lens of technology, addressing both the comfort and the uncanniness that AI can bring.
With cutting-edge technologies emerging around the globe, the author effectively asks what this kind of tech-assisted afterlife would look like in the real world, where people are already turning to chatbots to fill emotional voids. Some readers may wish that the novel probed the emotional and ethical implications of its premise more deeply. However, the bond between Enid and Hugo remains tender and affecting, while also reminding readers that not everything that technology allows can replicate reality.
A touching meditation on love and loss in a futuristic world that may be closer than one thinks.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Perfectly Hugo is a novel about a couple that builds a strong relationship and life together. It explores how their creation can continue beyond death. The cutting-edge tech company Assembled Souls offers a rare opportunity to continue life via AI, giving them the promise that they will never be alone and that death won’t part them.
Within that promise lies danger, however, as Enid and Hugo find that it’s not easy to build a future based on unlimited potential and the specter of living together forever.
What does it mean to be human under such conditions? Enid and Hugo forge new territory as they enter into murky, uncharted waters with their AI experiment and desire to remain connected even beyond death.
Filled with moments of connection and revelation, Perfectly Hugo is an enlightening, moving story that will delight book clubs and general-interest leisure readers with its foray into the costs of staying intimate and connected in a technology-enhanced world.” —Midwest Book Review
Perfectly Hugo is a poignant tale that illustrates how advancements in AI technology can influence the very nature of our lives in the near future. Author Barbara Monier has crafted an absorbing narrative about the moral, philosophical, and emotional implications of advanced AI technology on everyday human lives. It’s a character-driven story about a couple deeply in love, trying to deal with the inevitable nature of loss and human mortality. Monier’s character work is stellar. —Reviewed by Pikasho Deka for Readers’ Favorite
“Pitch-perfect blend of literary wit, believable dialogue, and psychological insight.” –B.L.
“This one will rock you hard and stay with you.” –R.D.
“A superb, quietly magical story that should not be missed by anyone who has ever loved.” –P.C.
“The story is packed with movement and depth.” –P.S.
“Thought provoking, insightful, perceptive, creative and unputdownable.” –J.F
“A page turner! A perfectly satisfying read.” –D.P.
“Monier had done a fantastic job.” – L.J.
BARBARA MONIER has six previously published novels. In addition to PERFECTLY HUGO, she published THE READING, PUSHING THE RIVER and A ROCKY ORCHARD with Amika Press. YOU, IN YOUR GREEN SHIRT and A LITTLE BIRDIE TOLD ME are available on Amazon.
AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE ON AMAZON!
THE READING
Synopsis:
An unexpected – and unrecognized – visitor attends veteran writer Esme’s reading and brings events of forty years past squarely into her present. Struggling with writer’s block and uncertain about a future with her romantic partner, Esme undertakes a journey through her own history. Esme revisits a particular year she had written off as the worst of her life as well as her whirlwind early marriage. In the process, Esme ultimately overcomes the wounded hesitancy that has characterized her life and rediscovers her former courage and openness to risk.
REVIEWS of THE READING:
“Barbara Monier’s The Reading is a literary novel about an established writer named Esme. From the outset, you are immersed in Esme’s vivid world.
The Reading deals with the human condition of loneliness, addresses the complexity of relationships (regardless of age), and illustrates the difficulty of understanding both youth and loss. I relished the descriptions of Esme’s physical surroundings because they were poignant and evocative. Monier also uses humor, and I found myself laughing out loud at some of Esme’s observations in her internal monologue. Besides her wit, Monier’s intertextuality and literary references are particularly apt and add context to Esme’s character. The novel also touches on the contemporary concerns of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Reading will appeal to anyone who appreciates self-reflective writing and a complex main character.” —Kayleigh Perumal, Readers’ Favorite
Thank you, Esmé, for speaking truth so brilliantly. Thank you, Barbara Monier, for writing this up front and personal novel that’s so profound, so witty, so real. I’m not surprised your caring, take no prisoners voice changed lives.” —Carol Orange, author, A Discerning Eye
Monier’s style of writing is compelling, filled with details and occurrences of everyday life that most people don’t notice, but once the author mentions them, we know how meaningful they are. This is a book that will make you examine your own values, and is a must read, particularly if you are unhappy about what is happening in today’s troubling times.” —Patricia Camalliere, author, Cora Tozzi Historical Mystery Series
It’s a masterful story from a masterful writer.” —David Berner, author, Sandman: A Golf Tale and 9 others
The writing is so clean and the voice so authentic, that there is a tendency to take it slow and reflect on what’s on the page. Highly recommended.” —Len Joy, author, Dry Heat
“This latest novel from a writer who loves language and crafts stories that deeply mine a character’s past to allow them to understand a key truth that illuminates their present, takes this formula to a new height. A positive message in our turbulent times.” —Rita Dragonette, author, The Fourteenth of September
SUBSCRIBE TO THE MAILING LIST!
