Review: The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

Title: The Good Girl   

Author: Mary Kubica    

Published: July 2014, Harlequin MIRA  

Format: ARC Paperback, 352 pages   

Source: Publisher  

“I’ve been following
her for the past few days. I know where she buys her groceries, where
she has her dry cleaning done, where she works. I don’t know the color
of her eyes or what they look like when she’s scared. But I will.”

Born
to a prominent Chicago judge and his stifled socialite wife, Mia
Dennett moves against the grain as a young inner-city art teacher. One
night, Mia enters a bar to meet her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But
when he doesn’t show, she unwisely leaves with an enigmatic stranger.
With his smooth moves and modest wit, at first Colin Thatcher seems like
a safe one-night stand. But following Colin home will turn out to be
the worst mistake of Mia’s life.

Colin’s job was to abduct Mia
as part of a wild extortion plot and deliver her to his employers. But
the plan takes an unexpected turn when Colin suddenly decides to hide
Mia in a secluded cabin in rural Minnesota, evading the police and his
deadly superiors. Mia’s mother, Eve, and detective Gabe Hoffman will
stop at nothing to find them, but no one could have predicted the
emotional entanglements that eventually cause this family’s world to
shatter.

An addictively suspenseful and tautly written thriller,
The Good Girl is a compulsive debut that reveals how even in the
perfect family, nothing is as it seems…

My thoughts: Sometimes you read a book and you just can’t stop thinking about it…well, this is that book! Mary Kubica’s debut novel, The Good Girl, is so cleverly crafted that I just want to go back and reread it to see how she got to the ending she did because let me tell you…that ending was just WOW!!!

This is a story where nothing is as it appears. And from the first page, you become so engrossed that you just don’t want to put the book down. I found myself flying through the pages and devoured the book in a little over a day – something I haven’t done in a while…but then I was bummed because it was over and I wanted the story to continue!

Told in alternating viewpoints and moving back and forth in time from before and after the kidnapping, you get into the minds of the key players of the book – Eve, Mia’s mother; Gabe, the detective working the case, Colin, the man who kidnaps her; and Mia herself, though she only narrates the final chapter.  I loved that the story was told this way as it allowed us to sympathize with the characters at different points of the story, even Colin. And, this is how we really get to know Mia – through these three characters, which is quite an unusual way to showcase your main character, yet I felt as if I knew her just as well as I did the other three characters.

This is an intense, emotional story and with each chapter, I found myself thinking I had it all figured out, only to have a new guess when I got to the next chapter. And by the time I got to the end, I was completely surprised. Like I said earlier…this is the kind of book that I might have to reread just to see how Mary Kubica got to that ending. 

This book is definitely a keeper, especially since I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to meet Mary at BEA this year and get a signed copy. I cannot wait to see what comes next for Mary as this debut is certainly one that will get people talking!