The Good Girl by Mary Kubica starts with a missing girl, woman really, though we first hear the news of the disappearance of Mia Dennett from her mother’s point of view. And to her mother, Mia is still a girl though she is a schoolteacher. Detective Gabe Hoffman is bemused that Mia’s parents don’t seem to visit their daughter’s apartment. And then, the time shifts and it is after Mia’s return and we are with Mia and her parents on the way to psychiatrist. Amnesia. Mia cannot remember what happened. And so the story is pieced together. Mia’s kidnap is told from multiple viewpoints; before, during and after the event over a winter in Chicago. Everyone in this dysfunctional family seems to have their own agenda. But Mia cannot remember what happened in that cabin where she was held captive by a man called Owen for three months.
The setting of the Minnesota cabin in winter is so clearly drawn I could be there, a mixture of beautiful, intimidating and claustrophobic. The eerie quiet, the ice fishing, the extreme cold. The feeling of being trapped, in more ways than one. Mary Kubica handles the transition of the kidnap relationship so well, two people sharing an intimate space for so long, and how the emotions and stresses play out.
Kubica has plotted a page-turning story, sort of a kidnap version of Gone Girl, though she may hate the comparison.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read my reviews of two other novels by Mary Kubica:-
DON’T YOU CRY
PRETTY BABY

If you like this, try:-
‘An Uncertain Place’ by Fred Vargas
‘The Blood Detective’ by Dan Waddell
‘The Accident’ by CL Taylor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GOOD GIRL by @MaryKubica via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1a6