Tag Archives: Mary Kubica

#BookReview ‘Don’t You Cry’ by @MaryKubica #mystery #suspense

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Don’t You Cry explores how easy it is to make assumptions and how this guesswork is so often wrong. This is the third novel by Mary Kubica, all thoughtful mysteries, carefully written and detailed. It took me longer to get into this one, but Kubica spends time drawing the characters and I was prepared to go along with her. Mary KubicaThere are two narrators. In Chicago, Quinn’s roommate disappears. After a couple of days waiting for Esther to return and wondering if she has done anything to upset her, Quinn starts to poke around looking for answers. The first things she finds are confusing, they contradict the Esther she knows, or thinks she knows. And then she starts to wonder what Esther is hiding. Quinn’s voice is alternated with Alex, a young man who lives in the small town where he grew up on the shore of Lake Michigan. He is a nice guy, who passed up on college for a boring low-paid in a rundown lakeside café so he can care for his drunken father. He takes lunch to Ingrid, a housebound elderly lady and stays to eat with her, and to play cards. One day, he goes to work and sees a girl with distinctive, ombre hair. There is something about her that captures his imagination. The girl, in his head he calls her Pearl, is watching the house next door to Ingrid, which is the office of a psychologist.
Nothing is what it seems. I raced through the last few pages as the answers came thick and fast. The twists and turns are clever but, compared with Kubica’s other two novels, this feels baggy and would benefit from an edit to improve the pace and cut repetitions.

Read my reviews of two other novels by Mary Kubica:-
PRETTY BABY
THE GOOD GIRL

If you like this, try:-
‘Pretty Is’ by Maggie Mitchell
‘The Lost Girl’ by Sangu Mandanna
‘The Accident’ by CL Taylor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DON’T YOU CRY by @MaryKubica by @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-21l

#BookReview ‘Pretty Baby’ by @MaryKubica #mystery #suspense

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Don’t be fooled by the cover photograph, this is not a thriller about trains. Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica is a psychological tale of parenting, grief, abuse, and husbands and wives who stop communicating and stop interacting. At times I had to take a gulp and accept some situations which seemed unrealistic to me, it was either that or put the book down. Mary KubicaHeidi and Chris live with their daughter Zoe in Chicago. One freezing wintery day, running for a train, Heidi spots a homeless girl with a baby. She hesitates, wondering whether to say something, and then the girl is gone. Wishing she had helped, Heidi looks out for the girl the next day… and takes her home. Zoe sees it as an invasion of her space, Chris worries about who the girl – Willow, with baby Ruby – really is, and whether she poses a threat to his family and property. Both are right to be worried.
At times I grew impatient with Heidi for indulging herself and impatient for Chris to show some intuition and see what was really going on. Unfortunately Chris is a bit of a stereotype, the hard-working banker husband who spends more time at work than home, fending off the glamorous co-worker. Zoe’s thoughts we do not hear. For me, Willow is the most interesting character and I would have liked to read more about her relationship with Matthew. Concentrating more on Willow’s story, rather than Heidi’s would make this a completely different book.
Unfairly, I think, the publisher compares Pretty Baby to Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins [in other words, to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, giants of their genre]. But they are page-turners whereas the pace of this story is slower, allowing the various threads to unfold. What kept me turning the page? What is Willow hiding? When will Chris or Zoe speak out? How far will Heidi go to help a stranger and why is she risking everything?
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my reviews of two other novels by Mary Kubica:-
DON’T YOU CRY
THE GOOD GIRL

If you like this, try novels:-
‘The Girl on the Train’ by Paula Hawkins
‘Gone Girl’ by Gillian Flynn
‘Stolen Child’ by Laura Elliot

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview PRETTY BABY by @MaryKubica via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1T5

#BookReview ‘The Good Girl’ by @MaryKubica #suspense

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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. Mary KubicaAnd 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