Well, here’s to a pretty good reading start in 2024. I guess there’s a perk to the fact that I’ve pretty much been sick since NOVEMBER! I had non-Covid and then I had Covid and then when the Covid was gone I was back to just the standard non-Covid still coughing my head off but still having to go about my daily business. At least I was able to read some books, right? For the first time in years my goodreads challenge tells me I’m actually ahead of schedule! Let’s dive in!

Synopsis

When Shelby Tebow goes missing, everyone looks toward the husband. It’s always the husband, you know? But then seeds of doubt are planted when local doula, Meredith Dickey, and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish without a trace. Eleven years after their disappearance, Delilah reappears, and her return calls into question everything previously thought about what happened to the missing women. The book bounces back and forth in time and between the perspectives of Meredith, the Dickeys’ neighbor Kate, Delilah, and Leo, Meredith’s other child. As these threads are all woven together, we get a clearer picture of everyone’s relationships to one another.

Review

Reviewing a book like this one is extremely difficult, because I can’t be completely candid about my thoughts. My main issues with this book surrounds motivation, action vs. inaction, and decision-making on the part of the characters. I found myself immensely frustrated at many junctures, not to mention utterly perplexed at how some things could even be possible. Too much wound up conveniently working out against all odds just to fool us into believing one thing over another.

I can definitely attest to this one being twisty, and admittedly I didn’t see a couple of the twists coming. But, honestly, that’s mostly due to the fact that much of this book doesn’t make a lot of sense. The villain? Without trying to give anything away, I will say that this person was completely different in the first half of the book than in the second. Such a rapid 180 is jarring, and I don’t think misrepresentation is the same thing as strategic misdirection. After things come to light, they seem to vacillate between utterly devoid of compassion to scared and desperate, which really muddles the whole concept of motive. Are you a sociopath or a freaking mouse just trying not to get caught in the trap? Also, there were just so many red herrings. I think literally everyone must have been a suspect at one point, some for pretty dumb reasons.

Delilah’s story in the beginning was great. It was riveting, moving, terrifying. Then the story lost something when we abruptly dropped her narrative and picked up with everyone else, and her story we only see through the eyes of Leo from that point forward. Leo’s perspective just seems utterly unnecessary and useless in hindsight. His is a very interesting perspective, but its potential also gets lost amongst all the other stuff going on. I don’t even want to get into how I felt about where Delilah’s character wound up. Suffice to say, she did not get the due diligence she deserved and that’s very disappointing. Honestly, I feel like she could have had a whole separate book dedicated to her story. That was much more compelling than Meredith’s.

Simply put, I think Kubica simply tried to include too much in this book, and that basically cheated each separate part out of its power to move the reader. A standard criticism I see from readers across the board about Kubica is the writing is pretty lackluster and simple. The appeal of her books is much more about the surprises she has lurking around the corners than in her skill as a wordsmith. I do feel that was made less obvious by the fact that I listened to this one. A good audiobook narrator can make the flow of the narration more pleasing to the ear and less disjointed than it is on the page. Despite what I saw as some pretty major flaws, I still found myself enjoying most of this book, It brought forth a gasp or two and I at least felt something for most of the characters involved. Overall, I give this one 3 stars.

Published May 18, 2021 by Harlequin Audio. ISBN 9781488211690. Runtime 11 hrs. 40 mins. Narrated by Brittany Pressley, Jennifer Jill Araya, Gary Tiedemann and Jesse Vilinsky.