“The Good Girl” by Mary Kubica – Filling in the Blanks

Family secrets aren't usually that big of a deal... most have them, and they generally revolve around hilariously embarrassing moments or medical issues.

It's not that often that you see a family keeping so many skeletons in its closet that it threatens to burst, but it's certainly that kind of story which gets our attention, and that's what we are treated to in Mary Kubica's The Good Girl.

The whole ordeal begins like a kidnapping novel. Mia is a 25 year-old art teacher, and one evening she decides to go with a stranger for a one-night-stand. The man however, named Colin, has very different ideas in mind, and takes her to a secluded and isolated cabin the Minnesotan wilderness.

However, before they even managed to find her, Mia returns back home, but things are visibly quite different. For one, she remembers very little of all that ordeal, or even the life she led before that.

In addition, she now calls herself Chloe, and is basically one huge mystery herself. A detective is assigned to the case, trying to piece it all together and make sense of something seemingly inexplicable.

The narrative in this book is constructed in an interesting fashion, with everything being told in the present tense while jumping back and forth in time, to before and after the kidnapping.

We get three main voices that fill in the blanks and slowly lift the curtains: her mother, a detective assigned to the case, and Colin the kidnapper himself. It quickly becomes visible that very few things are what they seem, and the so-called victims of the affair aren't all that innocent.

More and more questions and mysteries keep popping up with every answer we get, effectively dragging us hungrily along towards the conclusion. Kubica really knows how to tease the audience with the unexplained, having a great sense of timing for when to reveal or dissimulate something.

Even though one wouldn't think of someone's first published novel as being professional and well-polished, I have to say that this novel really helps to contradict those kinds of assumptions.

Of course, there are some hiccups when it comes to the timing or the structure of some sentences, but for the vast majority of the book the writing is top-notch, the author never having trouble conveying the specific thoughts or feelings she wants to. The book is very easy to keep on reading without stopping and you may easily end up staying way past your bedtime.

The characters are really the main show in this book, with their development being perhaps as big of a focus as the main mystery itself. They all speak in their own unique voices and the amount of small details put into them really helps to bring them to life.

As a matter of fact, it becomes all too easy to get emotionally-invested in them and care for their fates, even when they perhaps don't really deserve it.

All in all, The Good Girl is an engaging and interesting thriller that does things differently and tries to breathe something new into the genre, succeeding rather splendidly in that department.

Those who are into thrillers and families trying to keep their dark secrets at bay will without a doubt enjoy this book tremendously.

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Mary Kubica Personal site Mary Kubica is an American writer holding a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, specializing in History and American Literature. So far both of her books have earned her a lot of acclaim, and they are titled Pretty Baby and The Good Girl.