But the direction the story takes following Delilah's brave escape immediately starts to water down any goodwill found at the start. I wanted to love this, I really did! The beginning hooked me so completely, and Kubica's writing was so absorbing, that I couldn't read it fast enough. However, from there things (disappointingly) shift character perspectives and hop between two timelines 11 years apart, and the story begins its downward slope. When it comes to sequences like this, Kubica is incredible. Together these scenes make for a riveting start to the book, and I ripped through the chapters in record time. And then we switch to one of the bleakest sequences I've read in a while, with a young girl, Delilah, hatching an escape from a disgusting, pitch-black basement, where she's spent years enduring unimaginable horrors at the hands of her backwoods captors. It begins with the high-wire act of an unnamed wife sneaking out on her abusive husband to meet her lover, to what potentially seems like a violent abduction. Unfortunately Local Woman Missing was, for me, a miss. While not on the same level, I also found Don't You Cry to be a truly gripping psychological thriller, with imagery that has stayed with me to this day. The Good Girl remains one of my favorite thrillers, with twists that are genuinely shocking while still seeming plausible, and a mystery that unravels in realistic, but nevertheless thrilling, ways. For instance, when her books 'hit' for me, they hit. 'Complex, richly atmospheric and thoroughly riveting, Local Woman Missing is a thoughtful look at how even the most innocuous secrets between happy couples and beloved friends in tightly knit neighborhoods can sometimes turn so unexpectedly and terrifyingly deadly.Never has an author embodied the phrase 'hit or miss' for me the way Mary Kubica does. Riley Sager, New York Times bestselling author of Home Before Dark What I don’t understand why they are so popular among women. I know there is a very large audience for novels where terrible things happen to women. 'Dark and twisty, with all the white-knuckle tension and jaw-dropping surprises readers have come to expect from Mary Kubica.' Local Woman Missing (2021) by Mary Kubica. Loved every minute.' -Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Never Have I Ever LOCAL WOMAN MISSING is a propulsive journey through a winding maze of secrets, leading to a jaw-dropping twist that I never saw coming. 'I'm shamelessly addicted to Mary Kubica's juicy, unpredictable reads, as much for her well-rounded, fully human, flawed characters as her sizzling plots-and she just keeps getting better. The twists, turns, and an unpredictable ending make it irresistible.'

' will appeal to fans of Lisa Jackson and Gregg Olsen. takes readers to a whole new level of deceit and irony.' ' daringly plotted, emotionally eviscerating psychological thriller.'

Local woman missing author