Review: Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica

Suspenseful mysteries about people who go missing are one of my absolute favorite type of books to read. When I saw the title for this book I was very excited to read it for that reason, and I was not disappointed.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book, all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links, see disclosures for more detail.

About the Book:

People don’t just disappear without a trace…
Shelby Tebow is the first to go missing. Not long after, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish just blocks away from where Shelby was last seen, striking fear into their once-peaceful community. Are these incidents connected? After an elusive search that yields more questions than answers, the case eventually goes cold.
Now, eleven years later, Delilah shockingly returns. Everyone wants to know what happened to her, but no one is prepared for what they’ll find…

In this smart and chilling thriller, master of suspense and New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica takes domestic secrets to a whole new level, showing that some people will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.

My Thoughts:

I gave this book 3.5 stars

This author’s books are rather hit or miss for me, and after the last one (The Other Mrs.,) I was happy that her latest offering is fast-paced and a captivating read.

Stories about missing people are my absolute favorites. This one has a large cast of characters and timelines, so at first it is a bit puzzling and difficult to keep who/when straight. We have one initial missing woman, then a young girl who escapes from being held captive. Another missing woman. There are points of view from multiple people, and so it did take me a while to sort out what was going on. Once I did, the book moved along quickly as I was very interested to see what had happened to the missing people.

There are some excellent twists that I didn’t see coming, however some of them were just not believable and kind of bordered on the absurd. I get it, it’s difficult to come up with a plausible explanation for events like these, but suffice it to say that you’ll have to suspend a bit of disbelief to have any sort of buy in for some things that occur, particularly at the end. That’s not to say that the book isn’t gripping, because it definitely has some edge-of-the-seat suspense!

For the most part though, I was pretty entertained by this book and after I figured out the characters and the timelines, I was invested in the plot and finding out what happened. It’s a solid thriller and worth reading.

About the Author:

Mary Kubica is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of six novels, including THE GOOD GIRL, PRETTY BABY, DON’T YOU CRY, EVERY LAST LIE, WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT, and THE OTHER MRS. A former high school history teacher, Mary holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in History and American Literature. She lives outside of Chicago with her husband and two children. Her last novel THE OTHER MRS. was an instant New York Times bestseller; is coming soon to Netflix; was a LibraryReads pick for February 2020; praised by the New York Times; and highly recommended by Entertainment Weekly, People, The Week, Marie Claire, Bustle, HelloGiggles, Goodreads, PopSugar, BookRiot, HuffingtonPost, First for Women, Woman’s World, and more. Mary’s novels have been translated into over thirty languages and have sold over two million copies worldwide. She’s been described as “a helluva storyteller,” (Kirkus Reviews) and “a writer of vice-like control,” (Chicago Tribune), and her novels have been praised as “hypnotic” (People) and “thrilling and illuminating” (Los Angeles Times). LOCAL WOMAN MISSING is her seventh novel.