Mary Kubica – M J Mallon YA Author and Poet

Goodreads Synopsis:

I’ve been following her for the past few days. I know where she buys her groceries, where she has her dry cleaning done, where she works. I don’t know the color of her eyes or what they look like when she’s scared. But I will.”

Born to a prominent Chicago judge and his stifled socialite wife, Mia Dennett moves against the grain as a young inner-city art teacher. One night, Mia enters a bar to meet her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But when he doesn’t show, she unwisely leaves with an enigmatic stranger. With his smooth moves and modest wit, at first Colin Thatcher seems like a safe one-night stand. But following Colin home will turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia’s life.

Colin’s job was to abduct Mia as part of a wild extortion plot and deliver her to his employers. But the plan takes an unexpected turn when Colin suddenly decides to hide Mia in a secluded cabin in rural Minnesota, evading the police and his deadly superiors. Mia’s mother, Eve, and detective Gabe Hoffman will stop at nothing to find them, but no one could have predicted the emotional entanglements that eventually cause this family’s world to shatter.

An addictively suspenseful and tautly written thriller, The Good Girl is a compulsive debut that reveals how even in the perfect family, nothing is as it seems….

My review:

I was given a kindle copy of A Good Girl by Net Galley in return for an honest review. I had some difficulties with the ARC copy I received as there were no chapter headings or even pauses to suggest where one chapter started and the next finished. Unfortunately this made reading this particular novel very difficult especially as it has been written in multiple points of views, and in shifting time sequences alternating between the present and the past. Having said that I persevered and I’m glad that I did as I quickly found the story gripping, and I wanted to read on and find out what happened next.

A Good Girl is written through the eyes of Mia, the captive, Mia’s mother, and Gabe the detective running the cause. All three points of view work well and add a depth to the narrative. We feel Mia’s confusion and fear when she is kidnapped. Her mother’s distress at the unknown fate of her daughter, her sense of failure at being an inadequate mother and Gabe’s determination to set things right and solve the case. We also see a rich girl who has a depth to her that at first glance we may have overlooked. Her captive finds that Mia is much more than a spoilt little rich kid. He finds that she isn’t that different from him. They both share troubles, that have made them the way that they are, in her case, her father’s expectations that she will behave in a certain way and, in his case, his mother’s illness.

I had some problems with the initial propositions of the storyline, and with some of the developments within the novel. Why would someone abduct someone with the intention of handing them over and then change their mind? Why would the detective develop feelings for a member of the family? Was this really necessary, or did it distract from the storyline?

The ending was a bit of a surprise I just didn’t see it coming.

Overall I thought that Mary Kubica’s portrayal of Mia’s abduction, and the developing attraction between Mia and her captive was skillfully written but I didn’t really buy into the detective investigating the case following down the love route too. It seemed a bit too much! I won’t say any more on that one for fear of spoiling the novel for you but for me it just wasn’t necessary.

Overall I enjoyed The Good Girl. I thought it was a well crafted debut novel, that I would recommend to readers of mystery, thrillers, suspense, contemporary, and psychological thrillers.

My star rating:

3.75 stars