Guest Review: Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica

I'd like to introduce you to my newest guest reviewer Lauren (insert big round of applause)! Lauren is a voracious reader and she'll be helping out on my blog from time to time.

Summary:

A chance encounter sparks an unrelenting web of lies in this stunning new psychological thriller from national bestselling author Mary Kubica

She sees the teenage girl on the train platform, standing in the pouring rain, clutching an infant in her arms. She boards a train and is whisked away. But she can't get the girl out of her head...

Heidi Wood has always been a charitable woman: she works for a nonprofit, takes in stray cats. Still, her husband and daughter are horrified when Heidi returns home one day with a young woman named Willow and her four-month-old baby in tow. Disheveled and apparently homeless, this girl could be a criminal—or worse. But despite her family's objections, Heidi invites Willow and the baby to take refuge in their home.

Heidi spends the next few days helping Willow get back on her feet, but as clues into Willow's past begin to surface, Heidi is forced to decide how far she's willing to go to help a stranger. What starts as an act of kindness quickly spirals into a story far more twisted than anyone could have anticipated.

Publication Date: July 28, 2015

Lauren's Review:

4.5 stars! No spoilers per se, but some details revealed below.

So, briefly: Our bleeding-heart-brakes-for-animals Heidi sees a bedraggled young lady while waiting for the L during a particularly rainy time of year. Chicago, go figure. As sad of a sight this is, Heidi can't help but fly to the rescue after noticing the little baby tucked in her too thin jacket. Heidi brings Willow (ze girl) and Ruby (ze bebe) into her home, much to the chagrin of her workaholic husband, Chris and her attitude ridden daughter, Zoe. Cut to a few very awkward dinners and lots of eye rolling.

This was my very first Kubica experience, having missed The Good Girl (a mistake I plan to remedy ASAP) and I am just so pleased with her! I mean that less in the pat-on-the-head-we're-so-shocked-and-proud-of-you way but more in the YASSSS QUEEEEN kinda way. After a string of novels I felt like I was TRUUUDGING THROUUUGHHH, Pretty Baby was so refreshingly exciting. SQUEEEE!

What starts out as a story that seems to reek more of a disgruntled marriage than any other conflict slowly, so slowly unravels into something much darker. Disclaimer about me as a reader: I don't guess. I don't mentally read ahead. I prefer to take in exactly what's in front of me, so I am constantly shocked and surprised. Maybe I'm just a simpleton. In fact, I don't think it was until this passage, more than halfway through the book that I even realized something was LEGIT AMISS: "

There is a clock in this room, as well, red digital numbers that drift from 2:21 to 4:18 a.m., all in the blink of an eye as I hover, there, at the foot of the sofa bed...

"
Kubica had such a skilled way of building to her conclusion. And I loved her take on chapters. I know she is not the first author to use the POV of multiple characters to break up the novel but it was the perfect way to execute the story. We were able to see what made Willow the way she was without Heidi or Chris having any of this knowledge. We watched Heidi unravel. And with Chris, we witnessed an inconvenienced husband have his reality BROKEN because he stopped looking at his wife long ago.

Sidebar: Zoe, the 12 year old daughter is awful. I don't care. She's awful. Granted her mother is a little intense, but Zoe needs Jesus and boarding school. Sry. Bye.

And then there's Willow. Where to even start. We can blame her for everything coming unhinged if we want, but that's not the right move. We can judge her for keeping little Ruby when it was so wildly clear that she was not fit, equipped, prepared to take care of a child...but that doesn't feel so good either. As her story goes on not only do we learn about her tragedies, we learn about her spirit. She has so much of it. After her parents died and her younger sister was adopted, Willow was forced to spend her formative years with a foster family that sexually, physically and mentally abused her. There is one scene later on in the novel when one of her foster brothers (we like him) sneaks her out of the house and she realizes she hasn't had to wear shoes in six years...because SHE HASN'T LEFT THAT HOUSE IN SIX YEARS. That. Is. Just. And the girl survived it all. Guyz, like, I have a meltdown if I have to put pants on for more than three days in a row.

Pretty Baby ain't fun but it's so readable I can hardly stand it. The pages fly by and the story progresses at such a subtle speed that you, the reader, don't even realize you've been accelerating this whole time and suddenly you're CAREENING towards the conclusion. Insert awesome rollercoaster metaphor here!

If I may say about the ending, the readers are left with an idea of how Willow was doing but we really don't know what is going to happen to Heidi, and her family. Good. They were all outstandingly selfish in their own right, so it's nice to just leave them be, to let them sort themselves out. But Willow, we needed to know how she turns out, that finally she's in the a place where people are nice to her. She's safe, the baby is safe and we can finally put this book down and fall asleep.

Also! I was given a complimentary copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. NEATO!

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

Review: The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

Goodreads Summary:

"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…

Publication Date: July 29, 2014

Hmmm…that was an interesting book! I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it wasn’t what I got. But I wouldn’t say that was a bad thing. The flawed characters intrigued me and I did like the twists that the author threw in at the end of the book.

The Good Girl has a narrative structure that I normally don’t like: multiple point of views and time jumps. However, the author handled the transitions flawlessly. I never thought the switches were jarring and I felt like the way the book was laid out painted a complete picture of the plot without giving away anything too soon.

The characters were interesting and I felt the strongest connection to Mia’s mother. She felt like a real mom who had made mistakes in the past with her daughter and starts to question her entire life after her daughter’s abduction. Mia was hard to get to know because the story is never told in her POV. I didn’t like her or hate her, I just felt a little neutral towards her. It was a little bit of an issue because it made it hard to cheer for a HEA for her. I also was never sold on the relationship between her and Colin.

The beginning and end of the book really grabbed me. These sections were exciting and emotionally charged. I figured out portions of the plot early on, but there were definitely some surprises the author decided to add. For a debut novel, the suspense was very well done.

I’ve read several books from Harlequin MIRA and I have to say they were all enjoyable. If you like suspense novels with a hint of mystery, then you should definitely pick up The Good Girl.

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of the novel for review!