The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

I have no memory of how The Good Girl by Mary Kubica can on my radar.  But here we are. I have had it from the library for a good long while and finally got the "it's due in two days and you don't have any additional renewals" notice from the library, so I powered through it. 

Starting with the good news, my library copy was signed by the author!

I don't know who Vicki is, but I hope it brings Mary Kubica much joy to know that lots of other people besides Vicki are having some "happy reading."

In this book, Mia, the daughter of a prominent Chicago judge, is kidnapped by a guy named Colin. The book snaps up back and forth in time before and after her rescue, from several different perspectives including Colin, Mia, Mia's mother, and the investigating police detective. 

Hm. Well, I liked that the setting of the book was places I was familiar with. Janesville! Eau Claire! Chicago! Yay! (I did start to nitpick, though, because there is no exit off of I-90 that's going to have a completely deserted gas station, no matter how late it is. The truck traffic on that road is intense, even in the middle of cold weather season.) Much like with my reading of The Last Train to Key West, though, I thought this book could have been improved with a map. Regardless, yay for the setting!

Yay for the cat!

Boo for everything else? The mother who is kind of terrible? The sister who disappears about halfway through the book and never returns? The lack of police work (no gestures toward interviewing the boyfriend?)? The prolife rant in the middle of the book? The assumption made several times that "all women want to be mothers"? The "twist"?

Eh. 

You can skip this. 3/5 stars

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Lines of note:

She's a talented artist. I asked her once why she loved to draw, why it was something with which she was so enamored. She told me that she drew because it was the only way she could bring about change. She could turn geese to swans or a cloudy day to sun. It was a place where reality didn't have to exist. (page 62-63)

She tells me about her grandchildren. Two of them, a boy and a girl. The only name I catch is Zelda. What kind of stupid name is Zelda anyway? (page 69)

I ask what the heck a poetry slam is. I've never heard of it. I imagine works of Whitman and Yeats being thrown on the ground; that's not the case. The idea of listening to people recite their own poetry on stage, however, has me even more baffled. (page 91)

The weathermen warn us for days of the impending snowstorm that's about to arrive Thursday night. The grocery stores have run out of bottled water as people prepare to take shelter in their homes; my God, I think, it's winter, an annual certainty, not the atomic bomb. (page 224)

Thing I looked up:

Mowat-Wilson syndrome (page 144) - genetic disorder that affects many systems of the body. Symptoms may include intellectual disability, distinctive facial features, delayed development, and Hirschsprung disease. Other symptoms may include microcephaly, structural brain abnormalities, epilepsy, short statue, and defects of the heart, urinary tract, or genitalia. 

Hat mentions:

...in the canoe, with sun hats on, drinking wine around a fire. (page 180)

I wear my Sox hat. (page 260)

"Mia, your hat," I say, "your scarf," because it's so cold out here the very air will freeze her flesh. (page 307)