The Good Girl

by Mary Kubica

[Leah]

When I was offered the chance to review The Good Girl, I was quite excited, as it was being outed as this year’s Gone Girl (which I still haven’t read…). I enjoy books with a psychological edge, having read The Accident by C.L. Taylor this year, as well as Keep Your Friends Close by Paula Daly. However, I must confess that the last two thrillers I’ve read haven’t really been on their a-game. First up was Daughter by Jane Shemilt, which bored me immeasurably, and now The Good Girl. Don’t get me wrong, The Good Girl is not a bad novel at all, but it just felt as if there was something missing.

The Good Girl is quite interesting – going into the novel, I didn’t know quite what to expect as the synopsis is written from the POV of the kidnapper. Then the novel itself is told from the POV of Eve, Mia’s mother; Gabe Hoffman, the detective in charge of the case; and Colin, the kidnapper. I was somewhat surprised that Mia does not narrate any of the novel – she’s the focal point! She’s the one kidnapped, why don’t we hear from her? Surprisingly it was Colin’s narrative that was my favourite, but more on that later. I found Eve’s narrative to be deathly boring – if it hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have left anything out of the book, which was really my issue. I liked Detective Gabe, though he, too, was capable of waffling, but he was a solid narrator.

It was Colin’s narrative that was the best, that was the one I kept racing through other chapters to get back to. His offered the best insight into the entire novel, and it made me see things differently. I’m still not quite sure why he did what he did (I must have missed that bit), but it was interesting and it kept me reading more than the rest of the novel did. The Good Girl had an interesting concept (that would have worked better with just Colin’s narrative, in my opinion anyway) but it did seem like there was something missing. It’s really hard to review the book without spoiling it, or giving too much away. All in all, I was quite disappointed with the book. With the triple POVs when I was only interested in one (which was absolutely fasciating, I’d rather have read 370 pages of that), I was disappointed in the mystery aspect (no mystery, the mystery is solved within 10 pages with regards to Mia’s whereabouts)