I don’t know what to say. I found the overall resolution to this one to not just be implausible, but when we get the reveal about who took/killed a missing girl it just had me going what in the world. It was very much out of left field and it just didn’t even make sense. I did laugh at this character going, well there’s no DNA that will tie me to this. Really? Considering the person in question, I had to wonder at that myself.
It’s Not Her begins with Courtney, mom of one, waking up feeling exhausted after her daughter’s sleepover with her niece. Her husband and daughter, along with her brother, sister-in-law, and two nieces and nephews are staying at a lake resort in two cabins. When her niece runs back to her shaking and saying something bad has happened, Courtney goes to her brother’s cabin and finds him and her sister-in law murdered and realizes her older niece, Reese, is missing. When the police get called in, they find that Courtney’s nephew, Wyatt, was still in the cabin, but slept through the murders of his parents. With Courtney focused on finding Reese and refusing to leave, she gets caught up in an old missing case involving a local girl and wondering if it has any ties to her niece.
The book shifts between Courtney and Reese (prior to her missing). There’s not a lot of character development. I think Kubica focused on just throwing up enough red herrings that you start to suspect everyone and the cat as being responsible for the murders. And that just didn’t really work for me after a while since it would be a chapter or two later where something else would get explained to explain away the suspicions. And the flow was just up and down jumping between Courtney and Reese. I think that it didn’t help that Courtney kept interfering and had the lead detective telling her every time hey because of you, this case could get messed up. I get her not wanting to leave since she is focused on Reese, but she didn’t really seem to care at all about her own daughter or niece. And her nephew Wyatt had some obvious problems that she and her husband again just ignored. I felt like Courtney and Rese both kept making really dumb choices throughout this book that made me tired.
The ending was just a really are you serious moment for me. As I said, it was very implausible in my opinion and then we get the reveal about another kidnapping and the whole book just felt like it got tacked together. Poorly.
- Repair – how to fix something; a book with characters who reconcile; self improvement. Well in this one we do have a reconciliation between several sets of characters in the end. No spoilers.
