Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Summary and Reviews of The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

The Good Girl

by Mary Kubica

  • Critics' Consensus (1):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Jul 2014, 352 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book 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 propulsive debut that reveals how even in the perfect family, nothing is as it seems...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Kubica's powerful debut...will encourage comparisons to Gone Girl. Unlike that dazzling duel, this Girl has heart-which makes it all the more devastating when the author breaks it." - Publishers Weekly

"Similar in tone to William Landay's acclaimed Defending Jacob, this excellent debut is compulsively readable and highly recommended for anyone who loves a mystery, a suspense tale, or a psychological puzzle." - Library Journal

"Kubica's debut thrill builds suspense steadily and will have readers guessing what's really going on until the final pages." - Booklist

"If the novel lacks credibility in any one area, it's that the Chicago PD, one of the busiest law enforcement agencies in the world, would have the luxury of assigning one detective to a single case for months on end, even if the abductee was the daughter of an influential member of the judiciary." - Kirkus

"A twisty, roller coaster ride of a debut. Fans of Gone Girl will embrace this equally evocative tale of a missing woman, shattered family and the lies we tell not just to each other, but especially to ourselves." - Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fear Nothing

"Psychologically rich and pulse pounding, The Good Girl had me hooked from the very first sentence and didn't let go until the final word." - Heather Gudenkauf, bestselling author of The Weight of Silence and Little Mercies

This information about The Good Girl was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Roe P

If you enjoyed Gone Girl
This book will keep you turning pages..its the story of a kidnapping and the family and detective that are determined to bring her home...there are so many twists and turns and if you enjoyed Gone Girl, then this book is for you. The author uses a unique way of telling the story by having a different character speak in each chapter and label it "before" or "after" (the kidnapping event)....Take it home I think you will find it entertaining.

Sandi W.

Kubica is on a roll!
Story of a rich girls kidnapping due to her Daddys injustices. Mia(Chloe) was kidnapped by Colin (Owen) but instead of following the kidnapping plan Owen took her to an empty cabin in the woods.
Chloe ends up falling in love with Owen over the length of time they spent in the cabin.
The story held my interest and I kept listening to the audio book. There were 4 narrators of this story and each told it in their own way. Chloe, Owen, Eve -Chloes mother and Gabe - the detective on the case. The narration was very good.
There is a twist however. The twist is the story. Not something that I figured out before I read it and I can happily say I appreciate that fact. This was a debut book and after reading this one I am sure that I will read those that follow. Kubica is on a roll!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Mary Kubica

Mary Kubica holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in History and American Literature. She lives outside of Chicago with her husband and two children and enjoys photography, gardening and caring for the animals at a local shelter. The Good Girl is her first novel.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more thrillers...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

Men are more moral than they think...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.