Publisher's Weekly Review
Eleven years after the disappearances of new mom Shelby Tebow, doula Meredith Dickey, and Meredith's six-year-old daughter, Delilah, shook their tranquil Chicago suburb, troubling questions linger about just what happened to them in this daringly plotted, emotionally eviscerating psychological thriller from bestseller Kubica (The Other Mrs.). Out of the blue, Meredith's husband gets the call that will upend his life again: Delilah has been found. However, the traumatized, emaciated teen subsequently brought to the house bears little resemblance to the Delilah he remembers, other than her distinctive red hair. As usual for this author, much suspense stems from her storytelling sleight of hand, particularly the way she leaps forward and backward in time as well as among half a dozen distinctive if not always reliable narrators, who include Shelby, Meredith, and Delilah's younger brother. Though a couple of the final megatwists prove more shocking than convincing, Kubica's plumbing of the darkness lurking beneath the shiny suburban dream should please her fans and draw in new ones. This is definitely one of her better efforts. Agent: Rachael Dillon Fried, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (May)
Kirkus Review
What should be a rare horror--a woman gone missing--becomes a pattern in Kubica's latest thriller. One night, a young mother goes for a run. She never comes home. A few weeks later, the body of Meredith, another missing woman, is found with a self-inflicted knife wound; the only clue about the fate of her still-missing 6-year-old daughter, Delilah, is a note that reads, "You'll never find her. Don't even try." Eleven years later, a girl escapes from a basement where she's been held captive and severely abused; she reports that she is Delilah. Kubica alternates between chapters in the present narrated by Delilah's younger brother, Leo, now 15 and resentful of the hold Delilah's disappearance and Meredith's death have had on his father, and chapters from 11 years earlier, narrated by Meredith and her neighbor Kate. Meredith begins receiving texts that threaten to expose her and tear her life apart; she struggles to keep them, and her anxiety, from her family as she goes through the motions of teaching yoga and working as a doula. One client in particular worries her; Meredith fears her husband might be abusing her, and she's also unhappy with the way the woman's obstetrician treats her. So this novel is both a mystery about what led to Meredith's death and Delilah's imprisonment and the story of what Delilah's return might mean to her family and all their well-meaning neighbors. Someone is not who they seem; someone has been keeping secrets for 11 long years. The chapters complement one another like a patchwork quilt, slowly revealing the rotten heart of a murderer amid a number of misdirections. The main problem: As it becomes clear whodunit, there's no true groundwork laid for us to believe that this person would behave at all the way they do. More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Another chilly thriller (following The Other Mrs., 2020) from New York Times best-selling author Kubica. People disappear without a trace, more often than we would like to believe. A profusion of domestic secrets lurks behind the disappearance of three people in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in the Midwest. First, Shelby Tebow, the mother of a newborn baby, goes missing. Her abusive husband is immediately suspected. Soon after, just blocks away, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish. The police come up empty-handed, and the cases go cold. Shockingly, Delilah staggers home after being locked in a basement for 11 years. Just how far will some people go to hide the nasty business in their pasts? That question is finally answered here in an impossible-to-see-it-coming manner, devastating for everyone, including the reader. Kubica is known for her unpredictable stories, and this time out she takes readers to a whole new level of deceit and irony. Recommended for fans of Lisa Unger's Confessions on the 7:45 (2020).
Library Journal Review
When Shelby Tebow and then Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter Delilah vanish within a few blocks' radius, the whole town anxiously assumes that the events are related. But the case is never solved, and 11 years later Delilah turns up with an explanation guaranteed to upend the town further and make the blood run cold. With a 200,000-copy first printing.
![Cover image for Local woman missing. [book discussion kit]](/client/assets/5.1294/ctx//client/images/no_image.png "Cover image for Local woman missing. [book discussion kit]")