Local Woman Missing Book Review

Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica: Book Review 

*Warning: This review contains spoilers. It also contains mentions of abuse and the abduction of a child.* 

Summary & Review 

This is mostly another mixed bag thriller for me, just like my last review of Lisa Jewell’s Then She Was Gone. In this novel, Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica, there’s a good mix of things I liked, things I didn’t like, and things I had mixed feelings about. 

Starting off with the positives, the thing I actually loved most about this book had nothing to do with the mystery! It’s the fact that the main character/main couple featured in the present day of the timeline is a lesbian couple. I have been saying for so long that I want more LGBTQ representation in books in general (like outside of books that are specifically branded as queer romances). Not because I dislike queer romance novels—obviously I love them—but because queerness exists outside of romance and relationships, and LGBTQ folk exist in all facets of life, so they should be represented in all facets of books. There need to be more queer-lead thrillers (as well as sci-fi books, fantasies, historical fiction, and contemporaries that aren’t romance specific!) This book easily could have had a straight couple in the lead. The plot wouldn’t necessarily change at all if Bea was a man. Even the plot twist about Bea would still work. Kubica just simply decided to have Kate and Bea be a sapphic couple instead just because why not! And I love that! So many people act like characters should only be queer or that queer romances should only happen in stories “if it’s absolutely necessary to the plot,” and just ignore that straight romances are fudged into absolutely every story ever even when they don’t need to be there for the sake of the plot. Kubica just allows Kate and Bea to exist in the space of this book even though it’s not a romance, and I love that. 

There are a lot of other good things about the book too. The nonlinear timeline worked well for this story. I liked the added suspense from reading the chapters set in the past from Meredith’s perspective when in the present timeline, we knew she became a victim, and also the added shock of knowing she was one of the perpetrators of Shelby’s murder too. There were good red herrings that kept me distracted (in a good way) from determining who the real killer(s) were, like Dr. Feingold, and I briefly even considered Meredith’s husband. 

I also liked the revelation that there was no Gus, that the other child who had been captive with Delilah (“Delilah”?), was a figment of her imagination to cope with the trauma. I have absolutely no idea if such a thing is realistic or rooted in real psychology, but it did add a little something to her storyline that made her trauma feel just a bit more acknowledged. 

That being said, I had generally mixed feelings on the way that Delilah’s entire story was handled. The actual idea of her not really being the real Delilah was a great concept, and a good lead-in to the twist at the end (that the real Delilah was held captive in Bea’s shed), but I think Kubica fumbled the execution of the concept. How did one cop single-handedly keep the truth about “Delilah”’s DNA test hidden exactly? What about the people who abducted Carly (“Delilah”)? They just vanish mysteriously from their home when the police investigate the abduction, and it’s the last we ever hear about them. It kind of just felt like Kubica didn’t really know how to resolve their role in the story, so she just had them vanish to avoid needing to give it a real resolution. Plus, there’s no actual mention of another missing little girl named Carly at any other point in the story to build up to the reveal that “Delilah” was actually someone else, which is a really irritating issue in the story structure because one tiny little mention or foreshadowing to this could have easily solved that problem! 

There is also the issue with Kubica’s choice to have Delilah’s brother Leo as the protagonist for her storyline instead of “Delilah”/Carly herself. The entire story could have benefitted from just having those chapters narrated by Carly herself. It would have better foreshadowed the twist of who she was, and she narrated her own escape chapter anyway, so why not just continue with her POV? Leo adds absolutely nothing to the plot, and there’s so many points where his narration is just creepy and weird (and not in a good way). His hatred towards his rescued “sister” is weird too, because it’s portrayed like he despises “Delilah,” but then as soon as they recover the real Delilah, he’s hugging her. So what…? His resentment towards Carly was because he subconsciously sensed she wasn’t his real sister? Literally makes no sense. 

I also have serious mixed feelings about the way Shelby—the first victim—and her husband Jason were characterized. Both of them were cheating on each other, and Jason was abusive. I kind of get the point of characterizing Shelby the way that she was—just because she cheated on her husband doesn’t mean she deserved to be murdered or treated poorly by her doctor during labor, obviously. But this thematic concern is never touched on heavily enough to really feel relevant, and her affair is such a completely abandoned plot line. 

It’s mentioned in the prologue that she’s having an affair with a dude who goes by Sam, but she knows that’s not his real name. Then in an unsurprising twist, Shelby’s husband Jason ends up not being the father of the baby she gave birth to before her murder (yeah, duh, saw that coming). We also find out that the husband of Meredith’s close friend is potentially having an affair, which implies he may have been the other man in Shelby’s life… and then nothing. 

I understand not spoon feeding your reader, knowing that Shelby was having an affair with a married guy who wasn’t actually named Sam and knowing that Cassandra’s husband was cheating isn’t a coincidence; we can all infer that Shelby was the woman Cassandra’s husband was sleeping with. My problem, though, is that it ends up having no relevance. There’s no follow through on him being the baby’s bio-dad or addressing that Jason would need to give up custody of the baby since he isn’t the father. It isn’t used for the purpose of creating a red-herring in Shelby’s murder. It’s all buildup and no follow through. There’s no point, the story would have been exactly the same if the affair would’ve been cut out and the baby had just been Jason’s. So, I guess, I just don’t see the point of this subplot at all. 

Also, this story would have been ten thousand times more cathartic and emotional if Jason had been a good guy. Like, I get it, it’s a thriller, so to drive the plot we need the characters to be toxic and not morally upstanding, but we don’t need every character to be bad, and imagine how much more interesting this story would be if Jason were likable. His wife cheats on him, then she gets murdered, he becomes a framed suspect in her murder which pretty much ruins his life, and then after all of that, it’s revealed that the baby his wife had before she died isn’t even his, so he’ll probably lose custody. Like. That is tragic and traumatic, and it was a real opportunity for Kubica to insert some real emotional resonance into the story on the way that the traumatic events that happen in murder mysteries actually impact the survivors. But instead, she decides to make Jason toxic and abusive, so that the reader doesn’t feel bad for him. And I have to wonder why because it feels like the wrong choice. All thrillers have a place for horrible people that the reader isn’t meant to feel sorry for, and there are plenty in this one, but including Jason as one of those characters just feels like a mistake. It would have been better if his character could have been a point of empathy for the reader in realizing the tragedy that has occurred. 

The worst offense of this book isn’t the mishandling of Shelby and Jason though. By far, it is the way the reveal of Bea as the killer is handled. It’s not a bad idea for it to be Bea, really. But what where it just becomes insulting to the reader is that Bea’s partner Kate (who literally lives in the same home) is a protagonist who is literally investigating the murders that Bea committed and never once does Kubica use Kate’s unique position as living with the killer to foreshadow that it was Bea! Unless I absolutely missed it, there is literally no point where Bea acts suspicious until the very end when it’s revealed, there’s no subtle clues or hints or foreshadowing the significance of the shed that Bea plays drums in and also has Delilah captive in, she never acts shady even after Kate starts investigating. Never. Not once. Isn’t that the entire point and significance of Kate as a POV character, the twist that she’s been living with the killer the entire time? Kubica could have used this as a great way of subtly foreshadowing the truth the whole time but disguising it with red herrings and Kate’s own biased point of view because she loves Bea and would never even consider her a suspect in the first place. But no, the entire reveal ultimately ends up coming out of ko where and just leaves you feeling kind of “huh? Okay…” about the whole thing. 

Final Thoughts 

Overall, this book is interesting and twisty and full of a lot of potential, but Kubica just dropped the ball on what could have been such amazing plot points. So Local Woman Missing ends up feeling quite dull in all the places where it should have shined. Interesting to listen to on audio if you just want some background entertainment, but it’s not the best of its class—2.5 out of 5 stars.