Book Review – Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica – Fascinating Mystery
My Rating – 4 out of 5
Plot Summary – Local Woman Missing
This is my first Mary Kubica, and rest assured, it won’t be my last! Fresh out of finishing a taut suspenseful thriller like ‘Local Woman Missing‘, there is this feeling of emptiness, a feeling of being let down by the lack of something meaningful to do. This is that kind of an engrossing story, drawing you so deep into the story that you actually start living the life of one of the characters. There is a feeling of menace that hangs in the air, of something dark and forbidding, which threatens to engulf the reader into its darkness.
This is about two women from the same locality going missing within days of each other, the second one with her six-year-old daughter, Delilah. The novel is broken down into chapters named after some of the prime characters in the novel – Meredith – Delilah‘s mother and the second woman to go missing, Meredith and her husband Josh’s neighbor Kate, and Delilah’s brother Leo. All chapters are written in the first person, by the person the chapter is named after. Though the novel starts off in the present time, it shuffles back and forth between the portentous events that took place eleven years ago and till the present day.
Eleven years ago, Meredith Dickey and her daughter Delilah just vanish one day and nobody could find them This comes close at the heels of another disappearance of Shelby Tebow – from the same locality, a few days apart. Meredith is a doula by profession (a sort of modern day midwife and Shelby happened to be her client). A massive manhunt is launched to locate the missing women and Delilah, it comes to naught. Eleven years later, Delilah returns, a seventeen-year-old now, but alone. She is massively scarred and bruised – mentally and her story would scare the hell out of every parent. Delilah’s brother Leo is fifteen now and like all precocious teenagers, has his own issues to deal with.
When the missing sister, on return to her family, becomes the center of attention for his father Josh, Leo feels even more alienated and you can read the angst in his version of the story. Delilah is taken to counselors and psychologists, in an attempt to bring her back to a normal life. The buildup to the mystery and the suspense is huge and you just don’t see the twist coming!
Conclusion – Book Review of Local Woman Missing
This is a stunning page turner and you don’t know where this is going till you are almost at the end of the book. Mary keeps building these scenarios in every chapter where you think that you have figured out what has happened and why, only to be disillusioned in the next! In keeping with the suspenseful theme eleven years ago, there is a steady spate of rain in this Chicago suburb, with a thunderstorm brewing. The grey of the sky matches the inherent characteristics of some people in the novel and it is quite beautifully done.
I am short of words as to explain this properly, but this is one well written book and deserves its place in bestseller lists. Never again will I look at a character as benign without knowing more about that character. This is a must read, people, the atmosphere that the lady builds is masterful, the suspense stifling…. This is something I might return to, even knowing how it ends, such is the excitement!!
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