(AUDIO) BOOKS
No Trace Of Mother And Child
Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica — book review
I’m sure YouTube also works with algorithms, because one recommendation after listening to the two books about missing daughters was the book Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica.
To be honest, for a while I doubted whether I should listen to this book. For one, because the title left nothing to the imagination, but mostly because I had just listened to two books about missing people. The thing that pulled me over the line was because those two books were so different, and I wondered if this one would be too. I could always stop listening if it was too similar, right?
I needn’t had been worried. This story, despite also being about missing people, was different from those other two.
About the author, Mary Kubica
Mary Kubica is a former high school history teacher, holding a Bachelor of Arts degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in History and American Literature. She is a bestselling author of seven suspense novels, including The Good Girl, Don’t You Cry and The Other Mrs.
Mary’s novels have been translated into over thirty languages and sold over two million copies worldwide. Her debut novel, The Good Girl, was a nominee for the Goodreads Choice Awards in Debut Goodreads Author, and in Mystery & Thriller for 2014. Besides this, the novel received a Strand Critics Nomination for Best First Novel.
Mary Kubica lives outside of Chicago with her husband and two children.
About the book, Local Woman Missing
The book starts with Delilah, a young girl held captive somewhere in a dark basement. She talks about her captors, about the mean woman who brings her food, and if she’s not quick enough to take the plate from her, her food is taken away, and she goes hungry. Delilah escapes, and a woman letting her dog out finds her bloody feet and brings her to the police, after which she returns to live with her father, psychologically severely damaged, and eleven years after she and her mother went missing.
The book jumps back and forth from the present to eleven years before, telling the story.
Before Delilah — six years old when she disappears — and her mother, Meredith, go missing, a woman living mere blocks away from them, Shelby Tebow, goes missing. The police suspect her husband has something to do with her disappearance, and as the story unfolds, it turns out he and Shelby both had extra-marital affairs.
Kate and Bea are the neighbors and friends of Josh and Meredith. When Meredith and Delilah disappear, the neighbors follow the developments closely, and help Josh where they can. Kate — more emotional than the practical Bea — goes to quite some lengths to help the investigation along.
After the initial start of the book with Delilah, we don’t hear her as a narrator anymore, but then Meredith, Kate and Leo (Delilah’s younger brother) tell the story. All the adults in the book are flawed in some or other way, keeping secrets from one another or just not telling the full truth.
Surprising plot twists
As the story unfolds, there are three plot lines that run through each other. First there are the last weeks before Meredith’s disappearance, narrated by Meredith. Then there’s Kate, telling the story in the weeks after Meredith’s disappearance. Leo tells the part after Delilah’s return, and eventually Kate’s narrative runs alongside Leo’s.
We learn more about Josh through the eyes of Meredith and Leo, and more about Bea through Kate’s eyes. Meredith tells us about Shelby and her husband, as she was there when their baby was born.
What the reader doesn’t see coming are the plot twists at the end. Not only one, but several of them. I like a bit of ‘detective work’ and thought I could see the twist coming, but I was wrong.
Writing style in the book
Now, where I enjoyed this story and the unexpected plot twists, I feel the writing could’ve been better. There were several paragraphs throughout the book where sentences were all short, which made for ‘staccato listening’. Variation in sentence lengths would’ve made that easier listing/reading.
There were also some paragraphs that could’ve been omitted, such as a very long description of it raining for days. Had this been the only place in the book where you hear about the weather, it might’ve been okay, but the weather is mentioned many times as the story unfolds.
I enjoyed this story, but feel the book needed a bit more editing.
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