Title: Just The Nicest Couple
Author: Mary Kubica
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
First published: January 10th 2023
Publisher: Park Row
Finished reading: January 3rd 2023
Pages: 352

“I like the idea of Lily and me being in this together. I just don’t want to wind up like Bonnie and Clyde in the end.”

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Park Row in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

REVIEW

I loved my time with Local Woman Missing when I finally read my first Mary Kubica back in 2021, and I’ve been meaning to read more of her work ever since. I loved the sound of the blurb of this newest story with the missing husband and the other couple hiding something, and I couldn’t resist adding Just The Nicest Couple to my shelves. Now that I have had the chance to read it, I do understand why the reactions to this story are mixed… I personally still mostly enjoyed my time reading it, but there were also a couple things that didn’t work as well for me.

I’ve seen that a lot of people seem to have issues with the writing style this time around, and I do agree. The writing style could have flowed better and the use of too many short and disjointed sentences can get quite annoying. The writing tends to jump from one thought to the other almost randomly, and this really disturbs the flow and pace of the story. Somehow I was still quite entertained by it all, but it was definitely a surprise to discover that the story was written this way. Just The Nicest Couple uses a dual POV structure, where we switch between Nina and Christian. I personally find it such a shame that we didn’t get to see Lily’s POV, because that would have added so much extra flavor to the plot!

As for the characters in general… I can’t say that I’m a fan. I found their development to be a bit lackluster to be honest. Christian is particularly annoying with his blind love for his wife and going all over the top protecting her without knowing what exactly happened. Both Christian and Lily are particularly good at making the most stupid decisions, and it makes you wonder just how credible the plot is. Nina is basically mostly a human doormat, and it takes so long for her to redeem herself even a little… And I only started to dislike Lily more and more as things started to reveal themselves. Also, Jack is basically a horrible human being and I couldn’t care less about what happened to him or if he was still alive.

There are a couple of red herrings throughout the story, and as a whole it was still entertaining enough to keep reading. True, things only escalate because the characters keep making the most stupid mistakes, but still… I do wish the ending would have been different though. There are hints at different possible endings throughout the story, and I would have much preferred a different outcome. As it is, the ending felt too farfetched and to be honest a bit rushed to be fully satisfying. I could have done without the cheating as well; always a pet peeve, but particularly annoying when it was introduced here.

As you might have guessed, I ended up having mixed thoughts about Just The Nicest Couple. It was still a solid enough read, but there were also a couple things that prevented me from enjoying it as much as I thought I would.

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