Book Review | Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica

★★★☆☆

352 pages

Published: May 18, 2021
by Park Row

Shelby Tebow is the first to go missing. Not long after, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish just blocks away from where Shelby was last seen, striking fear into their once-peaceful community. Are these incidents connected? After an elusive search that yields more questions than answers, the case eventually goes cold.

Now, 11 years later, Delilah shockingly returns. Everyone wants to know what happened to her, but no one is prepared for what they’ll find….

In this smart and chilling thriller, master of suspense and New York Times best-selling author Mary Kubica takes domestic secrets to a whole new level, showing that some people will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.

Link to Goodreads

Main Characters

• Delilah – 6 years old at the time she goes missing (11 years ago)
• Leo – Delilah’s 4 year old brother at the time she goes missing
• Kate – Vet that lives next door to Josh and Meredith
• Bea – Kate’s partner
• Meredith – Doula, Leo and Delilah’s mom; goes missing not long after Shelby goes missing
• Josh- Meredith’s husband
• Shelby – New mom that goes missing while going out for a run and is later found dead
• Jason – Shelby’s husband… not a great guy

My Review

TRIGGER WARNINGS!! Child abuse, infants getting hurt during delivery.

The book opens up with Shelby going out for a run, freshly postpartum – with the intentions of cheating on her husband. And the she goes missing.

It jumps to 11 years later and a young girl locked in a dark basement who finally escapes. She is supposedly Delilah, a girl that has been missing since not long after Shelby went missing and her mom killed herself.

The story then goes back and forth between timelines – mainly of Kate, Meredith’s next door neighbor, and Meredith from 11 years prior and Leo in the current.

This book was a little over hyped for me. The beginning got me hooked, although the descriptions of the young girl in the basement were a little triggering for me. It was suspenseful at the beginning and then got a little too meh toward the end. The twists were a little too unlikely and almost too much packed into the story? I really didn’t like the side story with the creepy OB… I also felt like the ending was a little rushed and too much packed into the last little bit.

Spoilers