Review by Booklist Review
Quinn Collins awakens early one Sunday morning to discover her roommate, Esther, has vanished, seemingly into the cold Chicago air. Party-girl Quinn has a hard time reconciling how Saint Esther could have just jumped out the apartment window, but that's what it looks like. When Quinn comes across a stalkerish letter, apparently penned by Esther, she starts to wonder if her roomie was as innocent as she seemed. The story then jumps to a sleepy small town in Michigan, where young Alex, a coffee-shop employee, finds himself obsessed with the new girl in town, Pearl. Is she really Esther? What is she hiding? Back in Chicago, Quinn just wants to know whom Esther's note was written to and why is she getting phone calls on a burner cell phone about renting out their apartment. The narrative switches from Alex to Quinn, ratcheting tension effectively. Kubica's latest will please fans of her first two similarly themed thrillers. The twists and turns will keep readers guessing right up to the conclusion.--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
An autumnal chill, as piercing as the wind off Lake Michigan, pervades this muted psychological chamber piece from Kubica (Pretty Baby). The story unspools, initially slowly, through two alternating narrators: Quinn, a young Chicago woman whose exemplary roommate, Esther, has gone missing, apparently out the fire escape of their apartment, and 18-year-old Alex, who turned down a full college scholarship to stay in his poky hometown on the shore of Lake Michigan an hour outside Chicago to care for his alcoholic father. As Quinn starts to discover that there seems to be a lot about Esther that she didn't know-some of it downright scary-and Alex befriends a pretty but peculiar stranger he nicknames Pearl, the dual accounts begin to ping off each other. Although the pace accelerates in the final third as the plot speeds toward a shocking if contrived climax, the book as a whole boasts nowhere near the urgency or impact of Kubica's white-knuckle debut, The Good Girl. Author tour. Agent: Rachael Dillon Fried, Greenburger Associates. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In Chicago, Quinn wakes one Sunday morning to find that Esther, her roommate and best friend, is missing. Quinn tries to come to terms with her fears and begins to mature with the new responsibility of living alone, as she looks for Esther. Somewhere on the other side of Lake Michigan, 18-year-old Alex watches a mysterious new girl in town whom he'd like to meet. He doesn't know her name, but he calls her Pearl because of the little bracelet on her wrist. He watches her when she comes into the diner where he works, and he -suspects she's squatting in the town's haunted house. As Quinn follows clues to find -Esther, and Alex works up the nerve to speak to "Pearl," their life stories emerge, and a decades-old ghost story is explored, its mysteries revealed. Told in alternating voices, the narrative simmers slowly to a tight, surprising ending. VERDICT Fans of Kubica (The Good Girl; Pretty Baby) will enjoy her third stand-alone book, as will anyone who delights in the recent wave of terrific missing-persons novels. [See Prepub Alert, 2/21/16.]--Elizabeth Masterson, -Mecklenburg Cty. Jail Lib., Charlotte, NC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Twentysomething Quinn is awakened from a hangover one Sunday at 6:00 a.m. by her roommate Esther's blaring alarm clock. Esther's window is open (odd during a Chicago winter), but Quinn becomes concerned about her roommate's absence only when she selfishly craves the breakfast Esther usually brings her after church. The police aren't worried yet, but Quinn enlists the help of her cute coworker Ben to help find out where her roommate might be. They uncover clues that lead to Quinn suspecting Esther of murder-is Quinn next on her roommate's death list? Meanwhile, an hour up the coast of Lake Michigan, 18-year-old Alex has given up a college scholarship to wash dishes at a diner in order to care for his father, an alcoholic. When he notices a mysterious, beautiful girl in his restaurant, he befriends her, hoping for a romance. Told in alternating voices, Alex's and Quinn's separate mysteries combine in a surprising way. Readers will immediately sense that Quinn might be an unreliable narrator, but the author doesn't make the puzzle easy to solve. The unexpected twist at the end will be a bombshell for most readers. VERDICT The young main characters and the resemblance to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train ensure that this psychological thriller by the best-selling author of The Good Girl will be a hit with teen fans of the genre.-Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A roommate's mysterious disappearance and the tale of a dead girl form a haunting confluence of circumstances in Kubica's latest psychological thriller told from dual points of view. Quinn Collins awakens one cold Chicago Sunday morning to the sound of her roommate Esther Vaughan's alarm clock going off. When Esther fails to hit the snooze button, Quinn struggles out of bed and turns it off herself, but all is not right in Esther's room: the window on her fire escape is open, and Esther is gone. That night, Quinn is startled when Esther's phone starts ringing. She discovers that Esther left it behind when she disappeared, and further digging turns up even more mystery: why did Esther acquire a new name? Why did she place an ad for a new roommate? And what made her ask the super to change the apartment's locks? Meanwhile, Alex Gallo, the smart kid who got left behind when everyone else in his town on Lake Michigan went off to college, struggles with his home life and crappy job working at a restaurant. The only bright spot to his day is when a mysterious woman comes in and drinks coffee, watching the office of the handsome psychiatrist across the street. Later, he sees her on the playground and watches her take most of her clothes off and walk into the frigid lake. He finds her behavior inexplicable. Kubica, skilled at building on the premise that things are not always what they seem, stumbles a bit in this one. With disjointed prose, the first part of the book isn't her usual polished product, and the denouement isn't as surprising as the author intended. A master of suspense and dense plotting, Kubica still leads the pack when it comes to her genre even though this isn't her best work. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
