Just The Nicest Couple: The nail-biting new thriller for 2023 from the New York Times bestselling author of Local Woman Missing

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Without giving much away I can honestly say there’s not much going on in this book till the last quarter. The twists were foreseeable instead of one( I admit it was good one) Mary Kubica’s Just the Nicest Couple is a masterfully written thriller about deception where we least expect it and the danger of a lie tumbling out of control. Taut and incredibly suspenseful, every moment is perfectly crafted to keep us wanting more. An engrossing, spine-tingling read!’ Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push

This was a decent thriller with many false leads and red herrings - although I did guess correctly toward the end. I give it three stars because it wasn't anything really unique and all the characters were unlikeable idiots. When we meet the couples, Lily is pregnant…again. She has suffered multiple miscarriages and is now both terrified of losing her most recent pregnancy and almost convinced that it will happen again. As a result, she is overly cautious, putting an end to her usual running routine and trying to avoid stress as much as possible. Across town, Nina and Jake have had a blowout fight: Nina, Jake claims, has been spending too much time with her ailing mother and has put him second, which annoys the smug, self-centered surgeon. At 38, Nina is conscious that she definitely does not want to start over, especially if she would like to have children one day. But even so, she cannot help the ugly, vicious words that come out of her mouth: If you hate it here so much, why don’t you leave?As always, Kubica does an incredible job of getting inside her characters’ heads and unflinchingly asking the questions that every person (and every husband and wife, in particular) asks themselves..." The uninspired tired plot. I read a lot of domestic suspense novels and this book basically spit out all of the usual devices. A character has macular degeneration of her eyesight, so conveniently cannot see the action unfold. Lily is a damsel in distress cliche and Christian is her knight in shining armor.

The second big hang-up was how little happened within the plot for a large chunk of the book. I kept waiting for what I hear is Mary Kubica’s trademark mind-blowing twist and, while there certainly was one (and it was positively earth-shattering), it came at the last minute, leaving very little time to explore the ramifications of what happened. Equally, I wasn’t thrilled with the ending despite how it satisfactorily resolved all of the remaining hanging threads of the story. I guess I was simply hoping for a little, well, more.That said, JUST THE NICEST COUPLE tends to be overly descriptive about minute details while just grazing the surface of the relationships between the couples and one another. The novel is terrifically introspective about each person’s motivations, yet I often had a hard time relating to these characters. I also thought the ending was a bit of a letdown and wish it had been more realistic. It’s getting dark in the house. Out the window, the sun is about to set. Lily hasn’t bothered with the lights, and so the in- side of the house is colorless and gray. We face east. Any pretty sunset is the other way. You can’t see it from here, if there even is one to see. Some of Mary Kubica's books have been better than others and, unfortunately, "Just the Nicest Couple" is not one of Mary Kubica's better books. Mary Kubica is an author that I feel a lot of readers find a bit hit or miss, including myself. Just the Nicest Couple seems to be right down that alley with some loving it and some not so much but I found this one highly compelling with the set up of knowing something happened but waiting for the twist that I knew would come. The tension of what and when drew me in and had this one falling in at four and a half stars for me. Hey,” I say, coming in through the garage door, closing it quietly and stepping out of my shoes. I set my phone and keys on the counter, and then ask, “How was your day?”

A husband's disappearance links two couples in this twisty thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Local Woman Missing, Mary Kubica I had vowed to stop reading Kubica, but the premise sounded so good that I had to give this one a go. This book has all of the makings of a juicy thriller, but the flat characters and messy execution made for a boring read. Lily Scott, Nina’s friend and coworker, thinks she may have been the last to see Jake before he went missing. After Lily confesses everything to her husband, Christian, the two decide that nobody can find out what happened leading up to Jake’s disappearance, especially not Nina. But Nina is out there looking for her husband, and she won’t stop until the truth is discovered.”Rich with detail and a mounting, almost suffocating sense of dread, Just the Nicest Couple is a dark and twisted exploration of loyalty, family, and how far we’ll go to protect the ones we love." —Andrea Bartz, New York Times bestselling author of We Were Never Here Kubica says she always loved to write but did not set out to draft thrillers. Rather, she found her way to the genre by accident after writing in a variety of other styles, primarily general women’s fiction. But she knew something was missing because she repeatedly found herself bored with her own manuscripts before she finished them. She began penning thrillers “totally by accident.” The Good Girl was meant to be a love story, but she decided to add some mystery elements, having no idea that the story would end up being “so dark and twisty.” She loved where the writing took her and knew immediately that she had found her niche. The nicest couples in question are Christian and Lily and Nina and Jake. Lily and Nina are teachers at the same high school and are good friends. One evening Christian arrives home to find newly pregnant Lily exhausted but it’s more than that as she seems fearful. The same night Jake fails to return home after the couple have an argument earlier in the day. Nina thinks he’s staying away to blow off steam but is that the case or is there more to it? Lily Scott and Nina Hayes have been good friends ever since Nina was assigned as Lily’s mentor when she began teaching at the same high school. What started as a mentor-mentee relationship soon developed into a terrific, fulfilling friendship as Lily learned about the ins and outs of high school students (spoiler: teenage girls can be mean to you no matter your age or status) and began to carve a niche for herself as one of the youngest, prettiest teachers. Since then, they’ve shared drinks and gossiped at staff events, hosted one another and their husbands for dinners, and confided in one another about not just teaching woes, but their marital and fertility issues as well.