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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Lily blinks three times, as if to clear the fog. She finds her voice. It’s husky at first, dry, like after a day of shouting at a football game, which is not that different than a day of teach- ing rowdy high school kids math. “No,” she says, shaking her head, “I’m fine. Just tired. It was a long day.”

The characters are not especially well fleshed out and some dialogue between them isn’t good either which considering what’s occurring this feels very understated and underwhelming. Both performers voices were expressive, speaking with clarity and precision. Both narrators enhanced my listening experience. 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 It’s been a while since I’ve read a thriller! I tend to start off the year with a thriller or two. It’s a good switch from the more serious literary stories.

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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

There is movement on the ground before me. The sound that comes with it is something heathen and raging, and some part of me knows that if I don’t go now, I may never leave this place alive. What was that?” I ask as I gently lower Lily’s arms. Lily isn’t usually so jumpy. I’ve never seen that kind of reaction from her. Nina turned her mother in, but she was given compassionate leave from prison because she was dying of breast cancer. Instead, she was confined to house arrest. Jake Hayes is missing. Jake’s wife Nina thinks it’s due to a fight the couple had and confesses as much to her coworker Lily. Lily however may have been the last person to see Jake and confesses to her husband Christian. Christian only wants to protect Lily and their unborn child Lily is carrying so he knows Nina cannot find out the truth. I have read all eight of Mary Kubica’s thrillers, and they are either a big hit or a complete miss. Unfortunately, Just The Nicest Couple falls into the latter category.Christian is blindly in love with his wife, Lily. His inner dialogue was painful to read--he is immature, and his thoughts are pretty basic. He can't string together a complex sentence and spends most of his time obsessing over Lily and watching her sleep. Lily is whiny and annoying. She could have had some of the most interesting chapters, but Kubica does not share her perspective. Both Lily and Christian speak and act like the high school students that Nina and Lily teach. The next day, the body is positively identified as Jake. He died via a gunshot wound, though, not blunt force trauma. The Reveal: 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?” Per Wikipedia, five baseball players have hit grand slams in their first Major League times at bat: In the end, the main reveal was interesting enough, but it didn’t make up for how bored I was during the rest of the book.

Bestselling author Mary Kubica earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and American Literature from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, before embarking on a career as a high school history teacher. Her thrillers, including The Good Girl, Pretty Baby, Don’t You Cry, Every Last Lie, When the Lights Go Out, The Other Mrs., and Local Woman Missing. To date, her novels have sold over two million copies worldwide and been translated into more than thirty languages. She's been extremely tired lately. The pregnancy is getting the best of her. She's on her feet teaching all day. These two things in combination exhaust her. Being pregnant and teaching high school kids." HEY GUYS JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW... SHE'S TIRED BECAUSE SHE'S PREGNANT AND TEACHES HIGH SCHOOL KIDS. WHICH MAKES HER TIRED. BECAUSE IT'S TIRING. Sounds come, but I’m so disoriented that I don’t know where they come from. Is it only my pulse, the rush of blood in my ears? 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.A husband's disappearance links two couples in this twisty thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Local Woman Missing, Mary Kubica Jake Hayes is missing. This much is certain. At first, his wife Nina thinks he is blowing off steam somewhere after their heated fight the night before. But then a day goes by. Two days. Five. And Jake is still nowhere to be found. Eight months later, Nina’s mother has been released from jail, where she was being held on the murder conviction, because she is dying of breast cancer. Lily and Christian are separated. They share custody of their daughter, Bella. Christian might be open to reconciliation when he reveals that one day he will surprise Lily and accept her invitation to stay for dinner when he meets her for her week with Bella. The waitress brings our coffee. She puts the mugs on the table with a sugar bowl and little pot of cream. I add cream and sugar and taste the coffee to make sure it is to my liking, blowing on the coffee first so I don't burn myself. Two couples, two close friends, one missing husband… Jake Hayes is missing. This much is certain. At first, his wife, Nina, thinks he is blowing off steam at a friend’s house after their heated fight the night before. But then a day goes by. Two days. Five. And Jake is still nowhere to be found. 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. Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica – eBook Details

Kubica’s approach to telling the story is inventive and provocative. As noted, readers get to know Christian and Nina, and are privy to their thoughts and emotional struggles via their alternating first-person narratives. However, she does not include narratives from either Jake or Lily. Rather, readers get acquainted with them only through the recollections, observations, and impressions of their partners and friends. Thus, Christian and Nina are inherently unreliable narrators. Nina, meanwhile, believes Jake has just left her in his anger until she receives a call from the hospital where he works telling her that he has not come to work since Monday. Nina reports Jake missing at the police department, but the police do not seem to be too concerned about him. Nina even rescinds the missing person report on Jake when her mother, who has been staying with Nina since Jake’s disappearance, claims that Jake came home. Then, he left again when he realized she was there. Nina’s mother has macular degeneration, making it difficult for her to identify people. The man in the house was really Christian, looking for the key to Jake’s car so he could move it.

Jake and Nina are married with no children allowing them plenty of time for each other. Jake needs quality time with his wife. Except lately Nina’s been distracted and preoccupied with the health care of her mother and Jake’s feeling neglected. Fighting about the time she spends with her mother has become something common between Jake and her. 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