January 1, 2024

Kubica (Just the Nicest Couple) made LibraryRead's Hall of Fame with her clever, tense domestic thrillers. This time, an ICU nurse becomes embroiled in a deadly situation when she gets drawn into the life of a patient brought in with traumatic brain injuries--did that woman jump from a bridge, or was she pushed? With a 200K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from February 15, 2024
Kubica's ninth thriller (after Just the Nicest Couple, 2023) is twisty, addictive, and bingeable. In downtown Chicago, newly divorced, single mother Meghan Michaels is working full time as an ICU nurse and raising a teenage daughter. When a woman arrives in the ICU in a coma with a traumatic brain injury after jumping off a bridge, Meghan is assigned to her care. Soon, she finds herself getting too close to the patient and her family. Then, a witness reports that she saw someone push the patient off the bridge. And there's a serial killer on the loose. Meghan begins to fear that she and her daughter are now in danger. Could they be next? Kubica casts suspicion on many characters while creating palpable tension, eventually connecting the perfectly paced plotlines into a satisfying conclusion. The ICU-nursing profession is well researched and represented through Meghan's character. Kubica explores themes of complex mother-daughter relationships, kidnapping, domestic abuse, serial killers, and suicide. This suspense-thriller will fully engage readers and leave them guessing until the very end.

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March 15, 2024
In trying to do the right thing, a woman puts herself and her family in danger--and is forced to take extreme action to protect herself. After a long shift at the hospital where she works as an ICU nurse, Meghan Michaels trudges through the cold Chicago evening to attend her divorce support group, where she's surprised to run into Natalie Cohen, a woman she hasn't seen since high school. While they were never close friends, Meghan encourages Nat to give the group a chance when she expresses doubts. She can't help but notice the ugly bruise on Nat's temple; having experience with victims of domestic abuse in her line of work, Meghan is concerned. She remembers a previous case when a battered woman came in to the hospital but refused to press charges; she was later murdered by her husband. Speaking of dangerous men, there has been a recent rash of attacks on women by a man who hasn't been caught, so Meghan is particularly on her guard. She lives with her teenage daughter, Sienna, who's often home by herself when Meghan is working. One of Meghan's patients, a woman who purportedly jumped off a bridge and is now in a coma, may have been fleeing the assailant--and either fell or was pushed. These violent storylines converge over the length of a novel in which, of course, not everyone is who they seem. A twist is expected in any Kubica novel, and this one is pretty successful. Meghan is particularly strong and thoughtful, so she makes both an attractive protagonist and a formidable antagonist for those who will threaten her and her family. She has her secrets and will do anything to protect them, but she also has a sense of justice. Ultimately, she wants to make the world a safer place, and the novel encourages us to view that as a worthy goal, whatever the path. Interrogates and exposes the everyday fears that women face--while still checking all the thriller boxes.

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