Hello beautiful people! Welcome back to a new review! For this review, I get into Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica. I’ve checked out one of her other books before and really enjoyed it, and was looking forward to getting into this one. While Just the Nicest Couple isn’t the worst book I’ve read, it for sure is not one I would recommend. Every author has a dud, so I wouldn’t say shy away from her other books, but this one really just did not hit for me.
Main Characters:
Jake and Nina: Messy, complicated, and honestly a little exhausting as a couple. Their relationship has layers, but not always in a way that feels rewarding. Nina is a school teacher, and Jake is a well-loved surgeon. Together they seem amazing, but behind closed doors the secrets are major. When Jake goes missing, Nina is forced to look into their life together in ways she didn’t want to.
Lily and Christian: Lily is Nina’s coworker, and seemingly disconnected from their life. When Jake goes missing, Lily and Christian are forced to ask themselves how far they would go to protect their secrets, and each other. Another couple, another set of issues. Their dynamic adds to the overall intrigue, but again, everyone is just a bit aggravating.
Nina’s mom: Is ill with an eye condition that is causing her to lose her sight. Adds more onto Nina’s plate as she tries to figure out what happened with her husband.
My Review
As mentioned above, Just the Nicest Couple was not a hit for me. I loved Local Woman Missing, so I went into this expecting something similar, and was kind of shocked by how much this one didn’t land. The plot is not a terrible one. Two couples with a slight connection and a bunch of secrets that bring each other closer to one another than they ever expected. The execution, however, was just missing something. I am not sure if it was the pace or the twists, but I just found myself a bit disconnected from everything in the book. Due to this, I landed on rating Just the Nicest Couple a 4/10 rating. Again, it’s not the worst book I’ve ever read, but it just wasn’t good for sure.
Just the Nicest Couple follows two couples, Nina and Jake, and their friends Lily and Christian. When Jake Hayes suddenly goes missing, his wife Nina is left searching for answers. At the same time, Lily Scott is dealing with secrets of her own, ones that may be more connected to Jake’s disappearance than anyone initially realizes. As the story unfolds, shifting perspectives reveal hidden truths, complicated relationships, and a web of lies that slowly come to the surface. But the deeper you get, the more unclear everything becomes, until the final twist flips things on its head. Nina is forced to question how many relationships she would destroy to figure out what happened to her husband. Christian is forced to question how far he would go to protect his wife, and Lily is forced to question how far she can take this before the roof caves in.
So, this one ended up being a bit of a disappointment. The biggest issue? It’s just so slow.
There are moments where the plot gets interesting, and you can see the potential for something really twisty and engaging, but it never fully delivers. It felt like we were circling the same points for way too long, and by the time things started coming together, I was already a bit checked out. And the thing is, it is twisty. But it’s also pretty predictable. I found myself figuring out where things were going fairly early on, which made the slow pacing feel even more dragged out. Like we already know, can we please just get there?
Then the ending comes in and suddenly tries to shake things up, but instead of being shocking, it felt kind of out of nowhere. Very left field. The kind of twist that makes you pause, but not necessarily in a good way. More like an eye roll than a gasp.
I will say, the relationship dynamics were interesting. There’s definitely something there in how the couples are written and how their lives intertwine, but it wasn’t enough to carry the story when the pacing and payoff didn’t hit.
Overall, not a terrible read, just a very underwhelming one, especially compared to what I know Mary Kubica can do. I’d definitely recommend checking out her other books first, because this one just didn’t do it for me. But I’m not writing her off; everyone has a dud once in a while, and I’d still pick up something else from her in the future.
I hope you enjoyed this review. Thank you for checking it out! Feel free to subscribe to the page to be one of the first to know when I release a new review.
*** Don’t read any further if you don’t want to read any spoilers ***
As you may have grasped in the review, as I did early on in the book, it’s clear that Jake and Lily are having some type of romantic affair.
When Lily came home and spun the story to Christian that she just so happened to be walking on the same trail as Jake, she followed him to an isolated spot, and he randomly tried to make a move on her. When she rejects him, he attacks, and she fights back. I was like, yeah, that’s total shit. So early on in the book, I could tell Lily was lying. He did attack her, and she him, just not for the reasons we thought originally.
Despite this, neither she nor Christian is the one who actually killed him. When Lily is arrested at the end of the book, and a funeral is held for Jake, we find out what really happened.
Nina’s mother, who throughout the entirety of the book is presented as a feeble old woman who is slowly going blind from a condition, is revealed to be the one who killed him. I guess she had been lying about the eye condition so Nina would spend more time with her. She somehow finds out that Jake is cheating on Nina with Lily, follows Jake to the trail, and kills him after Lily hits him with the rock and runs off.
It was just one of those twisty endings that leaves you rolling your eyes more than you feel shocked. I am not sure, it just felt out of left field and kind of silly to me. But that’s just my opinion.
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