It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica
A Wisconsin lake resort, two murders, one missing teen, and too many loose ends.
At a Glance
The Setup: A Promising Premise in the Wisconsin Woods
If you are looking for an It’s Not Her review before picking up Mary Kubica’s latest thriller, my short answer is this: the setup is strong, the Wisconsin lake resort atmosphere works, but the book did not fully come together for me. I wanted to love this one. A secluded resort, two families on vacation, a shocking double murder, and a missing teenager should have been exactly my kind of suspense novel.
When I chose It’s Not Her as my Book of the Month selection for February, I had high hopes. The premise immediately sounded like the kind of thriller I usually want to clear an evening for: Courtney Gray is on a peaceful family vacation when she discovers her brother and sister-in-law murdered in the cabin next door. Her niece Reese is missing. Her nephew Wyatt is found upstairs, unharmed. And suddenly, the quiet lake resort starts to feel full of secrets.
If you want to compare my reaction with the official setup, you can read more on Mary Kubica’s official It’s Not Her page or the Harlequin book page.
That hook works. The scream in the night, the isolated cabins, the missing teen, and the uneasy Northwoods setting all create a tense opening. Kubica knows how to start with an unsettling situation, and for a while, I was fully willing to follow the story wherever it wanted to go.
Multiple Perspectives, Multiple Problems
The story unfolds through multiple points of view, with unreliable details and shifting suspicions layered throughout. Almost everyone seems questionable at some point, and the book does keep you guessing. I had a hard time pinning down one obvious suspect, which is usually a good thing in a thriller.
The problem is that the suspense often comes from making nearly every possibility feel equally plausible and equally far-fetched. Instead of the mystery tightening as the book moves forward, it starts to feel like the story is throwing out one scenario after another without giving the characters or plot enough space to breathe.
I kept turning pages because I wanted to know what happened, but by the end I felt more worn out than rewarded.
Where It Falls Short: Rushed, Thin, and Overstuffed
My biggest issue is that the book felt rushed. There are a lot of pieces here: two families, a missing teenager, a double murder, old secrets in the community, and multiple characters who may or may not be telling the truth. But the story never slows down long enough to make those pieces feel fully developed.
The characters also did not feel layered enough for me. Many of them seemed more like thriller roles than real people, and that made it hard to care deeply about what happened to them. In a mystery this dramatic, I need the emotional stakes to feel grounded. Here, the situation was intense, but the people inside it often felt thin.
By the end, I was reading more because I wanted to be done than because I was truly hooked. That is always a disappointing feeling with a thriller. The reveal did answer the central questions, but it stretched believability too far for me, and the final explanation did not feel earned enough after all the buildup.
What Worked for Me: The Atmosphere
To be fair, the atmosphere is genuinely effective. The secluded Wisconsin lake resort gives the story a creepy, boxed-in feeling, and the setting does a lot of work in the first half. There is something inherently unsettling about a vacation place turning into a crime scene, especially when everyone is close enough to hear things but still somehow hidden from each other.
It is also a quick read. If you are in the mood for a thriller you can finish in a weekend, this has that easy momentum. The chapters move fast, the premise is simple to step into, and there is enough constant suspicion to keep the story from dragging.
Final Thoughts
In the end, It’s Not Her was a disappointing read for me. I liked the concept, I liked the setting, and I appreciated how quickly it moved, but those strengths were not enough to overcome the thin characterization and the outlandish resolution. The book had the ingredients for a tense, memorable thriller, but it never quite delivered the depth or payoff I wanted.
If you already love Mary Kubica or are looking for a fast Book of the Month thriller to read over a weekend, this might still be worth trying. For me, though, this was a 2-star read: atmospheric enough to finish, but not strong enough to recommend without reservations.