DON'T YOU CRY held so much promise for me. I adored Kubica's first book, THE GOOD GIRL, so when this came up for review, I pounced. I bumped it up my review list and eagerly cracked it open, ready to be transported by Kubica's tight narration and woven layers. I've been on a real suspense kick this year, and am always looking for well crafted ones, especially those written by women. However, with this particular novel, I was disappointed.

The exceptional writing was still there, but the plot itself and the eventual climax felt simultaneously overwrought and undercooked to me. I do not want to spoil anything here (there are loads of spoilers up around the Internet if you are so inclined, but I never feel that is my role), but some of the details around which the plot functioned were far fetched to me. A key element, for example, I found to be a historically inaccurate understanding of mental health services and it took me right out of the book.

Some of the machinations made little sense; hence my aforementioned dichotomous opinion. The eventual conclusion had me shaking my head and saying "what the hell?!", and not in a good way. This thing just never clicked for me, I'm sad to say.

I will certainly not write off Kubica as an author from here, her other works have been too good for that. Instead, I will chalk this up to one that simply didn't work for me. I have high hopes she'll return more to the elements of THE GOOD GIRL which spoke to me so strongly.