Review: When the Lights Go Out by Mary Kubica

When the Lights Go Out

by Mary Kubica

Publisher: Park Row

Pages: 384

Format: book

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Jessie Sloane is on the path to rebuilding her life after years of caring for her ailing mother. She rents a new apartment and applies for college. But when the college informs her that her social security number has raised a red flag, Jessie discovers a shocking detail that causes her to doubt everything she’s ever known.

Finding herself suddenly at the center of a bizarre mystery, Jessie tumbles down a rabbit hole, which is only exacerbated by grief and a relentless lack of sleep. As days pass and the insomnia worsens, it plays with Jessie’s mind. Her judgment is blurred, her thoughts are hampered by fatigue. Jessie begins to see things until she can no longer tell the difference between what’s real and what she’s only imagined.

Meanwhile, twenty years earlier and two hundred and fifty miles away, another woman’s split-second decision may hold the key to Jessie’s secret past. Has Jessie’s whole life been a lie or have her delusions gotten the best of her?

Kritters Thoughts:  Jessie Sloane's mother just died after a long battle with cancer.  She is trying to piece back together her life without her mother, but with a few problems with financing for college she gets dropped into her own mystery.  Another storyline that runs parallel to this story, is a woman named Eden who desperately wants a child and is doing almost anything to get one.  The stories collide at just the right moment and then bounce back and forth in just the right rhythm.  

I sit on the fence with books with unreliable characters.  As the story progresses and the reader knows that Jessie isn't sleeping you keep wondering if what she is seeing and saying is anywhere near the truth.  You want so much for her to not be losing her mind after everything that has happened to her.  There were moments when I didn't enjoy the unreliableness of her, but I loved all the other aspects of the story so I could forgo and forgive this part.  

And then the ending happened.  As always, I won't say much to spoil anything.  But right at the end something happened and it made everything else make sense.  I am waffling on if I like how it all ended or not, but I can say it made me think and want to go back and reread the book to see if I could have picked out the ending earlier.  

I am a Mary Kubica fan and only have two of her books in her backlist that I haven't read, so I look forward to seeing what is next from her.  


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from TLC Book Tours.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.