Lily Scott and Nina Hayes are friends from work. They teach high school in a suburb of Chicago, Lily in her algebra classes and Nina teaching honors English. They met when Lily started, Nina acting as a mentor to her when she was taking on her first year of full-time teaching. The mentorship turned into a genuine friendship, with the occasional dinner with their husbands.
Christian comes home from work one day to find Lily in the living room, barely able to move. When he asks if she’s okay, she says that she is, but it’s clear that she’s lying. But he doesn’t want to push her for an answer. She’s pregnant again, and her past miscarriages has him worrying that there is something wrong with the baby, but he chooses to give Lily some space to find her voice. It’s not until the next evening that she’s able to talk about what is on her mind.
The previous night, she had gone to a local park after work, Langley Woods, and she had run into Nina’s husband Jake there. They had walked on the main path for a while, but then he persuaded her to veer off onto a side path, into the woods. He had seen some deer, he’d said, and wanted to show her. But once they got away from the main path, Jake had tried to kiss her, to force her to do things she didn’t want to. She’d been thrown to the ground. She managed to grab a rock and hit him in order to get away, but there had been a lot of blood. She was worried about what could have become of him.
And now he’s missing.
Christian is appalled by Jake’s behavior, but he starts to worry about how this could affect Lily and the baby. He finds the clothes she had been wearing and sets them aside, to get rid of them. He has Lily go back to Langley Woods to the place where it happened, to see if they can find any evidence that might lead back to her. They find the blood on the ground but nothing more.
Meanwhile, Nina is increasingly worried about Jake. He hadn’t been home for days. They’d had a big argument the night before, with both of them saying really hurtful things, so Nina wasn’t surprised when he didn’t show up at home the next night or wouldn’t answer any calls or texts. But when the head of surgery at the hospital called and told her that he hadn’t shown up for any of his surgeries, Nina knows something is very wrong. Jake had worked hard all through medical school to become a neurosurgeon. He might shut her out for a bit from anger, but he would never abandon his job. She files a police report.
As Christian and Lily scramble to try to cover Lily’s tracks, they find themselves turning inward and hiding, afraid of what the truth might eventually reveal about Lily’s actions that day. Meanwhile, Nina is becoming increasingly worried about Jake’s safety. He’s not used any of his credit cards or withdrawn any cash from their account. His phone just goes to voicemail. And then she finds out that the gun he had kept in the safe in his home office was gone.
All Nina has now is her mother, whose macular degeneration is getting worse, and her friends from work, Lily and fellow English teacher Ryan. Will she be able to find the answers she’s searching for, or will she discover that the people she trusted most are the ones who have caused her life to break apart?
Master of suspense Mary Kubica is back with Just the Nicest Couple, a tale of knife-edge suspense that keeps you awash in anxiety and wondering just who is telling the truth at any given moment. The contrast of the couples, Christian and Lily versus Nina and Jake, is a teeter-totter of half-truths and misdirection, until the end.
Just the Nicest Couple is told in alternating viewpoints of Christian and Nina, so you get an inside glimpse of both couples without getting the whole story of what happened to these four people. As the truths slowly come to light and the secrets are revealed, we find out that there is so much more going on with these characters than even they realized, and the tale finally comes full circle. But until that point, I was on pins and needles, wanting to know more and having to keep reading to find out the real story. I really enjoyed this thriller, and I could not stop turning the pages until I finally got to the end.
Egalleys for Just the Nicest Couple were provided by Park Row through NetGalley, with many thanks.
