Review: "Just the Nicest Couple" by Mary Kubica
I got married young and immediately purchased a new-construction house we couldn’t really afford on the first street of what would be a sprawling housing development.
At the time, there were only 5 occupied houses on this street, so we grew temporarily close as neighbors. Likely due in part to the fact that one of the residents of this street was a locally famous morning radio show DJ, we socialized to a degree that I now know is a bit atypical.
We arranged block parties and color tours and even, eventually, an Edward Fortyhands party — for those unfamiliar with this concept, this is a party in which all attendees have two forty-ounce beers taped to their hands and they cannot remove them until they are consumed. It is the height of responsible consumption.
I worked on the night of the Edward Fortyhands party — at a second job I had to hold because, as I mentioned, we really couldn’t afford this house — so I arrived late. By the time 40-ounce bottles of alcohol were being affixed to my hands, the vast majority of the party goers were well past intoxicated.
I took it in stride and went into the backyard to watch people while starting to sip away on my seemingly insurmountable dose of booze. I hadn’t gotten more than 3 sips in when yelling broke out. In far too close a proximity to the fire pit, two men started to tussle.
I was immediately alarmed for a number of reasons. First, I had never witnessed a real fight before. Second, I had two glass bottles of booze — in my case, Mike’s Hard Lemonade — duct taped to my hands, all but incapacitating me.
Fortunately, the fight broke up relatively quickly and my inability to both handle the stress of the situation and in any way defend myself were it to devolve into a total melee proved to not be a problem.
I would later learn that the two men — one of whom was the previously mentioned morning radio show DJ — had gotten into a fight because one had been sleeping with the other’s wife.
And that’s when I learned that adult relationships can be complex.
This lesson served me well as I moved through Just the Nicest Couple, a thriller by the increasingly prolific Mary Kubica.
Lily and Christian have a strong marriage, though — like most marriages — it’s not free from complication. Most impactful to their present — and probably future — happiness are the fertility struggles they have been navigating for several years. Recently, Lily has discovered that she is pregnant. Because Lily suffers from recurrent miscarriages, though, the couple is cautious in celebrating what should be great news.
Given Lily’s relatively tender condition, Christian is more worried than he otherwise would have been when he returns home from work one day to find her all but catatonic.
Though Lily is initially reluctant to share the source of her upset with Christian, she does eventually confide in him that something terrible has happened.
As it would turn out, the “something terrible” doesn’t just involve their little — hopefully growing — family. It also impacts Lily’s friend and co-worker, Nina, and Nina’s neurosurgeon husband, Jake.
As Christian works to protect Lily — and, by connection, his unborn child — he finds himself becoming potentially irrevocably entangled in a dangerous situation from which he might not be able to escape.
The success or failure of a thriller often depends on the degree to which we, as readers, care about the characters. This presented a challenge, here, as even the characters that should have been likable somehow weren’t.
The issue was not that the characters were flawed, in fact, I often prefer flawed characters. The problem was that the characters made unlikely, confusing, and at times even dumb, choices. There wasn’t a single character that I truly felt like I could empathize with and, in truth, not even one that I remotely liked.
Also challenging was the pacing of this novel. There were long chunks of inactivity that slowed the pace and killed the momentum that had previously been building.
To its credit, this novel did contain a last-minute twist that was redeeming. It was a twist that I didn’t see coming until right before it was revealed — which is seldom the case. Problematically, though, I’m not sure that I found the twist believable enough for it to be truly effective and satisfying.
All thoughts considered, this thriller is passable, though forgettable.
Just The Nicest Couple earns 3 out of 5 cocktails.
Have you been up-close-and-personal with any relationship drama? Drop the deets in the comments, below.
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