This was a brilliant read. As soon as I started reading this book I just knew I was going to love it. Highly recommended

Unfortunately this book was not for me, it was a bit slower than I would like and it just didn't hold my attention. I am sure other people will love it!

First book I’ve read by Mary kubica and spent a long time trying to tie the story strands together. Thanks for the opportunity to read

Can't say I enjoyed this book at all sadly. Found it very hard to read and quite predictable in the end.

I was excited to read this book, as the author previous book were excellent. This book started well and had me hooked as each chapter alternates from the mums story and the daughters. However the book got weird towards the end with the daughters story And you did know was real or not!!!!

I did finish this book but I didn't really enjoy it. I did not like the twist and know there are other books out there that are better.

The book started good, but i did not feel that it was as much as a psychological thriller as her previous novels. I found the twist at the end quite expected.

I received a copy from Netgalley.

The premise of this one caught my attention and made me want to request it. A girl’s identity is called into question when she finds her name is on a record of deceased people. With an alternate story of a woman’s decision some 20 odd years ago that might be the cause of it.

For the most part, this was actually a pretty good book. Jessie Sloane has lived with her single mom her whole life then mom gets sick and dies. Jessie has spent most of her life caring for her. She suffers from terrible insomnia which plagues her for days at a time during this difficult period.

I liked Jessie as a character, she was tough and seemed fairly smart and logical given her terrible circumstances. She knew how to look after herself. Applying to college for financial aid she discovers Jessica Sloane is deceased. Bringing on a whole host of panic and desperate search for answers as to what the hell her mom was hiding and where it all went wrong and how could she have never known this before?

The second story line follows Eden and her husband Aaron. The one thing Eden wants more than anything is a baby, but Eden seems to be unable to conceive. Which puts a huge strain, both emotional and financial on what was otherwise a perfect relationship.

Eden’s story was hard for me to relate to, as a woman who has no interest in rearing children, her obsession was just something I couldn’t get my head around as a reader. Yet as the novel progressed and Eden’s chapters went on I did find myself empathising with her. No matter what this poor woman tried nothing was working. And her best friend who came to visit has two or three noisy children she always brings with her and is pregnant again. It was heart-breaking for Eden. But as things go on and get more difficult Eden’s desire for a child becomes all consuming. She works at a hospital and is often going to the new baby ward. She drops hints that she did something terrible and it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. At least that’s what the story seems to want you to think, anyway.

Meanwhile Jessie is struggling to find out what happened and why “Jessica Sloane” is deceased. And how did she get this girl’s social security number? Made worse and worse by the fact that she just can’t sleep and her mind is going round in circles. She doesn’t know what’s real or what’s not anymore. It’s all pretty compelling stuff. And definitely becomes a page turner.

This is a huge spoiler but it pissed me off so much and ruined the whole book for me and I need to rant about it.

It gets to the point where Jessie can’t cope anymore and you start thinking dear god what else can go wrong for this poor girl, how is this ever going end? And then the book does what every English teacher told me in school was the poorest way you could end a novel ever. “And then I woke up and it was all a dream!” At the start of the novel Jessie is with her mother in the hospital on her death bed. She won’t leave her mother’s side and has been there for days. A kind doctor gives her something to help her sleep. Understandable. But then the combination of stress and drugs give Jessie this epic nightmare. And that’s all it was. A nightmare.

I mean…for fuck’s sake. All of that…all of that and to have it ruined with that. It just felt like such a huge let down for what was otherwise a really good book. The truth about Eden’s story is revealed as well, and thankfully that wasn’t as infuriating. It actually turned out to be nothing like what I thought it would be.

Great potential but ruined by a rubbish twist. The end itself wasn’t that bad, really. But that twist just pissed me off so much.

Thank you to Netgalley and HQ for approving my request to view the title.

For the most part, this is a fast paced psychological read that feels intensely claustrophobic due to Jessie's sleep problems. The two narrators make for an intriguing read and the backwards and forwards between Jessie in the present day and Eden in the past. Jessie is an unreliable narrator and that makes for some frantic and bizarre reading at times, even more so in hindsight once you've got to the twist. I was a bit disappointed with the ending. It's a big twist and not what I expected at all. Other reviewers have described it as a clever and while I'm sure it will be a talking point, I felt it would have been better to let the assumed plot play out and the actual ending felt more like a cop out. Had that happened I'm sure I'd be giving this 5 stars as I was absolutely riveted until I got to the twist.

I found this title throroughly confusing and difficult to get stuck into. I did persevere and found the ending to be a little rushed.

Set adrift by the death of her beloved mother - lost in grief and unable to sleep - Jessie’s life is thrown into turmoil. As Jessie travels further into sleep deprivation, things get rapidly stranger. And then stranger still. Is Jessie really the person she has always believed herself to be?

Twenty years earlier Eden, a young married woman, yearns for the baby it seems she can’t have. Eden knows she will do anything, whatever it takes, to have a child.

The story gradually unfolds both from the increasingly distorted viewpoint of Jessie - the unreliable narrator to end all unreliable narrators - and Eden as she tells her own story in journal form. As things for Jessie become increasingly bizarre I was occasionally reminded of another great unreliable-narrator story, Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans.

The ending has come in for criticism, even anger in some quarters, and in some ways I can see why, but in fact it was so well done that I thought it was okay. I kind of suspected earlier on where things were going - there were a couple of perhaps too obvious giveaways - though not completely. In fact I found the ending both moving and satisfying with a real sense of redemption and hope after the often dark and even sinister tone of earlier.

I found When the Lights Go Out to be an enthralling and very compelling read.

When Jessie wakes up to find her mom has died she isn’t surprised (they have spent the last few days in a hospital room and her mom has cancer), she is – however – devastated that she didn’t get to spend her mom’s last few moments with her.
She isn’t sure she can sleep again, and she doesn’t. Instead, she spends the next ten days becoming increasingly frantic as she tries to unpick her mom’s last words to her and understand why, when she tries to go through her mom’s paperwork, she can’t find any evidence she has ever existing.
The more tired she becomes, the more difficult it is for her to work out what is real and what isn’t, meaning it’s the same for you as a reader. It’s all very confusing, and not – I’m afraid – always in a good way, as least not for me.
I am sad to say that this is the first Mary Kubica book I haven’t absolutely loved. First up, there is story which is told through Jessie’s eyes and those of her mom. I really enjoyed her mom’s chapters, which I found intriguing and held great promise. Jessie’s frantic nature grated on me a fair bit and I struggled to make sense of it. Then, about halfway through, I figured it out and hoped that I wasn’t right because it made the ending seem like such a cop out.
I really wanted more, a tale with the type of twist I have come to expect from Kubica and characters I found compelling. And I did get that, I guess, just only half the time. It’s a shame and I have a feeling I might be in the majority here but this book just wasn’t for me. Sorry!

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher and of course the author. I have loved all this authors books and have recommended them to many other readers and shall do the same with this one. This book was based in Chicago and goes from past to present. Highly recommend.

Jessica Sloane is alone and distraught when her Mother finally loses her battle with cancer. No longer able to live in the residence they shared, Jessica (Jessie) decides on a fresh start and moves into a carriage house before applying to college.

It is only when doing so that she begins to question her very existence. For the college call her with some alarming news. Her social security number belongs to someone who died 17 years previously. Jessie seeks the truth by trying to track down her birth certificate but quickly realises she has no formal identification as she doesn’t drive and has never needed a passport.

This has never mattered until now. Living in a city Jessie has had no need for a drivers licence and has never travelled far enough for a passport. As she seeks to discover the truth behind this puzzling mystery, Jessie is shocked when she looks up ‘Jessica Solane’ Online and finds that she does indeed have the identity of a dead girl.

But how is this possible? Why would her mother lie to her for her whole life? And who is she really?

As Jessie seeks to find the answers to these questions, her life becomes more and more bizarre, as she battles grief with insomnia and worries that she herself might die from vital lack of sleep. Can she stay alive long enough to discover the whole truth?

This is the story of Jessie and her mother, Eden and is told in current time by Jessie and Eden’s story from 20 years ago. Eden has died and Jessie is on her own for the first time in her life and left to ‘find herself’, her mother’s last words. On applying for a college course she discovers that her social security numbers belong to a long dead 3 year old girl. Jessie then embarks on a quest to find out who she really is. She is suffering from chronic insomnia and hallucinations which makes her story very confusing. Eden’s story centres on her obsession with getting pregnant and all the heartache that comes with it which I quite enjoyed reading. But all in all, a disappointing read.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

Jessie Sloane is a young woman whose mother has died and for the first time in her life she is on her own. That coming after a long road of caring for her ailing mother which has clearly left its mark on this young woman she decides to pay heed to her mother’s last words to her, ‘to find herself.’

Although I read far fewer psychological thrillers than I have done in recent years I do look out for those with a fresh premise. This one certainly ticked that box with the synopsis advising that Jessie Sloane is a young woman who finds out that her social security details belong to a girl who died seventeen years ago when she was just three. Now I think we can all agree that a discovery like that throws up a whole heap of possibilities for the direction that the novel can take.

I like Mary Kubica’s writing, the setting and the people in all three of her previous books I have read have been carefully crafted giving this reader the feeling that she was truly having an insight into another life for the duration of the book. When the Lights Go Out was no different. While I might have queried the decisions Jessie made, all was easily explicable when considering the combined effects of grief and a lack of sleep.
Alongside Jessie’s story we are taken back in time to read Eden’s too. This is an entirely different tale of a woman who meets the man of her dreams, and then the dream fades to a reality which is acres away from the dream. Of course the reader realises there is a link between these two narratives and each time it seemed that they were going to converge into the answer to the Jessie’s mystery, another piece of information came to dash that idea. All of this meant that the book was full of suspense. I was invested in both characters despite being on my guard knowing that all could not be quite as it appeared and I was therefore hooked to find out what the answers to the mounting questions were.

Sadly despite being hooked by this psychological thriller for the majority of the book but I am afraid the ending just wasn’t for me. I don’t normally mention the endings because some of us enjoy a fairly open ending while others far prefer it when the author displays real skill in tying up loose ends into a neat bow. But the ending for this book deeply disappointed me and I so however much I enjoyed the journey, I can’t get passed that moment.

This means that this is an incredibly hard book for me to review – how do you rate a book that you enjoyed all the way until the final reveal – if only Mary Kubica hadn’t ended this one the way she did the writing and the characters would have earned the full five stars . If you haven’t tried this author I highly recommend her earlier books, but sadly despite Mary Kubica’s obvious talent and her willingness to try something new, which I always applaud, I found this one to be less enjoyable.

d like to thank the publishers HQ for allowing me to read an advance review copy of When the Lights Go Out prior to publication of today, 23 August 2018.
First Published UK: 23 August 2018
Publisher: HQ
No of Pages: 400
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Amazon UK
Amazon US

Previous Books by Mary Kubica
The Good Girl
Pretty Baby
Don’t You Cry
Every Last Lie

'When The Lights Go Out' is Mary Kubica's latest novel, and it is not at all what I was expecting. It deviates considerably from her usual enjoyable psychological thrillers. That said, this is a great read, just not as accomplished as many of her previous books.

The narrative alternates between two points-of-view, and we learn a lot about Jessie and Eden. Their stories are intertwined as the book progresses, and as more and more is revealed we find out HOW they are linked to one another. I have to say that this certainly isn't Kubica's best, so if you are looking for a book to introduce you to her work then I would advise avoiding this one and maybe keep it for later when you've tried all of the others. I am not questioning the authors abilities - she can plot out a story excellently, creating characters you truly care about and feel sympathy for, but this time this ultimately wasn't as gripping as her other books.

I will still be on the lookout for more from Kubica in the future and hope very much that she returns to her usual style. I guess this happens when reader expectations are so high, you are pretty much bound to be let down at some point, with reading being so subjective.

Many thanks to HQ for an ARC. I was not required to post a review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

I am a fan of Mary Kubica, so having read and enjoyed all her previous books, I was very excited to get my hands on her latest offering. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed by it. The whole concept didn’t work for me, I struggled to finish the book, skimmed read the last quoter and actually felt cheated by the ending. Hopefully the next book will be more up my street.
Many thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins publishers for the ARC.

So, When The Lights Go Out, tells the story of Eden, the Mother and Jessie, the Daughter.
I really enjoyed the story from Eden's point of view, although it was about a couple trying, and failing, to have a baby and the heart ache surrounding it. Also, to what lengths will Eden go to get a child, any child.
The story from Jessie's point of view just really confused me, making it become manotamous, although it does make sense in the end.

Although this book is good in lots of ways I don't think it is as good as Mary Kubicas previous books. This one didn't have me on the edge of my seat like her previous novels.