She’s Not Sorry – Mary Kubica

Meghan Michaels is trying to find balance between being a single mom to a teenage daughter and working as a full time nurse. While on duty at the hospital one day, a patient named Caitlin arrives in a coma with a traumatic brain injury, having jumped from a bridge and plunging over twenty feet to the train tracks below.

But when a witness comes forward with shocking details about the fall, it calls everything they know into question. Was Caitlin pushed and if so, by whom and why?

Meghan has always tried to stay emotionally detached from her patients, but this time, she mistakenly lets herself get too close until she’s deeply entangled in Caitlin’s and her family’s lives. Only when it’s too late, does she realise that she and her daughter could be the next victims.

Mini Review

I’m not going to lie; I didn’t like this one very much. I much liked Just the Perfect Couple better. I really hope my next Mary Kubica read goes better because I don’t want to write her off since I didn’t like The Other Mr.s either, and she is insanely popular. sigh. Perhaps we are just not meant to be?

As always, I read my fellow Goodreads reviewers thoughts once I finish a book or when I’m in the middle of it, so when we say that when a certain character appears, you just know one of the twists. The red herrings didn’t work this time, ma’am!

Speaking of red herrings, I didn’t like how some aspects were introduced only to be discarded and never talked about again. To me, there’s just something that bothers me, and dare I say, I believe it’s lazy, to introduce situations or characters in a book for the sole reason to attempt to throw the reader off and get your ‘gotcha!’ moment. Not a fan at all.

I’ve seen a lot of people describe this book as a slow burn, but I honestly don’t think it was. There’s a fair bit of activity going on throughout the whole book to be considered “slow burn.”

A very fast-paced read, great compelling writing as always from Kubica, but if your twists rely on lying to the reader by omitting a key aspect of the narration, then I just don’t know.

Click for spoilers!

Caitlin was “Nat,” and Meghan was the one that pushed her.

The book is told in 2 timelines, one before Caitlin’s accident and the other when she gets to the hospital. Caitlin/Nat was Ben’s girlfriend, and she was insanely jealous of Meghan. She planned to “stumble” upon her at the divorce support group, befriend her, scam her out of $10k by spoofing Sienna’s number and pretending that she was kidnapped, and ask for ransom money.

After getting the money, Caitlin ghosts everyone, and Meghan discovers that the woman she thought was Nat, one of her former high school classmates, was actually called Caitlin, and the real Nat died years ago in an accident. Caitlin assumed Nat’s identity to befriend Megan and set up her plan, though Meghan handed her gold on a silver plate because she confided in her that Sienna was not Ben’s biological daughter, something that Caitlin told Sienna that caused her to lash out towards her mother secretly in the form of threatening notes and upsetting behaviour, like when Meghan got “mysteriously” locked in while searching for photos at the beginning of the book.

When Caitlin eventually wakes up, Meghan realises that she recognises her, so Meghan resolves to kill Caitlin by injecting too much insulin into her. Meghan gets investigated because the death happened on her watch and is put on administrative leave; however, she does end up getting Scott free.

Luke is revealed to be the women attacker and to be obsessed with Meghan’s daughter, Sienna, who, in the final confrontation, he kidnaps, but with the help of his wife, Meghan finds them and saves her.

In the very end, on the epilogue, Ben gives Meghan her engagement ring back, something Caitlin had on her when the whole rails accident happened, which implies that Ben knows at least a bit of what went down on that day.