The Good Girl

The Good Girl (2014) is a thriller novel by Mary Kubica. It follows the kidnapping of 25-year-old Mia Dennett, an art teacher in Chicago, and her struggle to recover her memory after returning home. It won a Strand Critics Award Nomination for Best First Novel, and two Goodreads Choice Awards, one for Mystery and Thriller and one for Debut Goodreads Author.

Plot Summary

The novel alternates between moments before and after Mia’s rescue, finally focusing on the return of her memory after weeks of amnesia.

At the beginning of the novel, Mia Dennett, the outcast daughter of prominent judge James Dennett, goes missing. Detective Gabe Hoffman and Mia’s mother Eve Dennett search frantically for the girl, despite a tepid response from James and Mia’s sister Grace.

Meanwhile, petty criminal Colin Thatcher has kidnapped Mia from a bar at the request of his boss Dalmar. He plans to give her up to Dalmar but feels guilty at the last moment and instead kidnaps her himself. The pair drive to Colin’s father’s deserted cabin in Grand Marais, Minnesota, where they hide for months to evade police. After Mia’s return, she has no memory of this period with Colin. This frustrates police, who want to find the criminal who captured her.

Before Mia’s recovery, Detective Hoffman discovers several clues that lead him to Mia—a sketch from a waitress in a bar, an apartment with letters under false names, and Colin’s mother, Kathryn Thatcher, who has been left alone in her home in Gary, Indiana with a severe case of Parkinson’s Disease. In Kathryn’s home, the detective finds a postcard of Grand Marais that piques his interest and eventually leads to Mia’s rescue. As he searches for Mia, Detective Hoffman and Eve begin to fall in love.

Many scenes reveal Mia and Colin’s time in the cabin, and their budding romance. At first, the pair want each other dead, but as they spend more time together, they bond over shared feelings of isolation. They soon fall in love. After Mia’s recovery, Mia discovers that she’s pregnant with Colin’s baby. This prompts further panic from Eve and James. James insists on an abortion, but Mia refuses.

The dueling narratives circle around Mia’s rescue on Christmas Eve and her return to the cabin many weeks later, where she recovers her memory. Mia, who has forgotten that Colin was murdered by police on the day of her supposed rescue, collapses from the grief of remembering Colin’s murder.

At the end of the novel, Mia copes with her grief. Detective Hoffman discovers Dalmar was blackmailing James for accepting bribery in a racketeering case. James is disbarred and sent to jail to await trial. In the final scenes of the novel, Mia narrates for the first time. She reveals that she discovered her father’s extortion charges and orchestrated the kidnapping with Dalmar herself.