It's Not Her
| Published | 2026-02-03 |
| Series | Standalone |
| Genre | Psychological Thriller, Domestic Suspense |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Park Row (HarperCollins) |
| ISBN-10 | 0778387992 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0778387992 |
📝Honest Review
the setting is one of my favorite things about this book. the Wisconsin lakeside resort is not a nice pretty vacation spot. it is run down and slightly creepy in a very specific way, the kind of place where everything looks like it was once fine and nobody bothered to maintain it. the mildew in the cabins, the forest right outside the windows, the lake that feels more threatening than peaceful. Kubica makes that atmosphere feel genuinely unsettling without overdoing it and i kept noticing small details that added to that slow dread building underneath everything.
the dual timeline structure works really well here. Courtney is narrating the present, what is happening after the murders, how the investigation is going, how the family is falling apart. and then Reese, the teenage niece who was found at the scene, is narrating the week before and everything that led up to that night. i liked that Kubica gave us two very different voices and two very different ways of experiencing the same events. Courtney is trying to make sense of what happened. Reese is living through the thing that is going to become what Courtney is trying to make sense of. that gap between them creates a tension that is always present even in the quieter chapters.
the character of Reese is where i think the book is strongest. she is seventeen and lonely and going through the exact kind of social pain that being seventeen involves and then she meets this guy Daniel at the resort who actually pays attention to her. and you as the reader can see so clearly that Daniel is not a good situation but you also completely understand why Reese cannot see that. Kubica does not write her as stupid or naive. she writes her as a real teenager who is dealing with real loneliness and making a decision that makes sense from inside her own head even if it looks different from the outside. that felt true to me and it made me care about Reese in a way i was not expecting.
the twist in the final third is the kind that made me actually stop and put the book down for a second. i had a theory going for most of the book and i was feeling pretty good about it and then Kubica just quietly pulled the whole thing out from under me in a way i did not see coming at all. and the thing i liked about it is that it is not a cheap twist. when you think back through everything that came before it all fits. she was not hiding things from you dishonestly. she was just making you look in a different direction and i fell for it completely.
my only small issue is that the middle section is a slow burn in a way that some readers might find a bit too patient. there are stretches where the tension dips a little and the pacing softens before picking back up. it never stopped me from reading but i noticed it. also a few of the adult supporting characters in the resort are not developed enough for me to fully keep track of them. but these are small things in a book that overall delivers exactly what a good thriller is supposed to.
i finished this in two sittings and i have been thinking about it since. that is usually the test for me and this one passed.
Summary:
Courtney Gray is on a family vacation at a run down lakeside resort in northern Wisconsin with her husband Elliot and their daughter Cass. The resort is not what anyone hoped it would be. The cabins smell like mildew. The bathrooms creak. The whole place has the tired, sad feeling of somewhere that was nicer twenty years ago and nobody quite got around to fixing since. But the families are together and that is supposed to be enough. Then one night Courtney hears a scream from the cabin next door and runs over to find her brother Nathan and his wife Emily both dead. Her teenage niece Reese is the only one there and cannot explain what happened. The police start asking questions. Everyone at the resort is hiding something. And the closer Courtney gets to understanding what actually took place that night the harder it becomes to know who she can trust or whether the answers she finds will be ones she actually wanted.
✅ What I Liked
The resort setting is atmospheric and unsettling in all the right ways without ever feeling overdone. The dual timeline between Courtney and Reese is well structured and creates a tension that never fully releases until the final act. Reese as a character felt genuinely real to me in a way that teenage characters in thrillers often do not. And the twist in the final third is the kind that earns itself rather than just appearing from nowhere.
❌ What Could Be Better
The middle section slows down more than the rest of the book and the pacing takes a little while to find its footing again after that. A few of the secondary characters at the resort are not developed enough to fully register as individuals. And some readers who go in expecting wall to wall tension from page one may find the slow burn approach in the first half requires a bit of patience before the book fully delivers.
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