Book Review: When the Lights Go Out | Mary Kubica

This was my first book by Mary Kubica and I was excited because I’ve heard so many great things about her. I expected this to be an experience and…I mean it was certainly an experience! The premise of When the Lights Go Out centers around a woman who loses her mother to cancer, only to then realize she may not be who she thought she was. I think I’m going to be in the unpopular opinion club here, so let’s get right into it…

What is When the Lights Go Out about?

Jessie Sloane is trying to rebuild her life. For years she cared for her mother who suffered from what eventually became terminal cancer. Jessie and her mother are incredibly close—best friends. Jessie is lost without her. The night her mother passes away Jessie is wracked with stress and finally gives into her exhaustion, sleeping through her mother’s passing.

Jessie is unable to forgive herself for missing her mother’s final moments, and she is terrified to go to sleep. Riddled with insomnia, and with no real friends, Jessie is lost. She tries to get her life on track by enrolling at the local community college. But they reject her application, saying that her social security number flagged. In a state of confusion, stress, and exhaustion, Jessie stumbles down the rabbit hole of her past.

Her mother’s last words to her, to find herself take on more weight as Jessie realizes she is not Jessie Sloane. But how does she go about finding out who she really is??

What did I think of it?

This is a very emotional book as far as psychological thrillers go. To be honest, it read more like dramatic fiction with a big twist. I will get into the good and the bad but long story short–I wanted to throw this book against a wall when I finished it. It is unreal how such a fantastic premise could be torpedoed so badly! I know tons of people loved this book so please check out other reviews too. But for me, this was a 4 star book with a -1 star ending. Like a truly terrible ending. I felt rage at the ending and I honestly am not over it. I do think that books that give a passionate response did something right in some ways. Nothing worse than a book that I don’t have strong feelings about–being forgetable is worse than be hated, in my opinion.

What did I like?

I’m a notorious scaredy cat when it comes to sad books, but I can recognize when emotional content is done well and elicits a reaction from the reader. The relationship between Jessie and her mother and between Eden and Aaron are both so beautiful. There is so much pure love in this book, and you’ don’t always find that in a psychological thriller. I was devastated at Jessie’s mother passing, even with what we find out afterwards. The relationship were very well-done and as a character-driven book fan, that worked well for me.

I actually thought the premise was great and held so much promise. Jessie realizing that her birth certificate isn’t hers–and that she essentially doesn’t have an identity–was a shocking and brilliant premise. There’s a death certificate seventeen years earlier in her name. Can you even fathom learning this? With her mother now passed on, Jessie has no one to turn to for answers. This was a unique idea and I applaud Kubica for coming up with it and executing the first part of it well. Truly the first half was hard to put down, and I mean that.

What didn’t I like?

Here is where Kubica started to lose me (and let me be clear, this was before we even got to the twist). As Jesse is unable to literally do anything in life without an identity, she also develops crippling insomnia. Understandable in some ways, I have dealt with insomnia myself that is activated in particular when I’m stressed and anxious. However, this part was also such a drag to read. I felt like I was just living in the worst, most unhealthy, bleak, depressing spiral. It got repetitive–there were so many descriptions of her insomnia that just weighed down the story. It became an anchor that we are chained to and I was dying to surface and get some air.

And then that twist… Well it is polarizing for sure! When I first read it I was so confused. Was that…? Did I just read that…? But yes, I did indeed read it and it absolutely ruined the book for me. This was a terrible ending–absolutely atrocious. Psychological thrillers rely so much on the ending being able to deliver and this did not deliver. Even more, it actually stole back most of my enjoyment from the first part of the book. It’s the kind of ending that just undoes everything that you invested in all book.

Now, I have seen plenty of people who loved the ending and I’ll say that I would never want my review to be the reason you don’t read a book. Every reader is different and one of my best friends loved this about as much as I loathed it. I’ve seen plenty of reviews who said they never saw the twist coming and that is a sentiment I’ll agree with. I also did not see the twist coming in any of my wildest speculation, and frankly that is because nothing in the book remotely tied to it. To be honest, the ending didn’t make sense with anything else we’ve read. A good twist should have clues to look back on and smack us in the forehead with how we managed to miss that it was there all along. This book did not do that. The ending was a betrayal of the worst kind. The ending essentially undid everything about this book that is a psychological thriller, and instead turned it into a sappy, emotional, irritating mess of a fiction book.

Final thoughts

Let’s just be frank here with the closing thoughts–I am not the right reader for this book. I am still angry when I think about the ending, to be honest. But I want to reiterate a few things. First, my opinion is not the majority opinion. I have heard from so many people that loved this book and the ending, so take my opinions as just one of many. Second, I want to give Kubica credit for eliciting a strong reaction from readers–both positive and negative. This is certainly not a forgettable book. Perhaps I’ll come back and add a hidden spoilers dropdown to this, because I would like to save some people who aren’t feeling it the agony of having to actually read that disappointing ending.

Kubica, you wrote a great premise. I loved the idea of a woman losing her mother and then discovering she has been lied to her whole life and doesn’t know what her real identity is. Loved it! However, all of that is undone in one massively upsetting chapter. All of it!

I hope other readers enjoy this more than I did!

Many thanks to Harlequin books for my advanced copy of this book.