She’s Not Sorry (spoilers and ending explained) | Mary Kubica
This review will have spoilers for the end of She’s Not Sorry. If you’re looking for a spoiler-free review, you can go to the main review and come back when you’re done!
Meghan Michaels is an ICU nurse and single mother. When a patient named Caitlyn arrives at the ICU with a brain injury, Meghan gets close to the family who are sitting bedside hoping their daughter wakes up.
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?
How did She’s Not Sorry end?
Early in the book, Meghan is headed into her divorce support group when she encounters a woman standing outside. Meghan introduces herself, and woman turns out to be an old friend from high school that Meghan didn’t recognize at first, Nat. Meghan and Nat reconnect, and Meghan becomes mildly obsessed with this new friendship. She tells Nat about how Ben (her ex-husband) isn’t their daughter’s real father. She slept with a random man when they were in a fight right before their wedding. She shares this when she notices a bruise on Nat’s forehead that appears to be from an assault, and she wants Nat to feel comfortable opening up. At one point, Nat stops getting back to Meghan, and when she goes to her work to check in with her, she finds out Nat doesn’t actually work there.
At the very end of Part 1 and beginning of Part 2 (which is nearly at 75% of the book), we learn that the woman Meghan went to high school with (original Nat), died in a tragic accident not long after graduation. The woman Meghan thought was Nat is actually Caitlyn. Caitlyn is wearing Meghan’s old wedding ring and taunting her, and Meghan pushes her. The reader realizes that the storyline with Caitlyn in the ICU occurs after the storyline about her reconnecting with “Nat”. Meghan is the person who pushed Caitlyn, causing her injuries and coma. Meghan has known who is in the hospital bed all along.
Part 2 moves fully to the present storyline (after Meghan pushed Caitlyn off the bridge) for the rest of the book. When Caitlyn begins to wake up from her coma, Meghan realizes Caitlyn remembers everything and once she can speak, she’ll tell everyone what Meghan did. Meghan makes the decision to “accidentally” give Caitlyn the wrong medicine and kill her. Meghan does this knowing the risks. She turns off the systems that would alert the unit, injects another patient’s insulin into Caitlyn (and “messed up” the dose so it was higher), and waits a moment for her to die before calling for help.
The other ICU staff rush in to help, and believe her when she says it is an accident. Meghan admits fault immediately, knowing this is the only possible way she may save her job. Meghan is sent home on administrative leave pending an investigation. She doesn’t tell her daughter Sienna what happened. Her ex-husband Ben comes over that night, and Meghan shares about losing a patient but not the specifics. Eventually, she learns that Ben’s girlfriend that he had for several months was actually Caitlyn. In a tangential storyline, Meghan discovers her daughter is the person who has left her threatening notes. Sienna evidently hates her mom after Caitlyn told her that her mother lied about who her father is her whole life. Sienna doesn’t know that Caitlyn is also Nat.
Meanwhile those random, vague comments about attacks on women around the city that weren’t really a storyline? Meghan receives a call from the wife of her friend Luke (who works with her in the ICU). Meghan learns that Luke is the person who has been attacking women around the city. What’s more, his girlfriend tells Meghan that she found photos of Meghan and Sienna. Meghan realizes Luke must have taken Sienna, and she rushes to save her.
In the epilogue, we learn that Meghan was cleared from her investigation at work. They ruled it an accident and she was able to keep her nursing license with probation. Meanwhile Ben comes over. He was interested in rekindling things, but Meghan was not. Ben gives Meghan back her engagement ring (the one Caitlyn had stolen), and Meghan realizes he suspects some of what happened. She worries he will have this to hold over her.
What did I like about the ending?
In general, I thought this was better than Kubica’s usual twists, in that many of these actually made sense. I clocked that “Nat” couldn’t possibly be the real Nat from the second she entered the book (at the very beginning. I think it is more surprising that Meghan fell for it. She claims she and Nat were good friends in high school. It may have been nearly twenty years, but surely she must realize this isn’t her friend. Meghan also comments several times how young Nat’s skin looks. Caitlyn is quite a bit younger than her, so again, I’m surprised she didn’t catch onto this. Added to that, Nat’s profile on Facebook seemed obviously fake. However, most of my friends who read this said they never guessed that twist, so I will give Kubica credit there. I always love when someone turns out to not be who they said they are.
I also liked the twist that “Nat” was really Caitlyn and the chapters covered two different timelines. This brought those stories together. I also guessed this one because at the beginning Meghan seemed to reveal she knew the victim. At first I thought it was going to turn out to be her daughter, but eventually I realized it had to be “Nat”. This was a great twist! The stories needed to tie together, and this was executed very well. Similar to the first twist, friends told me they never guessed the two timelines or that Meghan knew who Caitlyn was, so big props to Kubica on that twist.
The major turn Meghan takes as a character occurs when she shoves Caitlyn off the bridge and then eventually kills her, pretending it was an accident…I loved it. Earlier in the book we got small moments that Meghan can tend to be somewhat unhinged, particularly in how involved she gets in Nat’s and Caitlyn’s lives. If you didn’t guess that she knew who Caitlyn was in the hospital, the fact that she was tracking down information about Caitlyn’s life should have clued you in. It makes complete sense when we realize Meghan doesn’t want Caitlyn to wake up, and she may need someone else to take the fall for pushing her off the bridge (pun not intended). But I had no idea just how wild Meghan would turn out to be! Meghan is ballsy!! She swiftly made the decision to kill Caitlyn, figured out how to do it with the other medicine, turned those machines off, administered it, and confessed her “mistake” immediately to save her nursing license. Cold-blooded!
What didn’t I like about the ending?
Here’s the thing, the rest of the story and twists went off the rails in my opinion. Similar to other books, Kubica launches a bunch of threads at the beginning, but fails to effectively tie them together in a way that makes sense and has impact for the reader. I didn’t guess that Caitlyn was Ben’s girlfriend, and that was a good twist, but then the plot got away from Kubica. Threads began fraying into different directions instead of coming back together.
When we learned that her daughter believed her father’s new girlfriend about the paternity issue, I was confused. Why would Sienna believe a random woman dating her father and who doesn’t even know her mother would have this information? Sienna was also the one leaving Meghan threatening notes. Aside from Sienna being slightly deranged like her mother, the notes were a total nonentity. I didn’t even remember that they had happened until that was revealed. This felt unnecessary and distracted from the tension. I didn’t even mention it, but there was also a fake ransom scam earlier in the book and Meghan paid someone $10,000 only to find out Sienna wasn’t even missing from school. This never ended up mattering, other than adding more evidence that Caitlyn was not a good person (we knew this already).
Meghan does mention attacks have happened in the city a few times, but it wasn’t clear the attacks were intended to be a real storyline or even that they were committed by the same person. Those read to me as more evidence that Meghan is an overprotective mother to Sienna and can tend to be an over-worrier. It’s good for women to be vigilant, but I didn’t know those attacks were supposed to be part of the story until we randomly found out her friend Luke was the one doing them. Huh?? If that was going to be her big twist, those needed to be much more prominent in the first 90% of the book. In my opinion, the other twists were so good, that storyline could have been removed altogether. It wasn’t a storyline that mattered until Luke is revealed to be an attacker and takes Sienna. I didn’t feel we got a great answer as to why he was obsessed with Sienna and Meghan. It didn’t make sense and again, I thought “…ok…“
Finally the epilogue…did this confuse anyone else? I liked that Meghan got away with murder (literally). I also liked the idea that Ben knew about it and Meghan realized she’d always be at risk of him telling someone. However, it’s unclear what exactly Ben knew and how. Ben hands Meghan back her ring, but we saw Caitlyn fall off a bridge wearing that ring. How did Ben end up with it? Wouldn’t her parents have it? Furthermore, Caitlyn having the ring wasn’t evidence of anything except her own deception. We know that Caitlyn stole the ring from Meghan’s house when she was there visiting Sienna.
The biggest question I had was what Ben actually knew and how. Why would Ben assume that Meghan is the one who pushed Caitlyn just because of the ring? Or was the point supposed to be that Ben suspected Meghan killed Caitlyn on purpose? If so, what did he think her motive was? I wanted a bit more here. After thinking about it, here is what I concluded the twist was supposed to be:
Ben and Caitlyn catfished Meghan together. He helped her get the fake profile set up and told her what friend to use. He knew Caitlyn took Meghan’s ring and that Meghan found out about it. He assumed Meghan killed Caitlyn out of jealousy, and pretended it was a mistake. He somehow ended up with that ring from the hospital, and gave it back to Meghan to let her know that he was onto her. I don’t think he could have possibly known Meghan pushed her, but who knows.
Final thoughts (TLDR)
Overall I liked this book. It is a quick, bingeable read. I think if the storyline about the attacks/Luke were removed, the book would have read much better. That derailed the tension from Meghan killing her own patient (who we found out was catfishing her). THAT was a great story and a great twist. The epilogue didn’t do enough to show the reader what Ben knew and how. I couldn’t get past the fact that I had no idea how Ben ended up with the ring, since her parents were the one at the hospital with her. He may have visited, but why would the hospital give a patient’s personal effects to a non-family member? I do like the idea that Meghan could still be caught as an ending note. If the attack storyline were removed, this would bump up in my rating from good to great.
