Notes from the Shelf

This post contains major spoilers. This post also contains affiliate links. If you buy through Bookshop.org, I may earn a small commission—at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the blog and indie bookstores!

She’s Not Sorry by Mary Kubica is 330-page mystery thriller. Meghan Michaels is a full-time nurse in the ICU, juggling her job with being a single mom to a teenage daughter. A patient named Caitlin arrives in a coma with a traumatic brain injury from jumping off a bridge and landing twenty feet below on the train tracks. It looks like attempted suicide to everyone, but a witness comes forward with shocking details on the fall, calling everything into question. Was Caitlin pushed, and if so, who did it and why?

Meghan always tries to stay emotionally detached from patients, but Caitlin’s case hits too close to home, reminding Meghan of when her sister committed suicide years earlier. She lets herself become deeply entangled in Caitlin’s and her family’s lives. She realizes too late that she and her daughter could be the next victims.

This book did not turn out at all what I expected, and it seemed like there was too much going on. First, there’s the ICU girl, Caitlin, who we find out did not try to commit suicide but was actually pushed, so there’s a would-be murderer on the loose. Then, there’s been assaults on women at night in the city, so there’s an attacker on the loose. I didn’t think they would be the same person, and I was correct. Then, there’s an old high school friend that Meghan reconnects with only to find out it was a scammer taking advantage in order to steal from Meghan’s home. Then, Meghan gets a threatening note in her mailbox, which turns out to be from someone else than the other plotlines even. Then there’s a ransom where Meghan’s daughter Sienna is taken hostage for $10,000. Once Meghan pays the ransom, they find out that it was a random scam and Sienna is fine. The police never do find the $10,000 to give back to Meghan, so that seemed like a loose end that she just never gets this back. Come to find out that it wasn’t totally random, but that is a bigger spoiler that I will leave out here.

I felt there were too many different plots going on. I think it could’ve been either Caitlin in the ICU, because that turned into a really interesting storyline, or the attacks in the city. Having both detracted from the plot. I also found it unnecessary to have the threatening note in her mailbox as it didn’t really make sense when it was revealed who that was.

Also, about a third of the way through it was very obvious who the attacker was, but that reveal was saved for the end, which I don’t think was a good ending. In contrast, I thought it was revealed too early on who tried to murder Caitlin and the motivations behind it. There were a few people who I thought maybe could’ve tried to kill Caitlin, and those could’ve been explored more before the reveal.

Revealing Catlin’s would-be murderer first and then the city attacker second made it seem the city attacker was the bigger of the plotlines in the book, where I think it was the opposite. Most of the book focused on Caitlin being in the ICU, so I was disappointed it was revealed so quick. I was also disappointed in the outcome with Caitlin. It made me respect Meghan less.

Also, I didn’t really like Meghan as a character. It was frustrating how her default was to ignore and evade, although by the end it made more sense why she was like that. I really didn’t like that she deletes Nat’s ex-husband’s threatening texts as that could’ve been used as evidence for the police. I also didn’t like that she threw away the threatening note as that again could’ve been used as evidence for police if she kept receiving them.

It was a little trippy to realize some of the novel was set in the past while some was the present because at first it seemed like everything was happening at the same time, so it changed everything to realize that. I thought that reveal was too nonchalant for how much it changed the story.

Overall, I think some of it was way to predictable while some of it seemed too crazy to be real. I was thinking for a while that Meghan would turn out to be an unreliable narrator because she was so paranoid and seeing connections everywhere that I thought wouldn’t be true, but a lot of it did turn out to be real. It seemed like too much was happening to her at once for it to all be real, but once it was revealed about the timelines, then it maybe made it a little more believable. Still, this book had a little too much going on for my taste.

I give She’s Not Sorry 3 stars.

If you’re interested in buying the book, consider buying through Bookshop.org. Bookshop.org helps indie bookstores thrive, and your purchase also supports my blog—so I can keep reading, reviewing, and recommending great books.

Love what you’re reading here? Support the blog and fuel my next cozy reading session by buying me a coffee.