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When the Lights Go Out: A Thrilling Suspense Novel from the author of Local Woman Missing Hardcover – September 4, 2018

by Mary Kubica (Author)
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 2,744 ratings
Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
See all formats and editions
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“A twisty, captivating, edge-of-your-seat read.” —Megan Miranda, bestselling author of All the Missing Girls

“Creepy and oh so clever!” —Alice Feeney, bestselling author of Sometimes I Lie

A woman is forced to question her own identity in this riveting and emotionally charged thriller by the blockbuster bestselling author of The Good Girl, Mary Kubica

Jessie Sloane is on the path to rebuilding her life after years of caring for her ailing mother. She rents a new apartment and applies for college. But when the college informs her that her social security number has raised a red flag, Jessie discovers a shocking detail that causes her to doubt everything she’s ever known.

Finding herself suddenly at the center of a bizarre mystery, Jessie tumbles down a rabbit hole, which is only exacerbated by grief and a relentless lack of sleep. As days pass and the insomnia worsens, it plays with Jessie’s mind. Her judgment is blurred, her thoughts are hampered by fatigue. Jessie begins to see things until she can no longer tell the difference between what’s real and what she’s only imagined.

Meanwhile, twenty years earlier and two hundred and fifty miles away, another woman’s split-second decision may hold the key to Jessie’s secret past. Has Jessie’s whole life been a lie or have her delusions gotten the best of her?

Don't miss Mary Kubica's chilling upcoming novel, She's Not Sorry, where an ICU nurse accidentally uncovers a patient's frightening past...

Look for these other edge-of-your-seat thrillers by New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica:
  • The Good Girl
  • Pretty Baby
  • Don’t You Cry
  • Every Last Lie
  • The Other Mrs.
  • Local Woman Missing
  • Just The Nicest Couple
  • She's Not Sorry
Previous page
  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Park Row
  4. Publication date
    September 4, 2018
  5. Dimensions
    6.36 x 1.18 x 9.28 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9780778330783
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0778330783
  8. See all details
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From the Publisher

New York Times Bestselling Author Mary Kubica
Lock the Doors. Read the Books.
Look for Mary’s chilling new thriller, Local Woman Missing!
When the Lights Go Out by Mary Kubica The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica
When the Lights Go Out The Other Mrs. Local Woman Missing Just the Nicest Couple
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Customer Reviews
3.7 out of 5 stars
2,744
4.1 out of 5 stars
11,976
4.4 out of 5 stars
44,430
4.0 out of 5 stars
10,776
Price $14.99 $14.99 $14.99 $13.99
Be left on the edge-of-your-seat with more chilling thrillers by Mary Kubica
The Good Girl by Mary Kubica Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica Don't You Cry by Mary Kubica Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica
The Good Girl Pretty Baby Don't You Cry Every Last Lie
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Customer Reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars
47,840
4.1 out of 5 stars
10,946
3.9 out of 5 stars
6,331
3.8 out of 5 stars
4,836
Price $14.99 $13.99 $8.49 $13.99

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Mary Kubica knows how to do thrillers. [When the Lights Go Out is] a mystery that'll keep you turning pages.” —theSkimm

"Kubica is a helluva storyteller." -Kirkus Reviews

"Kubica brilliantly unravels the lives of two women in this tense and haunting tale of identity and deceit. WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT will keep you questioning everything-and everyone-until the riveting conclusion. A twisty, captivating, edge-of-your-seat read." –Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author of ALL THE MISSING GIRLS

"Intensely moving... will keep readers riveted... strongly recommended." -Booklist

"Creepy and oh so clever with a brilliant twist that I did not see coming!" -Alice Feeney, bestselling author of SOMETIMES I LIE

About the Author

Mary Kubica is a New York Times bestselling author of thrillers including The Good Girl, The Other Mrs., Local Woman Missing and Just the Nicest Couple. Her books have been translated into over thirty languages and have sold over two million copies worldwide. Her novels have been praised as “hypnotic” (People) and “thrilling and illuminating” (L.A. Times). She lives outside of Chicago with her husband and children.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0778330788
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Park Row; Original edition (September 4, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780778330783
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0778330783
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.36 x 1.18 x 9.28 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 2,744 ratings

About the author

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Mary Kubica

Mary Kubica

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Mary Kubica is a New York Times bestselling author of suspense thrillers including The Good Girl, The Other Mrs., and Local Woman Missing. Her books have been translated into over thirty languages and have sold over two million copies worldwide. She’s been described as “a helluva storyteller” (Kirkus) and “a writer of vice-like control” (Chicago Tribune), and her novels have been praised as “hypnotic” (People) and “thrilling and illuminating” (L.A. Times). She lives outside of Chicago with her husband and children.

Visit Mary at http://www.marykubica.com/

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
3.7 out of 5
2,744 global ratings
Wow..that twist!!
4 Stars
Wow..that twist!!
Mary Kubica never disappoints me. I loved this book. I didn't see the twist coming but love surprises!
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Top reviews from the United States

Linda l.
5.0 out of 5 stars My new favorite book
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2019
Verified Purchase
When The Lights Go Out was absolutely awesome! I am not a writer, but a voracious reader, and love my book club for the suggestions and variety we read. Just what a book club should be. I missed the month we were to read this book, and was very sorry to not be there to give my two thumbs WAY up on this book. I was blown away, as the ending was not predictable at all.
If you have struggled with infertility at all, you would understand how true some of the situations in the book are. I worked in a hospital many years and the research for this book were so true.
Please do not rely on the negative comments with an agenda, this is one of Mary’s best writings and a totally entertaining read!
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GripLitGrl
4.0 out of 5 stars I've read The Good Girl by Mary Kubica & I enjoyed this book more, it was a satisfying read from start to finish.
Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2018
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This is a MPOV book two woman are telling thier story in short chapters with the date indicated like journal or diary entries. The two main characters are Jessie & Eden.

Jessie a young woman struggling with loosing her mother to cancer. Brought up by a single mother she has no father in the picture or any inclination as to who her father is. Jessie is struggling to find out who she is in this world without her mother, & dealing with the grief of loosing her mother. Jessie must now uncover the reason she has the social security number of a dead girl & what other secrets is her mother may have been keeping.

Eden's story goes from past to present she wants to be a mother more than anything else in the world. The fertility treatments, the longing & loss that occurs for her is quite a heartbreaking ordeal. Going through her journey & uncovering how Eden became a mother was quite an emotional ride that Kubica wrote really well.

The writing early on in the book seemed like it was a totally predictable plot & story line, Kubica was still able to surprise me with a twist at the end. I've read The Good Girl by Mary Kubica & I enjoyed this book more, it was a satisfying read from start to finish.

🚨This book maybe sensitive for some as it deals with infertility, & miscarriages.
3 people found this helpful
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Siobhan79
3.0 out of 5 stars MEH....
Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2024
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I like fast easy thriller reads and I don't expect much substance, but I've had a hard time getting through this one.
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Chelsea
2.0 out of 5 stars Plot summary held a lot of promise, but poor delivery
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2019
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I think I bought this book based on the premise alone. Girl's mom dies, she goes to apply for college and finds out her SSN is associated with someone who died 17 years ago?? What kind of hidden family secrets await!? I anticipated a real page turner with a juicy ending.

I wish I had read the reviews first.

Honestly I would not recommend this book to anyone. It does have a very interesting premise, but it falls short on the delivery. Don't get me wrong, the writing is fine. I liked the dual perspectives and timelines, so you could try and guess the ending along the way, but the book was repetitive and slow moving. I've been reading it at work over the last 2 days while it was slow, and the book is a quick read (and good, because if I had read this for over a week and it ended like that I can't even imagine how angry I'd be), but it didn't grip me by any means. I was really just finishing it just to finish it, because I wanted to know what happened. But it was also the kind of book I could have put down 75% of the way through and never picked up again and been fine.

The protagonist suffers from insomnia, and in the beginning you may think her reality is actual reality, but after a while you can kind of pick up on all the nonsense. And then it's just repetitive. And the other protagonist isn't much better in terms of repetition. And you just want to get it over with, and get to the ending, so you can be done with the book already. And then you get to the ending, and BOY does it fall flat. I get reading books where you're upset with the ending. But this can be offset when the ending makes some fair amount of effed up sense, and the rest of the book was good. Like Gone Girl. LOVED the book, an actual page turner, but I was mad at the ending. But in a different way. With Gone Girl, I was unsatisfied by the ending the characters had worked out for themselves, though I will begrudgingly admit it fit. With this book, When the Lights Go Out, I'm angry at the ending because it's just stupid. It's anticlimactic, doesn't make a ton of logical sense (Eden was WAY too secretive and sketchy for her storyline to have just been that), and the poor ending isn't offset by a gripping and enjoyable read the rest of the time.

If you can find this at a library or borrow it from a friend, have at it if you want. But I wouldn't buy it. Or get it from a library either, honestly. I have a laundry list of books I would recommend to people looking for something good to read before I would ever suggest this one.
17 people found this helpful
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ROBIN RUIZ
5.0 out of 5 stars Love Mary Kubica !
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2018
Verified Purchase
When I see a Mary Kubica book I immediately read it. I have enjoyed everything she has written and When The Lights Go Out is no exception! What a great story. I was hooked from the first page till the very end. An ending I didn’t see coming!
Jessie Sloan is mourning her mother when she finds out she may not be who she thinks she is. She has no social security number and no birth certificate? Is it possible her perfect mom kidnapped her ?
Written in Jessie and her moms point of view, this was an another amazing read!
12 people found this helpful
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Savannah
4.0 out of 5 stars Not the best Kubica
Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2021
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This book really had me hooked and I loved the character development, but the ending kind of spoiled the story for me. This was not a thriller as I had expected. I love Mary Kubica and still enjoyed the book, but it missed the mark for me a little bit, because my expectations are so high for her books.
3 people found this helpful
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Lindsey S
3.0 out of 5 stars Okay read disappointing ending
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2024
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The book was confusing leading up to the end which was terrible
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Ms. J.
5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite Detail
Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2018
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I love all of her books, and this one was no different. I don't want to leave any spoilers, but it was an intense vision of insomnia and poignant feelings only the desperate can truly understand. Mary Kubica captured exactly the specific psychological twists and turns that real people deal with every day. That's one of the catches to this book, it's so realistic. This could really have happened to someone. Wow. All I can say is that she has an amazing gift and I will be hoping for more.
6 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!
Reviewed in Canada on April 26, 2024
Verified Purchase
I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Excellent plot twist at the end, so well done. I thought I knew all kinds of things and eventually, almost everything I thought I knew was wrong. All well told, great pacing, and very entertaining.
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars When the lights got out
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 25, 2018
Verified Purchase
Addictive was not the.word.. it grabs you by the throat and you can't stop reading. My only complaint was that towards the very end although the final twist was very good. It got slightly silly and you.end up.not sure if it's all happening to the mother or daughter.
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Sam PS
2.0 out of 5 stars Boring
Reviewed in India on August 27, 2018
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Mary Kubica is known for her narrations which Spears towards many allies ..reader lost track of it...Good Girl has that spellbound effect but off lately this technique is becoming more and more boring.. Using past tense and present needs some soul in script.Here that gist is not present.Boring .. . Narrative is lacking the speed.Story gets lost.
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Read and Reviewed
4.0 out of 5 stars Sensational storytelling -compelling time-slip emotional drama with dual narrators losing their way.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 27, 2019
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Mary Kubica’s fourth novel, When the Lights Go Out, appears to have divided readers but having enjoyed all of her previous efforts I was keen to read. It is certainly far less of a traditional psychological thriller than her previous work and a real emotional rollercoaster but for me, it confirms her prowess as a sensational storyteller. Whilst the subject matter and the debilitating insomnia and delirium that blights principal narrator, Jessie Sloane, is often unremittingly gloomy and rather stymies the prospect of any thrills, the novel is very much worth reading for its gritty realism and Kubica’s profound and honest take on infertility, grief and chronic insomnia.

When Eden Sloane succumbs to the cancer that has ravaged her body since daughter, Jessie, was fifteen-years-old, her only child looses sight of her purpose. Having only ever had each other for family, their lives, memories and identity are bound by each other and so when Jessie’s efforts to make her mother proud and finally attend college cause her to stumble over the fact that her Social Security number belongs to a girl who died some seventeen years earlier, she is understandably confused. As a beleaguered and sleep deprived Jessie is thwarted at every turn as she attempts to confirm his identity given her failure to find her birth certificate and the fact that she does not hold a drivers licence, she scours the only home she has ever known for parts of her history and begins to question everything she has ever known about her mother. Going it alone and spiralling into the relentless cycle of insomnia, poor judgement and hallucinations, fragile Jessie downsizes and begins renting a creepy carriage home. Flashbacks in Jessie’s story flesh out her adolescent battle to learn the identity of her father and give an insight into the lengths which her mother went to provide for her and give her a happy childhood. Whilst Jessie’s first-person account loses some of its impetus in the closing stages, the second first-person narrative which begins over twenty years earlier in 1996 takes up the slack. This second narrative chronicles twenty-eight-year-old Eden’s quest to be a mother and the inability to conceive which causes her to lose sight of who she is and experience the agony of yearning that eventually drives a wedge between her and devoted husband, Aaron, and leads her into dangerous territory..

Both Jessie and Eden are sympathetic characters and hearing from both women in the first-person allows Kubica to draw out the story of directionless Jessie, trying to make something of herself after her mother’s death, and Eden, who is driven out of her mind by her desire to be a mother and whose voice aches with the crippling misery of her sadness as she loses sight of everything that once mattered in her life.

Kubica’s astute commentary and observation on everything from marriage through to the expectation on a woman to have children and the characters she portrays live on in the readers mind and make for a powerful, compelling and genuinely moving drama. The story is a deftly executed voyage of discovery for both a mother and a daughter and a heartbreaking and humane take on womanhood with a surprise or two in store. Whilst the final revelation may disappoint readers who demand sensational surprises no matter how realistic, for admirers of emotively charged and moving stories of ordinary life, When the Lights Go Out comes highly recommended.
3 people found this helpful
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NicShef❤️Reading
4.0 out of 5 stars Mystery... wow!
Reviewed in Australia on August 24, 2018
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I have been a fan of Mary Kubica's for a while, I devoured “When the lights go out” in a single sitting... seriously, I could not put it down.

Mary Kubica pivots from her usual genre of psychological thriller with this mystery featuring Jessie Sloane set in Chicago. She is a young woman who for much of her life as been caring for her dying mother, Eden, afflicted with termina cancer. Before she dies, her mother tells her to forge a life for herself...

Jessie has never known her father and has no other family. She decides to move into a new apartment and enrol into college. But when the college calls and tells her that her social security number has raised a red flag her life as she knew it starts to crumble... Is she really Jessie Sloane or is she somebody else... The story is told in alternative chapters between Jessie and her mother and it’s riveting...

Burdened by a grief that is tearing her apart, Jessie embarks on a quest to determine who she is, as she questions every aspect of her life. Admittedly she’s an unreliable narrator as she suffers from chronic insomnia, resulting in a wandering mind, an atrocious memory and with her emotions all over the place she is suffering from hallucinations also -but that adds mystery and instability to the book.

There are twists that are gut wrenching but it’s certainly a thought provoking read. Mary Kubica's writing is engaging as always and I’m pleased I read it.
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