A review by alibi313
When the Lights Go Out by Mary Kubica

1.0

For all of you who love listening to someone recount their lengthy, convoluted dreams, have I got a book for you! I’ve read all Kubica’s previous works, and while I haven’t loved them (primarily because she writes such unlikeable characters), they usually keep me fairly entertained. Listening to this audiobook made me notice for the first time what a truly bad writer she is, and it broke me—this is my last book from her. It’s filled to bursting with strained metaphors and similes (“my heart beats inside me like a cheetah,” “I softened like a stick of butter left on the counter too long,” “her eyes are poker-faced!!!??”), redundancies galore (“I lie awake not sleeping,” “I was followed from behind,” “male sperm!!!??”), and curious word choices that seem selected by throwing darts at a subpar thesaurus (“I lathered blush on my cheeks???”). Add to that two annoying protagonists (one’s painfully obtuse, the other’s pathologically obsessive!) and an endless infertility plot line not even hinted at in the GR synopsis (though it easily takes up a third of the book), and this is one big NO for me.