My Readers Guide for It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica has a character list, plot summary, the ending explained and our questions answered! Let’s discuss this chilling lakeside suspense story!
Readers Guide for It’s Not Her
Table of Contents (click to open)
Jen’s Quick Take on It’s Not Her
Character List for It’s Not Her
Plot Summary for It’s Not Her
It’s Not Her: The Ending Explained
My Questions and Yours About It’s Not Her
Jen’s Quick Take on It’s Not Her
- It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica is a lakeside suspense story brings a lot of chills, family drama and shocking reveals!
- This is a dual timeline, dual narrator story with Courtney’s POV in the present, and Reese’s in the past, with the two eventually converging in the present.
- With a ton of suspense, a truly disturbing murder, multiple suspects, and not one but two missing girls, Mary Kubica has a lot to juggle here and does it masterfully!
- Also check out my review of She’s Not Sorry, another twisty psychological suspense book by Mary Kubica.
- Publication date: February 3, 2026 by Park Row/Harlequin. Thanks to the publisher for the advance copy for review.
Character List for It’s Not Her
- Courtney Gray: mom with her family at the lake
- Elliott Gray: her husband
- Cass: her daughter
- Emily Crane: Courtney’s sister-in-law
- Nolan Crane: Courtney’s brother; Emily’s husband
- Mae Crane: Emily and Nolan’s ten year-old daughter
- Reese Crane: Emily and Nolan’s seventeen year-old daughter
- Wyatt Crane: Emily and Nolan’s teen son
- Skyler: Reese’s former best friend
- Detective Evans: investigator on the Crane case.
- Greta Dahl: works at the lodge
- Daniel Clarke: does handyman work at the lodge
- Kylie Matthews: also went missing at the lake
- Sam Matthews: Kylie’s father
- Joanna Matthews: Kylie’s mother
Plot Summary for It’s Not Her
The Present: Courtney
She’s up early on vacation at Pearl Lake in Wisconsin’s backwoods when she hears a scream.
Her young niece Mae comes running to their cabin with blood on her hands. Things have been stressful in her brother’s family as he lost his job. Also, Mae’s sister, Reese, has been depressed and saying alarming things.
Courtney heads to her brother and sister-in-law’s cabin, where she sees blood and then Emily‘s body on the floor of the screened porch.
Reese: One week earlier
Reese and her family are headed to the lake. They seem to be lost, there’s not much cell service, and her parents are arguing.
Courtney:
Mae and Cassie, Courtney’s daughter, show up. Courtney tries to block their view of Emily‘s body. But Cassie sees something and screams.
Nolan is dead too; his body is at the top of the stairs. It looks like he’s been shot in the head. Courtney drags the girls out of the cottage and tells them that they need to call for help even though she knows it’s too late. As they flee, she thinks she sees a face in the upstairs window.
Reese:
Everyone is still arguing. Reese doesn’t want to share a room with Mae and says she will sleep on the porch. Her best friend Skyler is ignoring her. But when she sees a cute guy outside, things are looking up.
Courtney:
There’s no cell service and Courtney’s husband Elliott has gone fishing. She and the girls go to the main lodge office where Greta, who works there, calls the police.
The police finally arrive, bringing Wyatt with them. Reese was not in the cabin and no one knows where she is. Courtney doesn’t mention to the police that Reese told her parents that she hated them and wish they’d die. She tells the police she last saw Nolan and Emily at 8:30 PM when they dropped their daughter Cassie for a sleepover.
Reese:
The kids see a flyer for a missing girl named Kylie Matthews. Reese watches the cute guy unloading a pickup truck. Her brother Wyatt has a gambling problem and tries to blackmail her for not telling their parents that she lost Mae for a few minutes.
Courtney:
Courtney tells the police that her husband is fishing. She thinks he left around 5 am but can’t be sure. Elliott returns and Courtney is shocked that he thinks Reese could have killed her parents. Courtney remembers that as she and Elliott were leaving their cabin, Emily said she had something she wanted to ask Elliot.
Wyatt seems evasive, saying his mother gave him Benadryl for a stuffy nose. Also, Emily was crying. Courtney explains that Nolan lost his job and money was tight.
Mae says that Reese met a boy with a snake tattoo on his arm. Mae says that the boy was in the cabin at night and that Reese cried and said he was hurting her. Courtney remembers a woman in one of the cabin saying that someone stole her wedding ring.
Reese:
Reese‘s friends seem to have dumped her. Reese thinks that Elliott is a bit of a creeper. She sees Wyatt with an older guy and it looks like Wyatt is selling him drugs. She knows that Wyatt sells his Adderall.
Courtney:
After the police talk to Elliott, he and Courtney share what they know: Emily was crying. Reese had been hanging out with a boy who she seemed to be scared of. Courtney reminds Elliot that Emily wanted to talk to him about something. Courtney puts off calling her parents and finds out that Reese has completely wiped her Instagram.
Wyatt has a huge bruise on his chest. In the middle of the night, Courtney here someone creeping around the house. It’s Wyatt. He tells her he knows where Reese is. Wyatt says he can see Reese‘s location on Snapchat, five minutes away. Courtney calls the police. They donn’t find her, but organize a search.
Reese:
Reese finally talks to the snake tattoo guy, whose name is Danny. Danny wants to meet at night by the beach to “show her something.” Uh-huh… She heads out at night to meet Daniel and someone grabs her and says “you should’ve known better than to trust a guy like me.”
Danny’s just kidding. But he’s stoned in a bit weird he wants to make out with her in the woods. The whole thing is super creepy. They smoke together. He took her to a haunted cemetery.
Courtney:
Courtney goes to help us search and meet the parents of an eleven year-old girl who went missing: Kylie Matthews. Her mother said she went missing five years ago, on her way home from her best friend Abby’s house.
Joanna and Sam invite Courtney to come by their house anytime. Courtney learns that Danny is actually in his 20s. She learns that Emily and Nolan suffered blunt force trauma probably from a baseball bat. Courtney realizes the bat is Wyatt’s.
Elliott’s shoes have blood spots but he claims it was from fishing. They don’t want to stay there, but they don’t want leave until Reese is found. Late at night, Courtney looks at Elliot’s iPad and finds pictures of Reese. In the sexiest photo, Reese is wearing a bikini and a gold beaded necklace.
Courtney finds Wyatt sleepwalking. When she tries to get him back to bed, he hits her he says he was dreaming that someone was trying to drag him off.
Reese:
Reese gets back to the cottage and Wyatt is in her bed. Also, he’s taking blackmail photos of her with Daniel. She’s furious and jumps on him. Reese thinks about stabbing him with a broken piece of glass.
Doctors diagnosed Reese with explosive disorder. She lost it at school and someone took a video causing her to lose friends. She goes to the local cemetery and sees an unmarked grave.
Courtney:
Courtney’s face is bruised from Wyatt’s sleepwalking attack. Greta tells Courtney they have access to the crime scene. She adds that when girls go missing around this place they don’t come back.
Elliott’s fishing cooler and it’s completely empty. He claims he threw the fish away.
Detective Evans arrives. He says they’re still looking for Daniel. Also, there was a knife in a nightstand on the porch. They want to take everyone’s fingerprints. They’re also searching Emily and Nolan‘s phones.
Reese:
Daniel comes lurking around and wants to meet her again. Reese goes to the words to meet Daniel. She asked him about the unmarked grave in the cemetery. He gives her a gold beaded necklace.
Courtney:
Courtney tells Elliot she’s going to the grocery store, but she goes to talk to the Matthews. Joanna shows Courtney a picture of Kylie wearing a gold beaded necklace.
Reese:
Emily asks Reese about her new necklace, mentioning the beads form a pattern. Reese lies, saying a friend lent it to her. Cassie and Mae use Elliot’s iPad to take pictures of Reese sunbathing. Reese finds her mom sleeping on the sofa.
Courtney:
Courtney figures out where Daniel lives. She’s able to get through a sliding door. She finds women’s jewelry and Reese’s pink fleece sweatshirt with blood on it. Someone points a gun at her.
It’s Detective Evans, as of the neighbors saw someone trespassing. She shows him the sweatshirt. He asked about the bruise on her face and she tells him the truth. He says no Benadryl was found in the Crane’s cottage.
Courtney realizes that Daniel lives directly across the street from the place Kylie was last seen, her best friend Abby‘s house
Reese:
Reese meets Daniel again. Emily is sleeping on the sofa and Reese worries she’ll wake her. She finds Daniel throwing rocks in the lake. They’re getting hot and heavy when they hear someone in the woods.
It’s her Uncle Elliott. She’s mortified that he saw her naked. Elliott says he will need to talk to her parents, and Reese says that if he does, she’ll tell them he hit on her.
Courtney:
Courtney wonders if Daniel had something to do with Kylie’s disappearance. Elliot realizes she didn’t go to the store and she has to confess. He’s still acting sketchy, and now claims that the blood on his shoes was when he cut himself fishing. And she tells him that Wyatt was lying about the Benadryl.
Courtney goes to the Matthews house and tells them that Daniel lives across the street from their daughter‘s best friend Abby. Joanna decides that Kylie resembles Reese seems certain that their cases are connected.
Reese:
A new girl and her family arrive at the resort. Daniel is watching her.
Elliot tries to talk to Reese. Reese sees Daniel and the new girl flirting and hears him using the same lines on her. Reese falls asleep crying. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she sees someone outside the cottage. It’s Daniel.
She admits to having seen him with a new girl and he says that was a mistake. She tells him to go away, and he tells her she’ll regret this.
Courtney:
Elliott and Courtney decide to go and get some of the kids things from the cabin. She keeps pressing about what he and Reese had been talking about before she disappeared.
They head to a motel, which is dingier and more cramped than the cabin. Courtney takes a shower and finds Wyatt peeping at her.
Reese:
Reese wakes up again to find Daniel standing outside watching her sleep. He in the screened porch with a knife. He tells her to be quiet. She’s able to knock the knife out of his hand. He cut himself and uses her sweatshirt to wipe off the blood.
Courtney:
Detective Evan shows up and says the blood on the sweater belongs to Daniel. He claims Reece came after him with a knife and has self-defense wounds on his hands. He has an alibi because immediately after that altercation he left town.
Reese:
The next morning, there’s blood on the floor. Reese tells her mom that she’s not sleeping on the porch anymore. Mae and Cassie steal her phone and post an old picture of her with Skyler. She’s furious. Her Uncle Elliot is freaking out that she’s going to say he’s a sex offender. Mae ask if she and Cassie can have a sleepover.
Wyatt makes fun of her so she tells her mom he’s selling their grandmother silver to pay his gambling debts, and selling drugs in the woods to strangers
Courtney:
Courtney knows Elliott is hiding something from her. She checks his search history and sees that he looked up the depth of Pearl Lake, researched the Kylie Matthews case, and left a comment on the Find Kylie Facebook suggesting that Reese was Kylie.
Also, Elliott is the one who suggested they come to this resort. He had been there with some college friends for a bachelor party.
Reese:
A tearful Emily admits that Reese was right about Wyatt. She tells Reese she didn’t have any Benadryl so she gave him Ambien for his allergies. Emily wants Elliot to help her file for a divorce and mentions finding the gold beaded necklace in the trash.
There’s a knock on the door and Reese tells Emily not to open it, but Emily does.
Courtney:
When Elliott says he’s going out to get coffee, Courtney tells Wyatt that they need to go to the police, but Elliott has the car. She makes everyone walk to the police station.
Reese:
Matthew is at the door. He thinks that she is his daughter and seems kind of deranged. Emily grabs the baseball bat, but Matthew gets it away from her. Emily tells Reese to run. As Matthew tries to take Reese, her dad comes down the stairs.
Courtney:
At the police station, Courtney explains the thing she found, including the search of the depth of the lake, and the Facebook post about the missing girl who looked like Reese. Cass and Mae confess they made the Facebook post as a prank.
Reese:
Matthew drags Reese through a field, convinced she’s his daughter. Reese manages to open Snapchat on her phone. When Matthew gets home, Joanna tells him Reese not their daughter. He loses it and starts crying. She asked him what he did, and they lock Reese in the crawl space under the house.They bring her food and let her use the bathroom.
Courtney:
She calls Elliot feeling terrible. She worries that Joanna and Matthew might’ve killed Reese.
Reese:
Detective Evans rescues Reese. Courtney tells Reese that her parents are dead, and Reese says she thinks she knows where Kylie Matthews is.
It’s Not Her: The Ending Explained
Courtney watches Greta Dahl being questioned by the police. Greta was friend with Daniel’s mother and promised to look after him. She did, and saw Daniel burying a body.
Sam confesses to killing Emily and Nolan and kidnapping Reese. Daniel gave Kylie’s necklace to Reese, which was part of the reason that Sam thought Reese was his daughter. Courtney says goodbye to Detective Evans. She wants to hear about what happened to her brother and sister-in-law, but he tells her she really doesn’t.
Detective Evans:
He was the one who killed Kylie! Like Daniel, he has a snake tattoo. A group of boys, including Daniel, got the tattoos together. Detective Evans was also Abby‘s older brother, Josh.
The day Kylie disappeared, she rode off on her bike. Josh followed her in his car, pretending he was going to hit her. He accidentally hit her bike. Panicked, he buried her body.
Thankfully, Mrs. Dahl thinks the guy she saw burying the body was Daniel.
So Evans will frame Daniel, but says Daniel’s not a great guy anyway. He’s a thief.
Questions and Yours About It’s Not Her
Why did Matthew Think Reese was Kylie?
Several reasons:
- Kylie and Reese did resemble each other.
- Mae and Cassie made a Facebook post saying they looked alike.
- Kylie vanished five years ago at age eleven, so she’d now be sixteen, about Reese’s age
- Daniel gave Kylie’s necklace to Reese. Emily noticed that the beads spelled out “daughter” in Braille, making it unique.
If Daniel didn’t kill Kylie, how did he get her necklace?
Toward the end, Courtney says that is something no one knows. I’m guessing a) it fell off either when Kylie fell off her bike or b) it fell off when Evans was burying her, and Daniel found it. Remember, he lived across the street from the spot where Kylie was killed.
Does this mean Detective Evans will get away with murder?
Maybe? Or maybe the book is suggesting that the necklace is the loose end that might trip him up. It was Kylie’s, then Daniel had it and gave it to Reese. If anyone knew he found it, that might help his case. Then again, it might seem to connect him to Kylie and seal his fate.
Did you love that the title was kind of a spoiler?
Me: what does this title mean? Ohhhhhh…..
If you have other questions, observations or corrections, please leave them in comments!