Helpful Score: 3
I received this ARC courtesy of Dead Good Books via Goodreads. Thank you so much! It pains me to think that I might have missed out on what is probably going to be the best book I read this year. There is so much I would like to say about this book, but I'm afraid it would take reams of paper to do so.
Try to imagine ... you've been married 18 years and you've just buried your husband after he was killed in a robbery. Now imagine that you find things that you never knew of .. tapes showing women being tied up, tortured, raped, murdered. And then you discover numerous files on women all across the country .. all rape victims at one time or another. And then you're told he embezzled millions of dollars from his company. So who exactly is this human monster you've shared your life with?
Who do you trust with this information? Where do you turn?
The book follows a father whose daughter disappeared many, many years ago and was never found. He spends his life journaling about his search for her. There are also two sisters affected by this disappearance. There are secrets between them and a lot of forgiving to be done.
The book is absolutely brilliant! I'd give it 10 stars if I could. I've followed Karin Slaughter for many years, starting with her Jeffrey and Sara books. This is a stand-alone book.. something entirely different for her ... and she did an awesome job of roping me in. I had moments of holding my breath .... even a tear here and there. It takes a very special author to wring those emotions out of me. The book is so well-written and the characters so believable.
I highly recommend this book!
Try to imagine ... you've been married 18 years and you've just buried your husband after he was killed in a robbery. Now imagine that you find things that you never knew of .. tapes showing women being tied up, tortured, raped, murdered. And then you discover numerous files on women all across the country .. all rape victims at one time or another. And then you're told he embezzled millions of dollars from his company. So who exactly is this human monster you've shared your life with?
Who do you trust with this information? Where do you turn?
The book follows a father whose daughter disappeared many, many years ago and was never found. He spends his life journaling about his search for her. There are also two sisters affected by this disappearance. There are secrets between them and a lot of forgiving to be done.
The book is absolutely brilliant! I'd give it 10 stars if I could. I've followed Karin Slaughter for many years, starting with her Jeffrey and Sara books. This is a stand-alone book.. something entirely different for her ... and she did an awesome job of roping me in. I had moments of holding my breath .... even a tear here and there. It takes a very special author to wring those emotions out of me. The book is so well-written and the characters so believable.
I highly recommend this book!
Helpful Score: 1
This is the first book by Karin Slaughter that I have read after hearing good things about her thrillers. Although I found this book to be very disturbing, it was also very compelling and kept me turning the pages. It tells the story from the perspective of two sisters, Claire and Lydia, who have been estranged from each other for years. Their older sister, Julia, disappeared without a trace 20 years earlier when she was nineteen and attending college. This event has haunted both sisters since then. Interspersed within the novel are excerpts from their father's journal that he writes to Julia as he tries to find out what happened to her. And then there is the disappearance of another young teenaged girl. Could this be connected to Julia's disappearance? So what happened to Julia? As the novel progresses, Claire and Lydia are thrown back together as they discover a very vile history of rape, torture, and murder that leads to a person close to them.
This novel contained some really disturbing descriptions of the terrible things that can be inflicted on pretty young women by sadistic psychopathic men. This was probably the most horrific novel in this regard I have read since AMERICAN PSYCHO. There were some twists to the story that I wasn't expecting and the narrative kept me reading to a rather satisfactory conclusion. The novel was long at over 500 pages which probably could have been shortened somewhat but overall it was a very compelling thriller. I have heard good things about Slaughter's other novels including her Grant County and Will Trent series. At some point, I'll be reading more of her.
This novel contained some really disturbing descriptions of the terrible things that can be inflicted on pretty young women by sadistic psychopathic men. This was probably the most horrific novel in this regard I have read since AMERICAN PSYCHO. There were some twists to the story that I wasn't expecting and the narrative kept me reading to a rather satisfactory conclusion. The novel was long at over 500 pages which probably could have been shortened somewhat but overall it was a very compelling thriller. I have heard good things about Slaughter's other novels including her Grant County and Will Trent series. At some point, I'll be reading more of her.
Helpful Score: 1
I'm a HUGE Karin Slaughter fan and have read all of her books. I probably enjoyed this one the least for one reason: it had FAR too much graphic torture for my taste. She's a great storyteller, don't get me wrong, but I could definitely have done without the incredibly detailed descriptions about the extreme torture endured by the young victims.
Helpful Score: 1
I've read 3-4 of the Will Trent series and I find Karin Slaughters books to be very disjointed reading which is irritating. Not only are they too grisly and gory and contain detailed descriptions of torture of women specifically, but the way she introduces characters in various chapters feels like she thought the whole book through, wrote a bunch of chapter and then tried to figure out how to put them in order. Disjointed at best.
