Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter

ebook, 480 pages
Published August 21st 2018 by William Morrow
☆☆☆☆
About the Book: What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all? Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we? But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out that before Laura was Laura, she was someone completely different. For nearly thirty years she’s been hiding from her previous identity, lying low in the hope that no one would ever find her. But now she’s been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again. The police want answers and Laura’s innocence is on the line, but she won’t speak to anyone, including her own daughter. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumb trail of her mother’s past. And if she can’t uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either one of them.

She had dozens, even hundreds, of friends, but not one single person knew all of the pieces of her.

This is not not my usual type of book, but I read Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter last year and I absolutely loved it, so I was kind of excited when I got my hands on this. The fact that it's not usually what I would read and I still gave it four stars says a lot! Pieces of Her is a terrific, gripping story. I was intrigued from the start and couldn't turn the pages quickly enough to discover if Andrea would be able to find a way out of her dire situation or not. It is a testament to Ms. Slaughter's writing ability that this was an exciting, heart pounding read for me.

Whenever people asked Andy what her mother was like, she always said: She always knew where all the tops were to her Tupperware.

The story is fast-paced and eventful, so there's a constant tension that I really enjoyed. I was incredibly curious about Andrea finding the answers to her mothers secrets, and liked the suspense and mystery around it. I was especially blown away by the last few chapters.

The question isn’t what else can I do. It’s what else am I going to fuck up?

One thing you can rely on Karin Slaughter for is to produce an original, unique story that is well thought out and plotted and paced perfectly. There are none of the indistinguishable and banal stories doing the rounds in the crime fiction genre here, that's for sure. She explores many timely and topical subjects throughout the book too, including gun violence which gives a nod to the current upsurge of shootings and other violence around the world. Karin Slaughter has written a captivating story filled with surprising twists and turns. I loved how she works with tension. The story is well-balanced between the past and the present - a cliff-hanger is reached in one time frame and then left hanging while we are returned to the present, very smartly done.

My mother was acting in self-defense. You weren’t there but I was and I will swear on a stack of Bibles in front of any jury that my mother had no other choice but to kill Jonah Lee Helsinger.

I loved the motive, the ending is spectacular and I was pleasantly surprised by the direction Karin Slaughter has chosen for her story. It's refreshing and original. Pieces of Her is a fantastic, thrilling book.

Like some kinda ninja granny, Grambo. None of it made sense. Her mother was a fifty-five-year-old speech therapist. She played bridge, for chrissakes. She didn’t kill people and smoke cigarettes and rail against the pigs.