Pieces of Her

by Karin Slaughter

 Paperback: 496 pages
 Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (May 21, 2019)

COMING TO NETFLIX!

Mother. Hero. Liar. Killer. How can you tell when all you have is…

What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all . . . ?

Andrea Cooper knows everything about her mother Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Gullaway Island; 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 Saturday afternoon 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 will ever find her. But now she’s been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Twenty-four hours later Laura is in the hospital, shot by an intruder who’s spent thirty years trying to track her down and discover what she knows. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumbs 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. . . .

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

He was charming, too. That was the problem. He would charm her. He would make her furious. Then he would charm her back again so that she did not know if he was the snake or she was the snake and he was the handler.

 

It’s only paranoia if you’re wrong.

 

He pointed to his ear. “Sorry, can’t hear you. One of my testicles is still lodged in my ear canal.”

 

She worked him like Tyson. The boxer, not the chicken.

 

My Review:

 

This is only my second time reading the compelling artistry of Karin Slaughter, and I feel compelled to amass copies of all her previous books.   This was one of the most complex tales I’ve read since the last time I delved into her work. The complicated storylines were chilling, taut with tension, distressing, maddeningly paced, ingeniously constructed, and each contrived with a dark underbelly that was heinous and horrifying. I cannot recall many books where I so thoroughly despised most of the characters; the vast majority of these were vile sociopaths who couldn’t seem to talk without lying. There were many complicated layers to this highly textured and cringe-worthy tale yet I didn’t begrudge the effort required to ferret through the quagmire and was quite awed by the end result.

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