I think this has been so far my least favorite of Karin Slaughters books- which doesn't mean I hate it by any means. Karin Slaughter at her worst is still better than many other thriller authors. But I was a bit disappointed by this. I suppose every author with a vast collection of works has to have a few misses.

What I liked about this book is basically the same for every other Slaughter. She's a fantastic writer. She has a great way of telling a story. Even though I didn't care about the characters or the plot, her storytelling was enough to push me forward and keep me interested. I think another author and this book may have irritated me quite a bit, but for all the flaws, I still adore her writing.

But that was about it in terms of positives. I didn't like any of the characters. Slaughter often walks a line of unlikable characters and sometimes it works for me, but here I just couldn't bring myself to care about Andy or Jane. The only character I was invested in died after their first chapter. I found both Jane and Andy to be annoying and passive. They dragged the story down more than they pushed it along, and spent half of the book crying. I think sometimes those types of characters can work very well, but not here.

I also found it annoying that a lot of the story had already happened. Not in terms of the two timelines, but it felt like the characters spent a great deal of time talking about things rather than doing the things. Instead of showing us a scary chase scene, we got told about it after the fact, sometimes from a different character altogether. It made it difficult for me to get invested.

This plot also tends a little more toward action than it does thriller. I love getting inside people's heads when they're afraid and faced with impossible decisions, which is why I love thrillers. They take ordinary people and destroy them. But this book didn't have a whole lot of intense psychological aspects. It felt like it should have- there was a cult, and a mother with secrets, and murder- but I never felt like the book got intense. It sort of just plodded along.

One specific thing that really irritated me was how everyone acted like a murder that happened in self defense that literally no jury would ever convict, was going to send people to prison forever. It made no sense and it was the whole premise of the book. Major spoiler:

Spoiler

Andy hits a dude with a frying pan while he's torturing her mother and then acts like it's literally first degree murder and the cops will lock her up forever. It clearly wasn't premeditated (hence the hastily grabbed frying pan) and her mother showed physical signs of a beating. Since Andy works with the cops, she should have known better than to run.

It was irritating to me that whole story was balanced on these illogical fears when it was so blatantly obvious.

But it was still a fine book. Disappointing if I look at Karin Slaughter's overall work, but pretty average for a thriller for me. I look forward to finishing off the rest of her books because I hear the best is still to come. If this is the worst she has to offer, then she's more than solidified herself as my favorite thriller author.