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alexblackreads 's review for:
The Last Widow
by Karin Slaughter
Still a really enjoyable Karin Slaughter book, but I don't think this was one of my favorites.
For starters, I struggled with the storytelling style she used for a lot of this book. It was told in overlapping fragments of time from the points of view of Will Trent (main detective), his partner Faith, and his girlfriend Sara. They all start the book in different locations and the timeline covers all them. So for example (this is a made up example), the first chapter could be from Will's POV and take place from 1:32 until 1:58. Then the next chapter could be from Sara's POV and take place from 1:38 until 2:04. And so on. I could see this style working for some people, but I found it rather tedious when it became clear most of the book was written like this. And it technically never stopped doing that, but maybe around halfway or the last third, Slaughter eased back into more of her normal style. The exact time was listed at the top of every chapter, but it was less focused on getting every minute from every character and showing how much the timelines overlapped.
The other thing I didn't like as much was the main plot. I like cop thrillers to feel a little more down to earth than this book did. I like when they're hunting one criminal (or a small handful) who's committing crimes for himself. This book had a much larger scale. It wound up feeling kind of unrealistic. Or not even necessarily unrealistic, but just melodramatic. It was big. It was meant to be a huge, world altering event. And I'm just not a fan of that in books like this. I do wonder if it will have any impact on the world in the later books in the series, because it seems like it very well could. So again, not inherently a negative thing, just one I didn't like.
I was very invested in the story though. The twist was kind of obvious in parts (the terrorist group kidnapped someone from the CDC, what do you think their plan is), but I didn't figure out the whole plan until the end and that was pretty cool.
I also really like how all the characters lost their morals in this book. They were in a situation where they didn't have the luxury of the moral high ground, so they didn't even pretend. Like screw it, I may be a doctor, but this is a bad person so I'm not going to help them. It was kind of awesome.
Overall, I really enjoyed this despite the lower rating. She just made a few choices that I wasn't a huge fan of. I would highly recommend the Will Trent series if you enjoy cop thrillers because this is probably my favorite cop thriller series that I've ever read. It's fantastic and I'm sad to be caught up.
For starters, I struggled with the storytelling style she used for a lot of this book. It was told in overlapping fragments of time from the points of view of Will Trent (main detective), his partner Faith, and his girlfriend Sara. They all start the book in different locations and the timeline covers all them. So for example (this is a made up example), the first chapter could be from Will's POV and take place from 1:32 until 1:58. Then the next chapter could be from Sara's POV and take place from 1:38 until 2:04. And so on. I could see this style working for some people, but I found it rather tedious when it became clear most of the book was written like this. And it technically never stopped doing that, but maybe around halfway or the last third, Slaughter eased back into more of her normal style. The exact time was listed at the top of every chapter, but it was less focused on getting every minute from every character and showing how much the timelines overlapped.
The other thing I didn't like as much was the main plot. I like cop thrillers to feel a little more down to earth than this book did. I like when they're hunting one criminal (or a small handful) who's committing crimes for himself. This book had a much larger scale. It wound up feeling kind of unrealistic. Or not even necessarily unrealistic, but just melodramatic. It was big. It was meant to be a huge, world altering event. And I'm just not a fan of that in books like this. I do wonder if it will have any impact on the world in the later books in the series, because it seems like it very well could. So again, not inherently a negative thing, just one I didn't like.
I was very invested in the story though. The twist was kind of obvious in parts (the terrorist group kidnapped someone from the CDC, what do you think their plan is), but I didn't figure out the whole plan until the end and that was pretty cool.
I also really like how all the characters lost their morals in this book. They were in a situation where they didn't have the luxury of the moral high ground, so they didn't even pretend. Like screw it, I may be a doctor, but this is a bad person so I'm not going to help them. It was kind of awesome.
Overall, I really enjoyed this despite the lower rating. She just made a few choices that I wasn't a huge fan of. I would highly recommend the Will Trent series if you enjoy cop thrillers because this is probably my favorite cop thriller series that I've ever read. It's fantastic and I'm sad to be caught up.