I love Karin Slaughter, but I didn't quite love this book as much as I wanted. I don't know if the hype got to me and I was just expecting something more or if it was the book itself.

It fell into a trap I hate in thrillers where they get too big. Every thriller is over the top, but sometimes it feels like the conspiracy gets too big and stretches too far, just absurdly so, and I cannot even pretend to buy into it anymore. By the end, this book was definitely there. I want to pretend that it could be real. That's why thrillers are scary to me. The realer they are, the more fun they are. This completely went off the rails. That's definitely not something that would bother everyone, but it bothered me.

This also just felt like one of those books where everything bad that could happen, did happen. It took away a lot of the tension because I stopped worrying about the bad things. Why worry when it's guaranteed it'll be just as bad as you expect, which is as bad as possible? Karin Slaughter always gets truly horrific in her books and I definitely enjoy that, but literally every point can't be as horrific as possible just for the sake of being horrific. It turns the horror of the situation into something almost boring.

But Karin Slaughter is a good writer with good thriller stories. Even at her worst when I'm the most disappointed, I still like it better than most other thrillers I've read. So it's not like this is a terrible review. It's just skewed by my high expectations of one my favorite author's highest regarded books. I wanted to adore this, and it was just okay.

I would recommend this, I guess. If you like really grisly thrillers, I think Slaughter is a worthwhile author for you to try. This one wasn't a standout to me, but it still wasn't bad. So I guess I'd recommend her as an author more than this one book, but I don't think you should avoid this book if you happen across it either. I do think she tends to be stronger in her cop thrillers, but that just might be my personal preference for cop thrillers.

I'm mostly just sad because I so badly wanted to adore this.