This thriller follows Claire Scott as she goes about her life as the glamorous wife of a millionaire. Her sister, Lydia, is a single mother struggling to make ends meet. Twenty years prior, their sister Julia went missing and their relationship never went back to what it was. The two are basically estranged but when Claire's husband is suddenly murdered, they reconnect and cautiously start to rebuild their relationship. However, in the wake of the tragedy, new details come to light that could suggest these two crimes aren't as random as they initially seem and these surviving sisters must journey into the darkness to unearth the truth.
TW/CW: kidnapping, sexual assault, rape, torture, manipulation, grief, death of a sibling, death of a spouse, drug use, drug abuse, drug abuse recovery
I just really want to highlight the subject matter in this book. I feel like when people talk about this book, they often say it is one of the most graphic and fucked up thrillers they've ever read. I know that's all I've heard about this book and those types of comments were my main reason for picking it up. The book description, title, and cover don't really scream out as being a really graphic read so I was taking these types of comments with a pinch of salt. I also read a good amount of graphic-y horror/thrillers already and I (luckily) don't have any big triggers so my reading tastes skew more toward the fucked up side of the spectrum. However, I still wasn't expecting to have so much of this violence depicted on-page. Slaughter does not shy away from these moments and there's a good amount of character build-up before these moments so they really hit the reader on a physical and emotional level. So I fully agree with the other readers who have called this book graphic and fucked up and I loved every second of it. However, I do recognize that there is a lot of subject matter that would be upsetting for readers and, again, since there isn't much about the title or cover that would suggest such level of violence, I want to be clear that this book is intense. I personally find it toed the line of being a bit torture-porn at times but it didn't ever cross the line, but I could 100% see how other readers would feel differently.
I absolutely loved the characterization and relationship between Claire and Lydia. From what I've heard, Slaughter has great character relationships in many of her books and I can see how this would be a draw for some readers. I really enjoyed how we saw both Claire and Lydia separately and how they're each dealing with their own struggles as well as their perception of the other one. Then, seeing them try to come back together when they have all that past baggage still was fantastic. I thought Slaughter really captured the feeling of being/having a sister really well and showed how complex that relationship can really be. We get some flashbacks to the past around the time that Julia went missing and seeing this sort of before and after of these characters was fantastic. Both women were fully fleshed out and wonderfully complex characters. I really liked how both of them had their moments where they could be labeled an 'unlikable' woman character but I thought these aspects just made them feel even more real. I did think the other side characters felt really flat in comparison, but since we only see them for a few scenes, at most, I wasn't too bothered by this.
The twists and reveals were perfectly paced and overall really impactful. Each of the reveals felt like they deepened an aspect of the story and seemed to have some real emotional weight behind them. I can't quite figure out if this is because of the character work Slaughter does before we get these reveals or if it is the reveals themselves (probably a mix of both). This was a long-ish read at 420 pages and there is a lot of plot folded into those pages. The reveals start pretty early and don't quit until the very end. The reveals really helped the forward momentum in the story because each reveal lead the characters to another question they had to answer which would then spur them into action. So many of these reveals had me absolutely on the edge of my seat and even if I could see a few of them coming, I was still entirely thrilled when they actually happened. There was a nice gradual escalation to these reveals as well which also helped give the story this building sense of dread as our characters got further and further into the mystery.
I was pleasantly surprised by the ending and how it was somehow both more and less sad than I was expecting. I don't want to give too much away, but at the 75% mark, I was afraid that these characters I had grown really attached to were careening toward a cliff of the absolute worst imaginable things. And, in the end, they did sort of go over that cliff but not in the exact way I was expecting. This is one of those endings where even the characters who survive don't get out of the situation without some scars (physical and mental) of their own. But after reading 400 pages of some pretty depressing stuff, I was surprised at Slaughter's ability to turn it around just a bit and give the reader and the characters a little bit of closure. Calling this a "bittersweet ending" feels too small of a phrase to use for the emotional magnitude of the journey the characters/reader have just gone through and how changed they are by the end. I think the ending is one thing that helped keep this book out of the 'torture porn' category for me by having that tiny light spot at the end of all these horrible things.
Overall, this was my first Karin Slaughter book, but it definitely won't be my last. I really loved everything about it - characters, plot twists, world building, and even the graphic scenes were really well crafted. Again, I would encourage all potential readers to check content warnings as there are a lot of sensitive topics in this book but I found this 100% worth the hype and I absolutely recommend it.
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