Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter

Pieces of Her is the new standalone thriller by Karin Slaughter, the author of the Grant County and Will Trent series.

The story opens with Andy and her mother, Laura, having lunch in a diner at the mall in a small beachside town. Without warning, a gunman enters and begins firing at the customers – killing two that were just speaking with Andy and Laura. As the gunman pauses looking for another victim, Laura approaches him and attempts to talk him down so that Andy can escape. What happens next shows Andy a side of her mother that she never knew existed.

The police begin questioning the witnesses to the shooting but Laura refuses to speak with them and refuses to allow Andy to speak with them. In fact, Laura tells Andy that she needs to move out, find her own place, and she needs to do it immediately, tonight. As much as Andy tries to get her mother to open up to her about what happened in the diner, the more determined Laura becomes to keep her secrets.

Andy finds herself alone and without her mother’s guidance for the first time in her life as she begins to follow the trail of her mother’s identity and discovers more than she ever expected. Suddenly, everything Andy thought she knew about her mother for the past 31 years is called into question.

I am a fan of Karin Slaughter’s Grant County and Will Trent series as well as her standalone novel, Cop Town. This book, Pieces of Her, while well-written and interesting, definitely did not live up to others that I’ve read by this author. The mystery of Laura was fairly easy to solve early on but the path that was taken kept the story moving along. A major issue for me was that I found myself disliking both Andy and Laura – Andy for being a spineless, inarticulate, wrecking ball and Laura for being an angry, radical bitch.

Rating: 3.5 stars