Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter

Nobody has the ability to take your breath away as shockingly and suddenly as Karin Slaughter. She can menace you with a slow buildup of dread or she can spring violence on you suddenly and intensely. What makes it even more impressive is the fact that she pairs the action with characters that are heartbreakingly, chillingly real. Pieces of Her is her latest impressive stand-alone novel.

Andrea has been drifting along for 31 years. Her mother, Laura, has spent her quiet life as a speech therapist in the beachside town of Belle Isle. As the two are having lunch at the mall, violence erupts right in front of them. A very different, very brave Laura emerges right in front of Andrea’s eyes, and it’s all captured on cell phone video. Andrea is a puddle of fear, but Laura very calmly confronts a killer. Now the police have questions and people from Laura’s past are very interested. Because Laura hasn’t always been Laura. Andrea winds up on the run, trying to put together the puzzle of who her mother really is. Both of their lives may depend on it.

Slaughter manages to marry, complicated, nuanced characters with breakneck plotting and intense, in-the-moment violence that draws you as the reader into its midst and doesn’t allow you to view it from a detached distance. The story alternates between Andrea in the present and Laura 30 years in the past. After a start that is a little slower than her previous novels, the story quickly picks up the pace and will have you reading it in big gulps if not all at once.

As great as the action is, the characters are equally memorable. Slaughter takes the time to flesh out her characters without sacrificing pacing. We see that Andrea is kind of a mess and when she winds up on the run her need to get her act together is not just an existential thing but a matter of life and death. Likewise, when we first meet Laura from 30 years earlier, we see how she was molded into the woman she would become. Along with some twists and surprises, you see some parallels between mother and daughter.

Setting a plot in two different timelines that eventually merge is tricky to do well, but Slaughter does it flawlessly. There is not the sense of loss as you move from one timeline to another, but an urgency as each timeline informs and builds on the other. A good book will have you tearing through the pages and enjoying every minute. A great one lets you enjoy it even more as you reflect and relive it. Karin Slaughter has written a great one. Pieces of Her is one of the best books of 2018. Highly recommended.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher.

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