Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter – a Review

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Description:
What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all . . . ?

Andrea Cooper knows everything about her mother Laura. She’s knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Gullaway Island; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we?

But all that changes when a Saturday afternoon trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out that before Laura was Laura, she was someone completely different. For nearly thirty years she’s been hiding from her previous identity, lying low in the hope that no one will ever find her. But now she’s been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Twenty-four hours later Laura is in the hospital, shot by an intruder who’s spent thirty years trying to track her down and discover what she knows. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumbs of her mother’s past. And if she can’t uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either one of them. . . .

Review:

Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter is a standalone mystery thriller.  We meet Andrea (Andy) Cooper right from the start, as she is living at home with her mother, Laura.  Laura is a successful professor in Pathology, and a respected member of their small town, Belle Isle. Andy came home from her job in New York, to help take care of her mother recuperating from cancer, and has no intention of returning to her former job.  Andy is in a crossroads of her life, not knowing what she wants, and totally unsure of herself.  When she goes to the mall with her mother, everything is about to change forever, as there is a shooting when they were at lunch.  Andy is in shock, watching two women get killed, but her mother pushes her to safety. To her disbelief, her mother stands up to the shooter, and manages to stop him from further violence, but in doing so kills the attacker, which shocks Andy, who never saw her mother act this way, making her question who her mother really was. With a video of the attack all over the media, in a short time, Laura’s life and that of her daughter brings danger from the past, which will put their lives at risk.

What follows is Andy being forced to leave town at her mother’s insistence, with a key to open a storage unit.  Laura tells Andy to lay low until she can call her home, and talk to no one.  But this escalates Andy’s resolve to find out the truth about her mother’s past, which is coming back to haunt her.  The story follows two time periods: the past, with major characters that were part of an uprising that brought about secrets, danger, murder and betrayal.  The other is the present time, wheras Andy slowly begins to unravel the truth about her mother’s secret past, which puts her own life in danger.

I do not want to give spoilers, as it would ruin the story.  I did think that after the exciting start to the book, it was a little slow moving forward, and at first I wasn’t crazy about Andy, who was a very unsure and confused young lady. She was 31 years old, and did not seem to have any self-confidence.  But once she begins to find clues, as well as money, she becomes more assertive and likeable.  The last third of the book was great, especially as Andy began to learn the truth, and we learned everything about the past timeline, and how it led to the present.

Pieces of Her had a very exciting climax to a wonderfully written story by Karin Slaughter. The premise of the story was very well done, as you wondered how this would tie together, which proves that the past can very well come back to haunt you.  I do recommend that if you like mystery thrillers, you can never go wrong with a Karin Slaughter book.

Reviewed by Barb

Copy provided by Publisher