The Good Daughter Karin Slaughter Read Online
From the BLURB:
'Karin Slaughter's most ambitious, well-nigh emotional, and all-time novel. So far, anyway. '
— James Patterson
The stunning new standalone, with a chilling edge of psychological suspense, from the bestselling author of Pretty Girls.
Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. I is left behind ...
Twenty-viii years agone, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn'south happy smalltown family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family dwelling house. It left their mother dead. It left their male parent - Pikeville's notorious defence attorney - devastated. And it left the family unit fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night.
20-eight years later on, and Charlie has followed in her father's footsteps to get a lawyer herself - the archetypal good daughter. But when violence comes to Pikeville again - and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatised - Charlie is plunged into a nightmare. Non just is she the first witness on the scene, but it'southward a case which tin't assist triggering the terrible memories she's spent so long trying to suppress. Because the shocking truth most the law-breaking which destroyed her family nearly xxx years ago won't stay cached for e'er ...
***
'The Good Girl' is the latest novel from my favourite crime-writer, Karin Slaughter.
The concluding Karin Slaughter book I read was 2016'due south 'The Kept Woman', eighth book in her long-running 'Will Trent' series which in recent books has become a convergence of her previous series, 'Grant County'. I enjoyed 'The Kept Woman', just also struggled with it in a way I oasis't done with a Karin Slaughter book before … and a lot of the struggle was a feeling of series-stagnation, a sense that Book No. viii was a bit of a "filler episode" with little happening to advance characterisation. Which basically boils down to a bit of fatigue for a series that is, essentially, xiv-books long by at present.
So I was somewhat happy to come up to 'The Good Girl', and realise information technology's a stand-lonely book. Even though by the end of information technology, I did find myself half-hoping that Ms. Slaughter would announce this as the first in a new series she's nigh to kicking off (which, hey!, isn't that wild a possibility – since her 2014 novel 'Cop Town' was meant to be stand up-alone and is at present rumoured to become the first in a serial!).
'The Practiced Daughter' revolves effectually sisters Charlotte 'Chuck' and Samantha 'Sam' Quinn – and their minor hometown of Pikeville, Georgia. Xx-8 years ago Chuck and her older sister Sam were the victims of an awful deed of vengeance aimed at their notorious defense force attorney male parent, that resulted in the death of their mother and left both girls with very different scars. We begin in 1989 and the awful events of i dark, an event readers will keep pivoting to and run across from both Sam and Chuck'southward perspectives – then we land in 2017, when the sisters have not spoken to 1 another for close to a decade, even as they've called very unlike paths for themselves, while still following in their father's lawyering footsteps.
A school-shooting forces the sisters to come together, for their father's sake, and the immature woman defendant of the heinous human action which has left 2 expressionless.
I have not been a very skilful reader this year (allow alone reviewer!). I have been reading, but mostly manuscripts and Top Secret projects I tin't exactly web log about. And so I take felt very much deficient as an gorging reader in 2017, with but a meagre number of *published* books completed from my towering TBR-pile. But Karin Slaughter has changed that, thanks to the compulsively brilliant 'The Good Daughter'. I feel a little unlocked at present, and it's no wonder when Slaughter is one of those mainstay authors whom I have come to rely on as a constant reading lodestone at least one time a year.
'The Good Daughter' is a fabulous introduction to Slaughter's criminal offense novels, for those who accept never come beyond her before. Even as this stand-alone novel is quite a dissimilar beast from her usual crime-dramas … it'south much more than a family unit-saga than anything else she's written, with a firm focus on the love between the two sisters and their complicated relationship with their charming, slippery male parent, Rusty. Slaughter's previous books have all tended to be focused on the prosecution side of things too – with a law chief, FBI-agent and coroner making up her usual list of protagonists – just 'The Good Daughter' switches things upwards brilliantly, by aligning us with the defence-attorney team on the side of the defendant, and painting small-town cops in a none too flattering manner … These are all thoroughly new avenues that Slaughter is exploring, but information technology'due south all still an affiliation of what makes Karin Slaughter the summit of her game.
I will warn that, yes, like most criminal offence writers of today – violence against women is a huge component of this book (and most of Slaughter's works, even as male person characters also become dealt their off-white share of violence). What I capeesh nearly Slaughter though, is that it's not for nothing. The physical and sexual violence meted out confronting her female characters is never used to advance a homo's storyline – and information technology'south never then throwaway that she doesn't selection autonomously, to the bone, the ramifications of that violence beyond the act itself.
Equally is always the case, Slaughter'due south characters are broken. Not merely by the past, and a collective, harrowing and fierce result from Sam and Chuck'due south childhood – that inverse their young lives' forever – but they're broken in more contempo grief of loss, and marriage-breakdowns. Sam and Chuck are messy, and it's easy to see why, when nosotros meet their enigmatic begetter Rusty who – for all his caricature bluster and good-nature, is merely as hollowed-out as his daughters by all that they've lost. Rusty reminded me more though, of a stone – smoothed by beingness battered and washed over by the current of time, while his two daughters are still jagged rock formations, not yet ready to face the waves. Even Slaughter'south minor-characters are sublimely drawn and you lot but know that if she wanted to (once more, I'm crossing my fingers for a series hither) there'd exist some fantastic stories to pluck out of them … Rusty'southward secretary Lenore, beingness a prime example.
I will say too though – that something which struck me equally so different almost 'The Practiced Daughter' from Slaughter's other books is how likeable all the main players are. I know how this sounds but trust me, – some of Slaughter'due south long-time readers (me included) take serious effect with some of her protagonists (*cough* Lena Adams *cough*). Sometimes it's an enduring hatred, other times what starts equally hate-of-a-thousand-suns cools over a series every bit their layers are peeled back … but pretty generally, Slaughter loves a character who lives in the gray-areas of morality, and whom readers have to really work at begrudgingly liking. To give y'all a teaser of this (which spoils nothing, because you learn information technology in the first affiliate or two of volume one!) is that hero of the 'Grant Canton' series, Jeffrey Tolliver, cheated on the series' other protagonist, Sara Linton and when we meet them they are bitterly divorced.
This kind of ingrained dislike of awful, damaged characters isn't really a gene in 'The Good Daughter'. Chuck and Sam certainly have their bug – Chuck especially, lives with more than one moral ambivalence. But y'all don't hate them. At least, I didn't. Instead I felt an instant kinship and tenderness towards both of them – besides, mayhap, because nosotros commencement meet them equally children, experiencing the worst moment of their lives. Peradventure we're made to be instantly forgiving for some of their more caustic behaviour considering we know where information technology stems from … only I don't think and then. At least, that'south not the merely reason. I think Slaughter has just really excelled at writing two damaged only determined women who are fascinating to read bump against one another'southward so unlike personalities, and observe a way to connect equally sisters later such a long silence.
'The Skillful Daughter' is, unsurprisingly, one of my fave readers of 2017 then far. It may fifty-fifty exist pretty high up on my list of All Time Favourite Offense Novels. A heart-pain piece of Georgia dark, from a crime-writer who has managed to pivot into family drama with such fine characterisations, that I observe myself in awe of an author I already considered a favourite. I will merely say that I'd have liked more courtroom drama – but I'll quietly hope we get more, should this book prove to exist the first in a series …
five/5
Source: http://alphareader.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-good-daughter-by-karin-slaughter.html
0 Response to "The Good Daughter Karin Slaughter Read Online"
Post a Comment