Pieces of Her

Hmmmm......this is my second Karin Slaughter book and after Pretty Girls, which is one of my favorite thrillers of all time, I was severely disappointed. I wasn't sure what I was expecting but what I got was and action movie in book form, not the exciting thriller I was hoping for. Also, there were so many political aspects to this book and all those details made the book drag on forever, at least that's what it felt like and the reason this book put me in a severe reading slump and I only ended up reading two books in the month of March.

To begin with, Pieces of Her centers around a mother and daughter relationship that gets complicated when the daughter, Andrea, starts to find out that she doesn't know her mom as well as she thought she did. Things escalate quickly and Andrea has to go on a dangerous journey to find out the truth about her mother's past and to guarantee them a safe future. I thought this plot was okay. I haven't read that many books with a plot like this but it honestly felt more like an action book, then a thriller. It was mediocre but the whole time I was reading it, I saw the book as a movie in my head so I will definitely be watching the series adaptation. Also, the book was so unnecessarily long and it really dragged on, having a lot of political aspect talk and explanation, which made it very difficult for me to keep reading since I didn't really care what would happen. Also, what was up with those long chapters? They were almost unbearable to get through. I really hope Karin Slaughter's other books will be more to my liking.

Further on, the characterization was okay. I generally really enjoy mother/daughter relationship dynamics in books, since my own relationship with my mother has always been very complicated, but in this instance I really didn't feel invested whatsoever. I just didn't feel the essence of the closeness between them and a lot of the things that the mother did and what actions she took really made me question the depth of her love for her daughter. Or maybe the writing just wasn't transcendent enough for me to really feel the mother/daughter bond that is supposed to run so very deep.

Finally, the writing style was good since it is a Karin Slaughter book and I find I enjoy her writing for the most part. The only thing is that for some reason this time, it didn't quite move me or evoke any emotion in me like Pretty Girls did. Pretty Girls made me sob like a baby but this book didn't even drive me to get to the ending in order to find out the fates of the main characters. Overall, I think it was just okay, as is everything else about this book.

In conclusion, I would say that this is one book that I should have dnfed and just watched the show instead. Not only did it put me in a severe reading slump but nothing was really that thrilling about it. It felt more like an action genre than anything else but the length of it really made the book drag on for ages and it took me weeks to read. I really think that this book could be skipped and you wouldn't be missing out on anything at all.