"4.5 stars
This was one of the hardest books to read that I’ve ever read. It has trigger warnings for pretty much any awful thing you can imagine like: violent rape, sexual assault, suicide, graphic violence, murder, torture, and at times I honestly wasn’t sure if I could stomach any more of it. But I was captivated by this writing and I couldn’t stop reading this book, I had to figure out how it would end.

This is my first book from Karin Slaughter and it definitely won’t be my last, though it may be a while before I pick up another because my heart hurts right now. It mainly follows two sisters Claire and Lydia who haven’t spoken in years, but when Claire’s husband is murdered, their horrible past comes back to them.

This book was incredibly hard to read, and it made me cringe so many times. I don’t think I’ve ever read torture like this and the way it was described literally made my stomach roll. I would not recommend this book to just anyone, because this shit is super fucked up. But this story really drew me in. It is an edge-of-your-seat thriller from page 100 till the end. And by the ending I was literally bawling my eyes out for this family. I don’t think a thriller has ever made me cry until this one. After finishing this book I feel emotionally drained."

"Put it Back.

This attempt at a thriller is jumbled and incoherent. TBH I’d give it zero stars. The title is unrelated to the story. The characters are poorly drawn and not relatable. The plot is scarcely credible. The story is told from the perspective of different narrators and seesaws between past and present. In summary, it’s a mess.

It starts with career-driven Ella who reluctantly travels to Seattle to help her sister Lorraine, a dying single mother of two. Lorraine (sometimes ‘Ray��, not to be confused with minor character Roy who appears here and there)�� is still in love with her ex-husband, Craig, the father of their sixteen-year-old son Logan. Logan is missing along with the assistant Lorraine hired to help her with a new baby.

There’s no plausible reason why Lorraine went ahead and had this baby, conceived somehow in a mysterious non-relationship with a ghastly character named Robert (a feckless and dishonourable man with no redeeming traits). Apparently this is just a plot device to explain that Lorraine has developed a fatal and rare cancer as a result of that pregnancy.

Lorraine’s assistant, Lexy (also missing) was hired as an ‘au pair�� (a part-time mother’s helper). She is an irrational and promiscuous young woman from London, England who only sought a job in Seattle in order to pursue ex-boyfriend Roy, who dumped her after pressuring her into aborting their child. Although Lexy is involved with a new boyfriend, Wayne, she pursues and has sex with Roy (improbably portrayed as a lawyer, but with no discernible intellectual acumen). She also has sex with Lorraine’s ex-husband Craig, AND their son Logan.

Within hours of Logan’s body being found, Lorraine also dies. Ella badgers the police for information while holding back on information she finds. Her clumsiness makes the entire situation worse, leading to further murders. Throughout the Seattle police detectives are portrayed as stupid, uncommunicative and inefficient.

In short none of this is credible or makes any sense. All the characters are portrayed as fatally flawed, with no moral compass, either mentally unstable or unable to think rationally. It becomes impossible to root for any one of them and when the final scenes play out, you just wish none of them had ever existed, even on paper.
"

"Awful ending

I enjoyed it for the most part. Little confusing jumping around to different time periods but why the author chose the awful no answers ending is beyond me"