It begins with an abduction. The routine of a family shopping trip is shattered when Michelle Spivey is snatched as she leaves the mall with her young daughter. The police search for her, her partner pleads for her release, but in the end…they find nothing. It’s as if she disappeared into thin air.
A month later, on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, medical examiner Sara Linton is at lunch with her boyfriend Will Trent, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But the serenity of the summer’s day is broken by the wail of sirens.
Sara and Will are trained to help in an emergency. Their jobs – their vocations – mean that they run towards a crisis, not away from it. But on this one terrible day that instinct betrays them both. Within hours the situation has spiralled out of control; Sara is taken prisoner; Will is forced undercover. And the fallout will lead them into the Appalachian mountains, to the terrible truth about what really happened to Michelle, and to a remote compound where a radical group has murder in mind…
What did I think?
I actually can't believe that this is my first ever Karin Slaughter book; her novels have been recommended to me many times so when an opportunity to join the blog tour for The Last Widow came up, I jumped at the chance.
I didn't realise it was the ninth book in the Will Trent series and, with the characters of Will Trent and Sara Linton being already well established, I didn't really get any depth of feeling for them. I think I definitely would have benefited from reading the earlier books in the series first, so I wouldn't recommend this as a standalone novel. I'm intrigued enough about them to want to read the earlier books though; I love how Will isn't a people person, except when it's the right person of course and I can totally relate to that.
The story is quite gripping right from the start as a woman is abducted in front of her young daughter. Michelle Spivey has disappeared without trace and the police have no leads. When an explosion shatters the peace of a Sunday afternoon, Sara and Will head towards the scene of the incident without thinking twice. What they discover puts them in terrible danger and Sara ends up right in the middle of something she can't escape from. Only one man can save her but can Will hide his very strong feelings for Sara and go undercover to rescue her?
To be honest, I struggled with the book at first. The first four chapters are told alternately from Sara and Will's viewpoint which results in whole paragraphs of speech being repeated. I almost missed out a whole chapter, thinking I'd already read it and had put my bookmark in the wrong place. Thankfully, Will and Sara get separated quite early on so there isn't too much repetition to contend with. One thing that really affected my reading pace was the frequent use of very short sentences. It's just my personal preference but I prefer a comma, semi-colon or an 'and' to keep the prose flowing rather than several very short sentences.
The talent of Karin Slaughter is very evident in The Last Widow; despite my jumping in mid-series and not knowing the characters, the story kept me intrigued and entertained. It was quite scary at times, not just the scarily realistic storyline, but the character of the baddie in the story, Dash, being like a pot constantly on the boil that could boil over and scald you at any time.
The Last Widow is a gripping and intriguing story and it's all too scarily realistic in this day and age where bigotry seems to be rearing its ugly head more often.
I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.
My rating:
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