Book Review: Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter

Last Updated on May 11, 2021 by lydiaf1963

I’ve long been a Karin Slaughter fan and her books have been an automatic purchase for me. She’s masterful at creating complex (sometimes unlikeable) characters faced with extraordinary circumstances. Her 2018 novel, Pieces of Her, is no exception.

Look for the Screen Version Coming to Netflix in 2021

I recently spent sometime re-reading this page turner and was just as caught up the second time around. The novel has been adapted for the screen and will be available on Netflix in 2021. The series Toni Collette will star as Laura Olive, and Bella Heathcote will play her daughter Andrea. There’s a host of other familiar faces, too. You can read more about it here.

How well do we know our parents?

Pieces of Her examines the theme of a parent with a secret, as does Slaughter’s previous novel The Good Daughter. As far as Andrea knows, her mother Laura had always lived in the Coastal community of Belle Isle. Laura’s mom is a speech therapist and breast cancer survivor. A normal, boring mom, right? That all changes one day when a crazed man opens fire at the food court of the local mall. Andrea’s mom defends them as if she’d had combat training, and then there’s this mysterious man who shows up at the hospital asking questions about the incident. A man who scares Andrea’s mother.

Andrea herself has been drifting through adulthood. At thirty years old, she’s never completed her theater arts degree and is saddled with major student loan debt. Her resume features a string of dead end jobs. She returned to Belle Isle to take care of her mother during her treatment and stayed to work night shift as a 911 Dispatcher.

Her life turns upside down after the incident. She finds herself on the run, trying to piece together the few clues her mother gave her before handing her a bag of money and directing her to a storage unit several hours drive away from their home. On the run and terrified, Andrea finds a resiliency she didn’t know she had as she puts the pieces of the puzzle together.

About midway through the novel the story switches from Andrea’s journey of discovery to Laura’s story. Turns out she wasn’t always a speech pathologist. At some point she developed a particular set of skills which enabled her to protect her daughter that day at the mall when everything changed. Laura’s story is horrifying and at times difficult to read, but it sets up other events in the novel and is important in understanding them.

The twists and turns in the novel kept me turning the pages right up until the final showdown between Laura and the man who once held an incredible sway over her. A man she’d been hiding from for 30 years.

If you like a tight psychological thriller with well drawn characters, it doesn’t get much better than Pieces of Her. The book is currently available in hardback, paperback or digital. Follow the link above or find it in your library or local book store.