Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter
Pieces of Her is a character-driven thriller focusing on themes of self-discovery, the tension of mother/daughter relationships, and a search for the truth.
I love domestic suspense, so this was a great one for me. But fans should know up front that the book is very different from Slaughter’s previous work. Pieces of Her is a wonderful story, intriguingly told with well thought out characters, but doesn’t have quite the grit or hard plot turns that many of her crime thrillers have.
The story follows Andy, a mousy, insecure woman incapable of making any decisions and her steely, elegant, confident mother, Laura. The plot moves between Laura’s past in which she’s part of an anarchist group trying to screw ‘the system’, and Andy’s present, as she’s running from an unspecified threat thrust on her after a shocking attack that exposes a side of Laura she’d never seen before.
There are many of Slaughter’s trademark gory scenes and some really great plot twists, but overall this is a character driven novel exploring the complex relationship between mothers and daughters and how that relationship changes as we realize our mother had a life totally separate to us before we were born.
