How well do you know your mother? Who is she really?

Andrea (Andy)is having a quiet meal with her mother, Laura, to celebrate her birthday when a violent attack takes place and she will never see her PTA perfect mother in the same way again.

Who is the calm, controlled woman that disarmed the armed man? And what is she hiding? To untangle the present Andy has to unravel the past, finding out both who her mother really is, and who she is too.

A strange read...two stories told and until the end you don’t find out the connection, and I didn’t guess it either! Very gripping and couldn’t put it down...

Due to the loss of my kindle I, sadly, was not able to read this book.
I sincerely apologize for this inconvenience.

This was my kind of book. A crime thriller, although not part of one of Karin Slaughter's series books (which I admit to loving), it reminded me a little of a Harlan Coben novel. Andy is 31 and left university in New York to move back home when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. But even though her mother has recovered, Andy can't seem to move on with her life and seems to be stuck in a comfortable rut. Then on her birthday she and her mother are caught up in a killing spree at a local café, and suddenly Andy is running for her life and isn't sure of anything any more. Moving between the past and the present day, the story twists and turns through time and hidden secrets until it reaches its explosive and satisfying conclusion.

This was a bit different to Slaughter’s usual style, a bit like Pretty Girls. It was brilliant and I was desperate to know the secrets of the story and what was really going on.
I felt like I was on the edge of my seat at times and guessing and then second guessing the plot.
I love Karin Slaughter and she’s never let me down yet!

Great book and so different from the last book that I read from this author. I always look forward to reading her books.

Being the first book I have read of Karins' I was gripped to find out exactly what Laura had been hiding in her past.

From start to finish, it had me turning page after page just to find out everything.

From reading this book, I can now say I'm a fan!

I quite enjoyed this book but found it a bit hard going at times. I preferred the modern-day sections with Andy as they seemed to have a better pace to them than the past with Nick et al. Entertaining book but I had to concentrate to remember who was who and I searched for names a couple of times!

A great read. Starting with a deadly shooting where Laura saves her daughter Andy from the gunman, by killing him, and her secrets start to unfold. Videos of the attack suggest Laura killed him unnecessarily, but she is a force to be reckoned with, even though she's wounded. The plot moves quickly on as Andy is forced out of her mum's house for her own good, she then finds herself watching her mother being attacked again, this time she has to run far. The story flicks back and forth with a story that doesn't seem to fit, but it does all become clear in the end. A well manufactured story that was very readable. I will definitely be reading more from Karin Slaughter. Thanks to netgalley and Harper Collins UK, harperfiction for this advanced copy for review.

I found this book incredibly confusing. Having read The Good Daughter, and enjoyed it, I came into this book with high hopes. The book really focuses on the relationship between a mother and a daughter, but I never really liked either of them. None of the characters in this book were likable to me, and for the most part, the majority that are introduced are immediately forgettable.

The book itself felt incredibly slow, and it wasn't like the main characters were being built up during these periods of boredom, because we were given this extremely convoluted terrorist plot instead. Andy annoyed me as much on the last page as she did on the first.

It pains me to say that Karin's books just don't grab me the way they used to. When I discovered her Grant County series I was amazed and I loved it and then I finished it and was left with the Will Trent series and a lot of standalones, none of which have ever matched up to the Sara Linton books. Perhaps it's time for me to part ways with Karin Slaughter. Such a shame.

Pieces of Her is the latest standalone novel from Karin Slaughter.

It is Andrea (Andy) Oliver’s 31st birthday and her life is going nowhere. The daughter of an eminent attorney, Gordon, and speech therapist, Laura, Andy has never felt that she has lived up to expectations. Any career aspirations quickly faded during a short stint in New York and she returned home to Belle Isle, Georgia, where she has since remained, working in an uninspiring job and living in an apartment above her mother’s garage. As characters go, Andy really is a sorry specimen. She has had many advantages in life, supportive parents and a decent education, yet she still struggles to find her way or, indeed, the motivation to do so.

The story opens in a shopping mall café, where Andy and Laura are having lunch to mark Andy’s birthday. A gunman bursts into the café killing two people and changing Andy’s safe, suburban life forever. Andy realises that there is a side to her mother that she does not know at all. Laura Oliver is a woman with a past and the terrors from that past are finally about to close in on her, catching Andy in the cross-hairs.

At Laura’s insistence, Andy finds herself on the run. Fleeing through state after state from an unknown threat, Andy doesn’t know where she’s heading or why she’s running, she just knows that stopping isn’t an option.

As the reader follows Andy on her journey, her story is interspersed with snatches of a 30 year old backstory involving a socialist activist/terrorist cell, the Army of the Changing World, who are determined to strike a blow against capitalist greed, yet just how much are they prepared to sacrifice for the cause? As Andy attempts to understand that mystery of her mother’s past, her curiosity puts her and others in danger.

Pieces of Her is a thrilling, Adrenalin-packed ride filled to the brim with intrigue, scheming, secret identities, double-crosses, questionable motives and murder. I couldn’t put the book down!

I found Laura’s backstory to be fascinating, particularly reading about the masterful manipulation by the activist leader, Nick. It seems clear to the reader (although apparently not to the activists themselves) that the underlying reason for the activists terrorism and violence is not actually their belief in the cause, but rather a narcissistic power-trip by their leader who wants the fame and attention that accompanies their shocking actions, and the need of the psychologically-damaged followers to compete for the approval of their leader by carrying out his wishes, however extreme.

In my opinion, the central characters of Laura and Andrea weren't hugely likable but they were certainly controversial and therefore made for great protagonists. I certainly have to give Laura credit for her strength and perseverance, however by the end of the book I realised there was more of her old-self in her than maybe she appreciated. Her thought-pattern and language towards the end of the story slightly surprised me and I liked the way Slaughter still found ways to catch me off guard even as the book was drawing to a close. In contrast to Laura, I found Andy's timidity to be somewhat exasperating and certainly there were times within the book when I just wanted to give her a hard slap and tell her to ‘get a grip’ or 'man up'. However this facet of her character was a great contrast to her cool and confident mother. It was interesting to read and consider the dichotomy between Andy's extremely timid/nervous nature, whereby she struggles to even speak to people at times, and the fact that she was flouting her mother's instructions and travelling alone around the US hunting down potentially dangerous people merely to gain some insight into her mother's past. This hints toward some hidden depths (whether due to strength or stubbornness) in Andy, which makes her seek answers to her questions despite the extent of her fears.

The book is a great balance between edge-of-the-seat thrilling and psychological analysis, and the story is well plotted and well written, making it a compelling read. Pieces of Her is a tale of destruction, lies, abuse and manipulation. It provides a fascinating exploration of family relationships, morality and human nature.

Another great book from Slaughter and proof, yet again, of why she is one of today's most popular crime writers.

This was very different to any of Karin Slaughter's previous novels that I've read. I really liked it.

Like her previous stand-alone, The Good Daughter, Pieces of Her abandons the police procedural (or medical examiner procedural?) in favour of telling the story from the perspectives of the victims.

It opens with a fairly horrific inciting incident, a shooting in a coffee shop. This seems to be fairly par for the course with these books, though in the current political climate reading about any mass public shooting like this can be tough.

Then the book goes down a wonderful, mystery thriller route. Andy needs to make sense of her mother's past to understand what's happening to her in the present, and she needs to do that while on the run from mysterious assassins. The story unfolds at a great pace, with the mysteries slowly becoming clear, mixed with flash back scenes that show us Andy's mother as a young woman. It's not like the murder mystery I was expecting, but it pulled me along on a thrilling ride.

I am a bit of a fan of Karin Slaughter and the way she writes. As usual this one opens with a shocking scene and then the rest unravels.

I didn't enjoy this as much as the Good Daughter as I felt the pace dropped in places. However it has still got all the things I like: complicated characters, fast paced and keeps you guessing.

I usually love Karin Slaughter books but this was quite a disappointment. The story seemed to drag out and there was none of her usual drama or intrigue. It's not going to stop me reading her books, but it's a long way from her best.

This was a real let down.
The main character was so weak and the whole story line was totally unrealistic.
Far from the authors best.

Veteran author Karin Slaughter really sinks her teeth into this great- but decidedly weird- book about cults and family. The story itself is split between Andrea, who witnesses her mother, Laura, perform an extraordinary act of self-defence in a restaurant one day- and Laura herself, whose backstory we cover in detail as Andi tries to find out just who she is.

Though there were several parts where I felt lost, the story itself is full of mystery and violence, laid atop a slowly unravelling mystery that unfolds across its two storylines. Slaughter excels at writing fully-rounded characters that leap from the page, and it’s no different here: we watch Laura develop from a scared girl into the person we see in the present day, as we do with Andi as she tries to make sense of a world that’s spiralling out of control. It’s fast-paced, if a little convoluted, and, with a backstory all about domestic terrorism, it’s certainly very different to anything else you’ll pick up this winter!

You know, I was beyond stoked when I got my hands on this book. You all know how deep a love I have for Karin Slaughter's work, and there are few authors I get as excited about when they have a new book coming, so I was over the moon when I got my paws on this. My joy, however, was short lived.

It is not that I hated Pieces of Her, not at all, but I did not find it nearly as thrilling or as well crafted as Slaughter's other work. I didn't like any of the characters, which in and of itself is not something that would ruin a book for me, it's just that I wasn't keen on the story. Usually I am fascinated with cults, I really am, and I was interested to see where this would go, and in parts it is really good, and others it is just... bland.

I was so interested to read about the relationship between Andy and Laura, but it never really felt real for me. I did like Gordon. I seriously thought we had some espionage thriller on our hands, and then it went another way. I am seriously struggling to write a review for this. I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. I just found it to be a bit of a chore to read in the sense that it did not hook me and take me captive, where I just had to know what was going on every second of the way. It is, without a doubt, the most disappointing Slaughter read I have ever read. That is all I can really say on it.

Another stonker from Slaughter!

How a thriller should be written.

Amazing characters, incredible strong independent women.

LOVED it!

A perfect read.
Completely different from previous novels, full of twists and turns. Relatable characters whom I would be ready to find again in a further novel