I committed the cardinal readers’ sin with this one – I watched the show before reading the book. I love Toni Collette, and I thought she did such a fantastic job that I wanted more, which is when I searched out the book from my library and devoured it.
This story starts dramatically with a shooting at a mall where Andrea and her mother, Laura, are spending some time together. This event is over quickly, but the life Andrea had before bears little resemblance to the life she finds herself in once the dust has settled. Nothing is the same – most of all her idea of who her mother is. And that’s just the beginning. The story quickly picks up the pace with further threats, attacks, and a long stint on the run while following a trail of clues to her mother’s past that will take Andrea in a direction she never could have predicted.
This is a thriller, but it’s not your standard bad guy does bad things, good guy faces danger to bring them to justice story. This one has layers, history, complexity. It even has inherited intrigue that passed from mother to daughter, which was something I haven’t read before. It’s one that’s impossible to start and not finish, because there are so many twists and turns that keep you flipping pages. It did lag a bit at the beginning of the second half, though I wonder if that was at least partly because I had seen the show and knew the reveal that was being teased out.
I enjoyed the book, I thought it handled the suspense quite well for the most part, and the characters were well written. I didn’t like the character of Andrea as much in the book, though, and I also found the bits that teased out Laura’s history dragged a bit and though they shared info I needed, I didn’t really enjoy the process of getting that information, if that makes sense. I read them really just wanting to get back to Andrea’s and Laura’s present. That might have been more to do with me than the book, though, as the storyline just wasn’t as interesting to me and I already knew a lot of the plot points. I’d be interested to hear if anyone who read the book before watching the show (or who hasn’t seen the show) had a different experience.
If you’ve watched the show, there are still surprises here. There’s a lot more detail about Laura’s previous life and family, a lot more about the people she was involved with and her family. The ending is also different, though obviously I can’t say how. So while there is a section that might feel a bit slow, even in those pages there’s detail and insight that will build on what you already know that’s worth reading for.
What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all . . . ?
Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we?
But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out that before Laura was Laura, she was someone completely different. For nearly thirty years she’s been hiding from her previous identity, lying low in the hope that no one would ever find her. But now she’s been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again.
The police want answers and Laura’s innocence is on the line, but she won’t speak to anyone, including her own daughter. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumb trail of her mother’s past. And if she can’t uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either one of them. . . . – Goodreads
Book Title: Pieces of Her
Author: Karin Slaughter
Series: Yes – Andrea Oliver #1
Edition: Audiobook
Published By: William Morrow/Audible
Released: May 3, 2022
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Intrigue, Family
Pages: 512
Date Read: January 22-26, 2023
Rating: 6/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.83/5 (100,013 ratings)