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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
tense
medium-paced
This was my first Karin Slaughter read ever, and it may be because it’s in the middle of a series, but it literally only got two stars because only the first 10 pages, then about 150 pages toward the middle/end (where they started figuring things out) were even interesting to me.
Characters I liked:
Jeffery, Sara, Lev (ish), Esther, and the secretary.
Characters I couldn’t stand:
Lena (hate finding out she’s in every Grant County book, likely won’t read more in this series because of her), Paul, Cole, Dale, Betty, Terri, and Carrie.
When one of the 3 main characters is annoyingly fickle, emotional, and unstable it really puts a damper on the book. Especially when she’s supposed to be a detective and is scared of every male besides Jeffrey. I get it was a trauma response and what happened to her sucks, but due to that, I would deem her unfit to be a partner to the head detective because she freezes up in any tense or aggressive situation. I’m not insensitive to what happened to her, just how she was absolutely crippled by it until the very end. Even her solution at the end feels crazy because does it fix her problem? Yes, for 10 years. Is it a super illegal answer to a detective’s personal issue? Yes, absolutely. He likely would’ve been thrown back in if they knew he was beating her since he was on parole.
It could’ve gone down SO differently at Terri’s house if Lena would’ve paid attention and used her head. I was honestly just annoyed by her responses to almost everything that happened throughout the case.
ALSO can we please not send Dale’s children back to him?!? The SHERRIFF saying “I don’t know if he’ll get custody again” when they all know he repeatedly laid hands on his wife and joked about poisoning her. Adopt those babies! Find them a safe place! Lev or Esther are family and SO much safer than Dale. Heck no.
I wanted to love this because I’ve heard awesome things about Slaughter’s writing, and honestly if Lena was left out of the story I probably would’ve liked it so much more. Her personality reminds me of Vic from the Longmire series, who I also found extremely annoying, but Vic appeared tougher and more resilient. Maybe this was just a bad book for her…but it was, indeed.
Characters I liked:
Jeffery, Sara, Lev (ish), Esther, and the secretary.
Characters I couldn’t stand:
Lena (hate finding out she’s in every Grant County book, likely won’t read more in this series because of her), Paul, Cole, Dale, Betty, Terri, and Carrie.
When one of the 3 main characters is annoyingly fickle, emotional, and unstable it really puts a damper on the book. Especially when she’s supposed to be a detective and is scared of every male besides Jeffrey. I get it was a trauma response and what happened to her sucks, but due to that, I would deem her unfit to be a partner to the head detective because she freezes up in any tense or aggressive situation. I’m not insensitive to what happened to her, just how she was absolutely crippled by it until the very end. Even her solution at the end feels crazy because does it fix her problem? Yes, for 10 years. Is it a super illegal answer to a detective’s personal issue? Yes, absolutely. He likely would’ve been thrown back in if they knew he was beating her since he was on parole.
It could’ve gone down SO differently at Terri’s house if Lena would’ve paid attention and used her head. I was honestly just annoyed by her responses to almost everything that happened throughout the case.
ALSO can we please not send Dale’s children back to him?!? The SHERRIFF saying “I don’t know if he’ll get custody again” when they all know he repeatedly laid hands on his wife and joked about poisoning her. Adopt those babies! Find them a safe place! Lev or Esther are family and SO much safer than Dale. Heck no.
I wanted to love this because I’ve heard awesome things about Slaughter’s writing, and honestly if Lena was left out of the story I probably would’ve liked it so much more. Her personality reminds me of Vic from the Longmire series, who I also found extremely annoying, but Vic appeared tougher and more resilient. Maybe this was just a bad book for her…but it was, indeed.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Read on my Kindle. Solid Karin Slaughter novel! Didn't love, didn't hate, but definitely enjoyed it. It's easy to get lost in these ones. Only 1 more in the Grant County series, which I'll read soon. I'll be trying to start Will Trent soon, with the new book announced!
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
The dynamic of sara and Jeff was started to annoy me because all they do is argue about whether they should be together or not.
The actual story was good and despite it seeming to go in the way of a cult it didn’t. Though I get the impression that the author really likes to use religious fanatics in her stories. Is America really like that?
The actual story was good and despite it seeming to go in the way of a cult it didn’t. Though I get the impression that the author really likes to use religious fanatics in her stories. Is America really like that?
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Why do men beat up women? Karin Slaughter tries to make sense of it in 'Faithless', book five in the Grant County mystery series.
The larger question is why do many of the women who are beaten up by men insist on staying with their abusers? Why do mothers allow their babies to get beaten up, and/or exposed to living with the constant fear and brutality of men? What do mothers think they are protecting their kids from by staying with a man quick to hit? Staying with an abusive man most certainly prevents kids from having any sense of people being decent, kind, and affectionate, whether their moms do it inadvertently or intentionally! Or are mothers hoping the man will destroy the kids emotionally from creating any healthy attachments to a family life, if not physically breaking the kids, as daddy most certainly is doing?
I know for some women, it's about financial survival. For others, it's because they made babies with their abusers and they have a fantasy life of a loving family "with a few problems - every family has problems." For religious women, they believe God either is punishing them for sins or they believe getting a divorce will enrage God into damning their souls to even worse perdition. Many women can't understand why they stay, or why they find another man that beats them too if they leave or are left by an abuser. Women also truly love their abusive monster man.
I lived with an abuser. My dad. I hated him and I was scared to death of him. He was 6 foot 2 inches and outweighed me by over a hundred pounds when we were both adults. He never touched my mother. He was very glad I rarely had anything to do with him and my mother anymore when I began to support myself. He always said he loved me, but he was relieved when I got married and only visited infrequently when my mother demanded it.
I knew for my entire life how I felt about him without mixed feelings at all - pure unadulterated hatred. But I tried to be civil and obedient mostly because of fear. When he died of cancer, I never felt a second of grief. I had dry eyes throughout the service that his church and my brother arranged for him. Decades later (he died when I was 34 years old and I am almost 70 today), I still recall him today with total disgust and hatred.
I was prepared to do the right things - shop, clean - when he was dying of cancer, but he didn't ask me in the end to help him after all. Before he was too sick, he visited me and my husband in California where we lived and worked. He still lived in another state where I was born in the same rundown small house where my mother had died four years before. Later, my brother told me he had wanted to move near me so I could be his nurse's aide. But instead he returned to his house after almost two weeks. He told my brother there weren't enough bathrooms in San Francisco (????). I don't think that was the real reason.
When he was sleeping on the couch in my husband's and my apartment (we had a one bedroom), I went out to the living room after my husband fell asleep to ask my dad why he had beat me. He said, "Because to teach you, because I loved you, because you needed punishment." I KNEW this was bullshit, gentle reader.
I read a lot. I had heard about other dads at work and at school. I had seen other families at home. I knew other dads did not beat their kids bloody over what I now knew were minor infractions or nothing at all. I knew other dads wanted their kids to go to college. I knew dads played games with their kids on weekends, took them out to movies, went to places like Disneyland on vacations, etc. He never once, not once, took us kids traveling anywhere except three times to visit his mother and married sisters in North Dakota and then drove straight back home. He never once set a foot inside any of my schools despite that I won scholar awards. He did not pay for any extracurricular activities or clubs like scouts or music, dance, or sports lessons for us. We never went together as a family roller skating, or swimming, or to a fair or to a concert. We saw a couple of summer aquashows at a lake. We went to fireworks a few times on July Fourth. He once tried to help my brother join a sport team. He took us once to a Boeing Day to show my mother the factory where he worked. He took us to a couple of baseball games because he got free tickets. But my dad mostly went to work, watched TV, ate my mother's cooking or his own, went fishing, went to church, and terrorized us at dinner or weekends when he was upset from work or he was mad at my mother (my mother was a chronic alcoholic, and sometimes disappeared for days, and she went out almost every night to taverns despite her work as a nurse's aide -frequently fired). That's it. I was ALWAYS scared when I had to be with him. I kept away from him as much as I could get away with. But he didn't want to be with us, either.
After us kids left home, he did some more relaxed traveling to relatives. He went out to restaurants to eat every weekend. He went out a lot where he enjoyed to go with my mother, fairs, parks, and did rowboating and fishing. He bought mom all the beer and alcohol she wanted. He did not really have a lot of varied interests. After my mother died, he became religious again, attending church regularly. Then he got cancer. Again. He had had cancer in his early twenties, and twice after us kids had left home. The third time killed him.
He had never supported or helped me when I was a child other than to provide a roof and food - important minimums. But we worked cleaning and doing yardwork all weekend every weekend.
I never had liked him or loved him. I did not know he wouldn't survive the third time of cancer or how sick he was. I worked 40 hours a week when he came to visit us. But I kept my temper, kept quiet. I had a question which had already burned out my heart towards him into a black cinder. Why had he beat me for twenty-two years? I kept it simple.
I questioned him again and again, repeating myself for an hour despite his proclaimed '"love, duty as a father" etc. I told him that couldn't be true, he had beaten me so hard I had to stay home from school so often over this or that, he never wanted to do things pleasantly with us, always mean - over minor or nothing things. Why had he beaten me?
Finally, at almost two a.m., he told me.
"I hated you. I hated being a father. I hated having the responsibility. I was sorry I had had kids. I was sorry I married. I didn't like kids and I didn't know it would be like that. I hated you for being there. I had dreams where I tied you up, put you and your brother and mother inside a car, and pushed you over a cliff to die. I felt so happy, free. I wished you all would die, go away forever, disappear."
I nodded, got up, went to bed. I did not see much of him for the next two days, did not talk to him, then he left for Seattle when I was at work. He never tried to enlist me as his cancer caretaker again. He lived for three more years.
'Faithless' is very good, and Slaughter did it all in six days.
The larger question is why do many of the women who are beaten up by men insist on staying with their abusers? Why do mothers allow their babies to get beaten up, and/or exposed to living with the constant fear and brutality of men? What do mothers think they are protecting their kids from by staying with a man quick to hit? Staying with an abusive man most certainly prevents kids from having any sense of people being decent, kind, and affectionate, whether their moms do it inadvertently or intentionally! Or are mothers hoping the man will destroy the kids emotionally from creating any healthy attachments to a family life, if not physically breaking the kids, as daddy most certainly is doing?
I know for some women, it's about financial survival. For others, it's because they made babies with their abusers and they have a fantasy life of a loving family "with a few problems - every family has problems." For religious women, they believe God either is punishing them for sins or they believe getting a divorce will enrage God into damning their souls to even worse perdition. Many women can't understand why they stay, or why they find another man that beats them too if they leave or are left by an abuser. Women also truly love their abusive monster man.
I lived with an abuser. My dad. I hated him and I was scared to death of him. He was 6 foot 2 inches and outweighed me by over a hundred pounds when we were both adults. He never touched my mother. He was very glad I rarely had anything to do with him and my mother anymore when I began to support myself. He always said he loved me, but he was relieved when I got married and only visited infrequently when my mother demanded it.
I knew for my entire life how I felt about him without mixed feelings at all - pure unadulterated hatred. But I tried to be civil and obedient mostly because of fear. When he died of cancer, I never felt a second of grief. I had dry eyes throughout the service that his church and my brother arranged for him. Decades later (he died when I was 34 years old and I am almost 70 today), I still recall him today with total disgust and hatred.
I was prepared to do the right things - shop, clean - when he was dying of cancer, but he didn't ask me in the end to help him after all. Before he was too sick, he visited me and my husband in California where we lived and worked. He still lived in another state where I was born in the same rundown small house where my mother had died four years before. Later, my brother told me he had wanted to move near me so I could be his nurse's aide. But instead he returned to his house after almost two weeks. He told my brother there weren't enough bathrooms in San Francisco (????). I don't think that was the real reason.
When he was sleeping on the couch in my husband's and my apartment (we had a one bedroom), I went out to the living room after my husband fell asleep to ask my dad why he had beat me. He said, "Because to teach you, because I loved you, because you needed punishment." I KNEW this was bullshit, gentle reader.
I read a lot. I had heard about other dads at work and at school. I had seen other families at home. I knew other dads did not beat their kids bloody over what I now knew were minor infractions or nothing at all. I knew other dads wanted their kids to go to college. I knew dads played games with their kids on weekends, took them out to movies, went to places like Disneyland on vacations, etc. He never once, not once, took us kids traveling anywhere except three times to visit his mother and married sisters in North Dakota and then drove straight back home. He never once set a foot inside any of my schools despite that I won scholar awards. He did not pay for any extracurricular activities or clubs like scouts or music, dance, or sports lessons for us. We never went together as a family roller skating, or swimming, or to a fair or to a concert. We saw a couple of summer aquashows at a lake. We went to fireworks a few times on July Fourth. He once tried to help my brother join a sport team. He took us once to a Boeing Day to show my mother the factory where he worked. He took us to a couple of baseball games because he got free tickets. But my dad mostly went to work, watched TV, ate my mother's cooking or his own, went fishing, went to church, and terrorized us at dinner or weekends when he was upset from work or he was mad at my mother (my mother was a chronic alcoholic, and sometimes disappeared for days, and she went out almost every night to taverns despite her work as a nurse's aide -frequently fired). That's it. I was ALWAYS scared when I had to be with him. I kept away from him as much as I could get away with. But he didn't want to be with us, either.
After us kids left home, he did some more relaxed traveling to relatives. He went out to restaurants to eat every weekend. He went out a lot where he enjoyed to go with my mother, fairs, parks, and did rowboating and fishing. He bought mom all the beer and alcohol she wanted. He did not really have a lot of varied interests. After my mother died, he became religious again, attending church regularly. Then he got cancer. Again. He had had cancer in his early twenties, and twice after us kids had left home. The third time killed him.
He had never supported or helped me when I was a child other than to provide a roof and food - important minimums. But we worked cleaning and doing yardwork all weekend every weekend.
I never had liked him or loved him. I did not know he wouldn't survive the third time of cancer or how sick he was. I worked 40 hours a week when he came to visit us. But I kept my temper, kept quiet. I had a question which had already burned out my heart towards him into a black cinder. Why had he beat me for twenty-two years? I kept it simple.
I questioned him again and again, repeating myself for an hour despite his proclaimed '"love, duty as a father" etc. I told him that couldn't be true, he had beaten me so hard I had to stay home from school so often over this or that, he never wanted to do things pleasantly with us, always mean - over minor or nothing things. Why had he beaten me?
Finally, at almost two a.m., he told me.
"I hated you. I hated being a father. I hated having the responsibility. I was sorry I had had kids. I was sorry I married. I didn't like kids and I didn't know it would be like that. I hated you for being there. I had dreams where I tied you up, put you and your brother and mother inside a car, and pushed you over a cliff to die. I felt so happy, free. I wished you all would die, go away forever, disappear."
I nodded, got up, went to bed. I did not see much of him for the next two days, did not talk to him, then he left for Seattle when I was at work. He never tried to enlist me as his cancer caretaker again. He lived for three more years.
'Faithless' is very good, and Slaughter did it all in six days.
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced