Speechless over how fiercely intelligent and empathetic this regency romance is. And funny—it’s so funny! This love story, featuring a neurodivergent Speechless over how fiercely intelligent and empathetic this regency romance is. And funny—it’s so funny! This love story, featuring a neurodivergent genius of a heroine, is infinitely patient and poignantly unusual and swooningly tender.
I love her, I love him, I love the writing, I love the scientific/mathematic/literary references, and most importantly, I love the author.
WOW. With two degrees from Harvard and this lovely pearl of a book, who needs traditional editing/publishing?...more
I didn’t mind the slow burn of the previous three books, but this one really had nothing to say. Everything that made this series interesting (his briI didn’t mind the slow burn of the previous three books, but this one really had nothing to say. Everything that made this series interesting (his brilliance, the well-thought out and realistic minutiae of her job as a concierge to wealthy people, his son) took a back seat here, so the meandering plot, repetitious phrasing and pet names just became more obvious.
2.5 stars for a book that probably didn’t need to exist....more
I'm always interested in learning about what makes people tick, so this was absolutely fascinating to me, and certainly broadens your understanding ofI'm always interested in learning about what makes people tick, so this was absolutely fascinating to me, and certainly broadens your understanding of what a sociopath is or can be.
A couple of good interviews that give a feel for the content:
Note that she uses the term "sociopath," which has fallen out of favor rather than the generally accepted antisocial personality disorder as listed in the DSM-5, with her reasoning outlined early in the book. I've seen a lot of discussion questioning her claims and even her credentials; I acknowledge that you probably have to take anything an admitted liar says to you with a grain of salt, but human behavior is not a monolith and she explicitly states that these are her experiences and anyone seeking further diagnostics or treatment should refer to other sources.
I also really appreciate the rare case of the author writing this as someone who lived these experiences who later became a therapist--it offers unique professional insight and context combined with personal anecdotes, much in the way Scared Selfless did. The descriptions of her observing social norms, her anxiety, her triggers, and her unusual coping mechanisms were riveting and I blew through this in a day. As a fellow Angeleno, I also enjoyed traveling through the city with her and dropping in on familiar places. And I appreciated her acknowledging, very early on, the position of privilege she occupies even as she learns to adjust to living in a world that she doesn't always understand, and that rarely understands her.
Audio Notes: This is also one of the rare cases when an author narrating her own life is very well done. (She has a background in entertainment, which helps!) She's calm but engaging, and I couldn't have asked for a better audiobook experience. Hat tip to the editor too, who insisted on an epilogue because he wanted readers to leave feeling a little more hopeful about life. The original ending would've left us in emotional limbo....more
So much fun! Started out sort of typically, but then my ears perked up at a particular spot and it got better and better as it went along.
Acid-sharp So much fun! Started out sort of typically, but then my ears perked up at a particular spot and it got better and better as it went along.
Acid-sharp writing and shrewd, ego-centric characters playing cat and mouse. It's interesting that Sutanto wields her canny pen with such knowing insights into publishing, marketing, and the complex love-admiration-hate relationships with which so many authors seem to circle each other. She also believably portrays neurodiversity, narcissism, female friendships, and sociopathy with assured style and humor. I also appreciated one character's re-examination of everything she thought she knew about herself and her relationships, which was approached with just the right touch--though I'm curious what the end means for the character in that respect! It's fun to speculate.
Similar themes as the excellent Death of a Bookseller, but with more thriller elements and wider scope. I very much enjoyed this and am excited to read the author's other books.
Audio Notes: This is a case where I borrowed this book because I saw that Saskia Maarleveld voices one of the characters, so a happy find indeed. All the audio performances are terrific, perfectly shading the words of each character with fixed intensity, careless arrogance, and manipulative charm. A very nice marriage of text and interpretation....more
Not sure what to do with this one. Not really a thriller, though there are crimes, not really YA but not really adult either? It’s released under S&S’Not sure what to do with this one. Not really a thriller, though there are crimes, not really YA but not really adult either? It’s released under S&S’s Gallery Books so I guess it’s supposed to be adult.
I have read a lot of books lately that have been upsetting for the somewhat cavalier way they handled serious issues—to name just a few recent releases, The September House, None of this is True, and Everyone Here is Lying. The highest praise I have for this book is that that is NOT the case here—the author really puts you in the mindset of the main character, who is bipolar and experiences so many thoughts and emotions it was sometimes difficult to keep up. The author’s note at the end says she did a lot of research and I totally believe her—you feel the MC’s paranoia and nerves and fixed interest and anxiety in a visceral way, and her mental health issues and the reactions to her personality are portrayed in a seemingly realistic manner. It’s very clear that doing justice to this character was important to the author and she makes it important to us.
Having said that, it’s kind of too much of a good thing. There is so much focus on getting you into Sarah’s head that the mystery plot takes a bit of a back seat, and the relationships with her mom and other students could have used a little more time to balance it all out—and the villains and motivations could have been more convincing. It’s also exhausting to be so much in Sarah’s head, honestly. I appreciated how well the writing described her jittery thoughts and the feelings that bounced around like a ping pong ball, but it takes up a lot of head space—and the amount of time devoted to her illness overrides most other aspects of her personality as well. I had to keep setting this aside so many times and nearly didn’t finish.
But something kept pulling me back, even though I could tell I was going to have mixed feelings about it. If you’d told me the author of the Black Daggerhood Brothers series could write a book like this, I’m not sure I would have believed you. But there is a lot of potential here and a lot of good stuff, and with a little reshaping, I think this one could’ve been really good. It’ll be interesting to see if she tackles more ambitious projects like this one in the future.
2.5 stars
Audio Notes: The voice used for Sarah’s narration is very good and most of the secondary ones are as well. The voices used for Nick and Strots felt a little off to me, though. But not a big deal, I was more distracted because one of the prominent names in this is also the name of an old boss, which grated a bit!...more
I guessed the answer immediately, but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book at all! I would have liked a little more time spent on how the death ofI guessed the answer immediately, but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book at all! I would have liked a little more time spent on how the death of one character would have had a tremendous impact on another who trusted and relied upon her (and there were a couple of moments when the language seemed anachronistic), but I very much like this series....more
3.5 stars for merit, less than that on personal feeling. General spoilers below, though you can tell most of what’s discussed by reading between the l3.5 stars for merit, less than that on personal feeling. General spoilers below, though you can tell most of what’s discussed by reading between the lines of the dust jacket.
My overall feeling: I don’t need for absolutely everything to be connected.
Over the course of 20+ years, Slaughter has slowly unveiled a lot of shocking information, or revelations about previously unknown facts that lend extra weight and poignancy to the history and relationships we know. She’s done it with incredibly hard scenarios, even circling back with dead characters, and most of the time it’s been done with a judicious, compassionate eye.
But I just couldn’t buy into the number of threads binding everything together in this novel, nor do I think they add significant layers to the existing story. To name just a few, over the years, we went from Faith’s dedication to her job as a cop/GBI agent back to her mom Evelyn’s job as a cop and now Faith’s son Jeremy getting involved in the investigation. Amanda’s ties to Faith and Evelyn have always felt strong, but I didn’t love Criminal’s deep dive into her past, and I have very mixed feelings on Amanda’s ongoing interference in Will’s childhood, career, and present life. It’s all just too conveniently—and not always convincingly—tied together.
Most of all, however, I feel such unease about taking one of the most defining, heart-wrenching moments in Sara Linton’s life—her rape when she was a young doctor—and turning it into part of a organized conspiracy 16 books later. The main plot, centered around a group of men who have a ridiculously regimented rape club, introduces and assembles whole new characters and histories and feels like a lurid CSI: Georgia episode. Does it do her a disservice to relegate this experience to a footnote in their games? Does it change how we look on violent crimes against women? Do her pain and altered life trajectory have further meaning because they’re now been made to be part of a bigger story? The fact is, finding meaning in crime in real life is often a futile exercise. What happens to victims of crime is often all the more tragic precisely because it is so random.
This retconning of Sara’s history feels lacking in genuine purpose and feeling. It really upsets me, actually, even as I appreciate how Slaughter continues to build on Will and Sara together and can acknowledge the technical skill in how the plot unfolds. I don’t know. I feel very unsettled and disappointed, in part because I just went through and reread the entire Grant County and Will Trent series, which are still overall unbeatable thrillers in terms of writing and plotting and character development.
Sara is an incredible character. (view spoiler)[I mean, two books ago, while in captivity, the woman doggedly broke rigor mortis on a corpse’s fingers and then used her fucking teeth to close up the fist again so the hidden message would remain undiscovered. (hide spoiler)] I have not been a fan of how she, who has always been a main character and driving force of these books, has been sidelined in the titles for presumably marketing reasons--they are just as much her books as they are Will’s (and several of the titles refer directly to her). But I didn’t expect that any Slaughter book’s content would ever do the same to Sara's history. Before this book, Sara had come to terms with what had happened to her, and was at peace with the fact that those who knew her did not see her as a victim, but as the tough, kind, intelligent person that she is.
Sara fought hard not to let that one moment define her. But here we are, forcing her to relive her trauma yet again....more
This is more of what I wanted out of The Quiet Tenant but that one never really got there. It comes close to the same anxious, helpJust...devastating.
This is more of what I wanted out of The Quiet Tenant but that one never really got there. It comes close to the same anxious, helpless feelings that Mo Hayder’s Jack Caffery series gave me. More thoughts when I can think about this a little more rationally.
But please, if the synopsis intrigues you at all, pick this one up. I'll just be huddled under a blanket whimpering quietly in the meantime.
4.5 stars
Audio Notes: The audio version is EXCELLENT. Highly recommended. ...more
— The first quarter of the book is most of the romance. The rest is mostly centered around her unexpected I didn’t love this the way so many seem to.
— The first quarter of the book is most of the romance. The rest is mostly centered around her unexpected pregnancy, which is a trope I don’t necessarily mind, but it’s just so not rewarding here. So much negotiating, so many misunderstandings/minor scenarios to be navigated, and endless logistics I didn’t care about.
— He’s pretty appealing, but really seems too good to be true. His fairly immediate acceptance of the situation and uprooting his life so quickly to move to another country after a two-night stand seems fairly sudden and unbelievable.
— She chooses to have the baby. His ex terminated her pregnancy/became distant/didn’t tell him/was also cheating. While I don’t necessarily think the author meant to do good girl/bad girl or to demonize abortion, the fact remains this is the scenario presented. Even if there was an abortion that left him conflicted—isn’t that enough to break them up without the emotional distance and infidelity? It just felt like piling on, even though this character is absent and not even mentioned that much.
— Honestly, at the risk of sounding unsympathetic, it’s also really hard at times to enjoy being in Lizzie’s head. I appreciate the attempt to show a neuro-diverse heroine, but in the context of a fluffy rom-com, the efforts to make it exactingly realistic added to her determinedly quirky, strong (sometimes aggressive) personality, compounded by the choice to have her be wildly accident-prone, unable to cope with everyday life, etc. added up to a pretty exhausting read. And at one point, she literally blurts out at a restaurant that her boyfriend has a huge dick, and at another function—for his work, where his boss is present—she writes “Sek C.Baudy” on a name tag. (It was a mixup that it ended up on her chest, but still. And then she causes trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres to crash down.)
Actually, how you react to those two things probably is a good indicator of how you’d feel about the heroine and book as a whole. To me, this had its moments, but overall it was never as funny or charming as it wanted to be.
I was in the mood to read a romance, and I’m usually able to follow where authors want to take me, but here, there just wasn’t enough payoff for me in terms of the characters or relationship to make it worthwhile....more
Just think about how many seeds have been planted in the past two decades to make this story. Respectful tip o'the hat, Ms. Slaughter.Just think about how many seeds have been planted in the past two decades to make this story. Respectful tip o'the hat, Ms. Slaughter....more
Precision plotting and tension lead up to a shocking revelation. All throughout, we know Sara has been kidnappStunningly, unbelievably prescient. Wow.
Precision plotting and tension lead up to a shocking revelation. All throughout, we know Sara has been kidnapped along with a CDC officer and they are being held by a loony cult that is planning something big. (view spoiler)[Towards the end, we discover that a large group of men--many of them white supremacists and ex-military--are storming the Georgia Capitol. The Last Widow was published in 2019, which means Slaughter wrote this a minimum of three years before the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (hide spoiler)] There are so many direct parallels between the lead up to the two events, and when I first realized what was happening, I literally got chills and screamed a little in my bed.
Re-reading in 2023, I appreciate the masterful character work, incredible action, and emotion even more. To be more than two decades into a series (and I do count Grant County + Will Trent as one big series, so please don't @ me) and still deliver so many surprises, revelations, and thrills is an unbelievable feat. Probably my favorite Slaughter book after Triptych....more
Wendy Darling
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