Complicated ,gritty thriller,well written and engrossing. I had worked out who done it,but the story kept me intrigued. The mix of stories from past to present worked well.

Not entirely sure where to start... First of all this book was amazing, second of all I have so much to say and when I read this book I had no one to talk about it with!!! Third of all, this review is going to have spoilers in it. I will put a massive spoiler warning before I get to those bits though! :)
The Silent Wife is Karin Slaughter's 20th book and it is a continuation of the Will Trent series. After a little run of standalones - Pieces of her, The Good Daugher - Karin gave us The Last Widow last year, and now The Silent Wife to give us our fill of Will and Sara.
The blurb tells us that there is a brutal murder case (always) that Will and Sara need to solve. The tricksy bit is, that the MO is similar to a murder 8 years ago (I'll come back to this time frame later) however there is already someone in prison for that crime. Sara and Will need to go back and solve the original case before they can solve the latest one.
OK this is where I have to say SPOILER ALERT AHEAD. If you are going to read the book PLEASE don't read on. I really really want you going into this book blind, it will be so worth it, I promise.
I'd recommend reading the series from the start, but you can read it on it's own. You'd get more out of it if you read from the beginning though :)
Remember Jeffrey? Ahhhh Jeffrey. I love Jeffrey. Always have been, and always will be, Team Jeffrey. So this book brings back our favourite small town police chief. Karin teased us with this last month on her various social media platforms and since then I have been waiting for a chance to read this book.
The original murder case was Jeffrey and Lena's (Pah Stupid Woman), and the book jumps back and forth between present day and back then. I liked this format and it was really well done, and easy to read. It flowed the way it should and I never didn't know what time period I was in.
The earlier story was during the time between Sara and Jeffrey's two marriages, so - to put it mildly - they weren't on good terms.
Now, I said I'd come back to the time thing... well KS put a note at the end of the book to explain that although the original story in the book is set 8 years previously, in fact it has been 19 years since Blindsighted - she just said that it's fiction and she can do what ever she wants basically :) Which I wholeheartedly agree with - however, I wold have appreciated this note before I read the book because I was constantly thinking I was going a bit crazy with my timings.
Also there is a bit where it says Lena is 32, and has 15 years police experience behind her - I make her 17 , then, when she became a cop?! I think I must have misread or misunderstood a bit somewhere, but that stayed with me for a bit.
Anyway, that isn't important.
In regards to the series - Grant or Trent - I have always preferred the Grant County Series of books. Probably because I read them first and I am loyal to my favourite book - Blindsighted. So I was really glad to be able to revisit the old town and set of characters from back then. I loved being back in a small town, where everybody knows everybody, and we are amongst old friends.
The Lintons - Tessa, Eddie and Cathy. Brock. Marla. The police squad - Frank, Matt, Lena. I am 100% not a fan of Loser Lena, as you will know from ANY of my other Grant County reviews .
The original murder was of a college student, out in the woods near the college. She was brutally attacked and left for dead, the offender using his knowledge of anatomy to paralyse her so that she was still alive during his sickening abuse, but couldn't move. Loser Lena makes a nearly fatal error of not checking properly if the girl is alive or dead - costing her half an hour of time where the victim could've been receiving medical treatment.
When Sara and Will eventually solve the case and the bad guy/gal was revealed, I was a bit gutted that it was them. About 60% of the way in, I started cottoning on to the idea that it could be them, and then at 90% when it was confirmed I was a bit.... saddened. And I think you will be too, if you have followed the whole series.
Running along in the background is the ongoing story between Will and Sara and the will they/won't they get married storyline. This rumbles on throughout the book, and although I enjoyed it, I did want to shake them both at points and just bash their heads together.
Faith and Amanda are both back. As is Nick Shelton. I love Nick, he is adorable. I've said before that I think he and Sara should've got together in another world where Jeffrey didn't exist.
So overall this was a fantastic book, a great addition to the Will Trent series. I am pretty sure that we won't see Jeffrey again though, which upsets me no end. But then I thought that after Skin Privilege and here we are! :)
Sorry that this was such a babbling review, but as I said at the start, I've had no one to talk about this book to!! Definitely read this if you are a thriller fan, a KS fan, if you want gore and violence and plenty of small town nuances. KS writes very gory details and the level of violence in this book is another level. I think it is probably at the very top of my threshold for reading about, but as she mentions in a passage after the book - she has always written gritty books about violence against women and she believes it is a story that needs telling.
Ok I'll leave it there. If you've made it this far, well done!

I’ve been a fan of Karin Slaughter’s for 20 years now. I devoured her books but I hit a wall with her last 3 books, for me they weren’t typical Slaughter stories. But, with this one she is back to what she does best - classic whodunnit, police procedural and the most amazing characters, with a jump back to the past. I haven’t put the book down in two days, loved it!

Special Agent Will Trent and his partner Special Agent Faith Mitchell of the GBI are called to investigate when a prisoner is murdered during a prison riot.
While there they receive a note from one of the prisoners, Daryl Nesbitt claiming he will give them information into the murder if they agree to look into a crime he was widely believed to be guilty of. Jeffrey Tolliver, Lena Adams and the Grant County police force were wrong to assume his guilt and that more women have died as a result.
Dr Sara Linton, Will’s girlfriend, is Jeffrey Tollivers widow so Will knows he is going to have to tread very carefully.
Digging back into the old crime raises more questions than Will expected and it quickly becomes apparent that Nesbitt could have a point. Will needs to track down the real culprit and keep his relationship with Sara on track before any more women go missing.
Great read, well written (as always). Very twisty, didn’t have a clue who the killer was. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where so many of the characters were so complex but that just made it more interesting.

Finished in a matter of hours... gripping, disturbing and characters that we know and love! Utterly absorbing and hard to process once I finished!

Karin Slaughter's latest addition to her Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) agent Will Trent and medical examiner, Dr Sara Linton, series is a dark, unsettling and disturbing nightmare of a affair. GBI have been called in to to investigate the murder of inmate, 38 year old Jesus Vasquez, at the penitentiary during a riot, when they are offered information on the perpetrators by another prisoner, Daryl Nesbitt. He claims that he is innocent of the brutally devastating attacks, sexual assaults and murders of women in Grant County, pointing the finger at the then Chief of Police, Jeffery Tolliver, Sara's dead husband, and his fellow police officer, Lena Adams, as responsible for a corrupt investigation. Nesbitt says he can prove he is innocent, that there have been at least eight other women murdered since his imprisonment, by the real serial killer, furnishing GBI with newspaper articles on their deaths, demanding they investigate in exchange for revealing who killed Vasquez.

Will and Sara's relationship develop tensions, fears and insecurities as Sara is plunged into her past, the trauma of Jeffery's original investigations, a bitter period where she had been divorced from the handsome Jeffery after his infidelities, before she later married him again as she had never stopped loving him. GBI and Sara begin to look at the deaths of the women, beginning with the most recent, Alexandra McAllister, thought to have been an accident. Lena, loathed and not trusted by the GBI in the slightest, is now pregnant informing them she has shredded her notebooks, making it difficult to uncover the truth of her and Jeffery's actions that led to Nesbitt being identified as the killer. It soon becomes alarmingly clear that the serial killer has continuing raping and killing women through the years, becoming more adept at disguising the deaths as accidents. His MO though has remain the same, stalking the women, stealing hair accessories from his victims as trophies, hitting them on the head with a hammer, drugging them, rape and sexual assault, paralysis, leaving their bodies in the surrounding woods.

GBI find themselves up against a killer that is smart, deliberate, methodical, a risk taker, relishing hiding in plain sight, continuing to prey on women relentlessly, with never a flicker of remorse. Sara's personal relationship with Tolliver comes under the spotlight, the past taking up so much of her head space in the present, impacting on her relationship with Will, and having her examining the different natures of the men she had fallen in love with. The highlights in Slaughter's terrifying narrative of extreme violence and rape against women, is the sliver of hope in the theme of survival through the worst of horrors and trauma that could befall a woman, and the undeniable love portrayed between Sara and Will. This is brilliant, if tortuously dark and disturbing, storytelling that I highly recommend to crime and thriller readers. Many thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC.

Karin is my favourite author, getting an ARC of her book fills me with great joy because I just know I am in for a treat.
This is probably Karins best book yet, with a crossover of characters, one in particular I miss.
Heartbreaking in it's voilence, disturbing and chilling throughout and utterly devastating upon certain discoveries. Wow this book is incredible! If you have not read anything by Karin Slaughter yet, why not?
Five stars from me and I am already waiting for the next one

The Silent Wife
Author: Karin Slaughter
Publisher: HarperCollins Uk
Publication Date: 25/6/20

I have read and enjoyed all of the Sara Linton/Will Trent books and in this one, particularly liked the parallel timeline returning to Sara’s previous life with Jeffrey. I love the style of writing in that although the crimes are described in brutal detail, the way it is written is always respectful and does not seem gratuitous. That said, the description of the crimes in this book are particularly graphic and at times I had to physically look away. The authors notes at the end of the book explained why she chooses to write about violence against women and the context made me even more in awe of her books.

An immense and satisfying conclusion. I would strongly recommend this to lovers of crime fiction.

I’d like to thank the author, publisher and netgalley for providing me with this advance digital copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

I was drawn right into this book this new episode in this terrific series.Karen Slaughter writes characters that come alive a story that kept me on the edge of my seat.Highly recommend The Sikent Wife and any of her thrillers.#netgalley#harpercollins uk

I just loved all of Karin Slaughter’s Grant County series and I was devastated when she killed Jeffrey, Sara’s husband and Chief of Police. When she started the Atlanta novels when Sara and Will get together I couldn’t believe I could like Will as much as Jeffrey but the author is so adept at building such wonderful characters that in no time at all I was in love with Will too and desperate for their relationship to work. These books are love stories as well as crime thrillers!
In this book the reader gets the best of both worlds, flashbacks to Grant County when Jeffrey was still alive but divorced from Sara and the current day when Will and Sara are having communication issues in their relationship.
Atlanta GBI are asked to investigate a serial rapist case where Jeffrey believed he’d put the perpetrator in prison although a lot of the evidence was not conclusive and there were a few things that were covered up,at the time.
8 years later and Daryl Nesbit who was suspected of the crime wants out claiming he is innocent. He is in prison for child pornography but Jeffrey believed he was also the rapist and was keen to make sure he stayed in gaol so he couldn’t attack any other women. However more victims are discovered after Daryl was in prison. Maybe his claim is true....maybe he did not do it.
Will, Sara, Faith and Amanda, their boss, have to reinvestigate the case. Sara has to look at Jeffrey’s files and notebooks and this takes her back to the earlier time.
As Sara gets more involved in the past Will feels he is competing with a saintly ghost and he is Sara’s second choice.
The plot is very clever and moves effortlessly between the two time frames. Gradually more and more is revealed about the rapes and murders as the team rush to stop it happening again. Be warned that there is a lot of graphic description about the rape and murder victims in the book but if you are reading a story about serial killers this is to be expected.
This is an amazing book which had me gripped from the very first page. I felt like I was catching up with old friends and I was truly bereft when I reached the end as I just wanted to read more about Will and Sara.
You could read this as a stand alone as all is explained but there are 16 other books for you to enjoy and I highly recommend reading them.
I can’t wait for the next book in the series - I hope it won’t be too long in coming!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my arc in exchange for an honest review.

Well, it's been some time since I read a crime novel that is as page-turningly gripping as this! I would normally avoid anything about serial killers, especially killers fixated on violent sexual crimes against women: there's a disturbingly fine line between books which luxuriate in misogynistic brutality and those that call it out - this one manages to stay in the latter field, with scenes that made me flinch. But the portrayal of trauma, grief and what it might take to survive, even barely, is hard-hitting and feels authentic: there's more interest here in the victims and their various hard-won strategies for survival than is typical in the genre.

After being underwhelmed by Slaughter's last two books (Pieces of Her, The Last Widow), it's good to find her back in top gear. In an ingenious double time-frame plot we have Will, Sara, Faith and Amanda investigating in the present, and a return to divorced Sara, Jeffrey and Lena Adams investigating in the past: this is before Blindsighted so a kind of prequel to the Grant County series, and Sara is raw over Jeffrey's infidelity and boy, does she show it!

The crimes are gritty, the plotting twisted, but what really makes it is the characterization is right back on track. Seeing Sara with both Jeffrey in the past and Will in the present made me realise how much more invested I was in the former relationship: Sara and Will are just too juvenile for my tastes and however much baggage they both carry, there's an air of creating conflict just for the sake of it (view spoiler).

Switching between the two time-frames keeps the tension taut and it may be cheesy but Slaughter works the cliff-hanger chapter endings like a pro. There are a few massive plot holes (view spoiler) I also recognised the criminal immediately, to the point that I wondered if he'd been mentioned in the books which are later chronologically? In any case, seems even the GBI can't always spot a psychopath when they meet one!

But these are niggles not deal-breakers: overall, brilliant, scary, and utterly gripping.

I really enjoyed this book because it goes back to one of her old characters, the chief. The flashback chapters kept you gripped and hooked all the way through. One of my favourite Karin Slaughter books. Would recommend for a thrilling and exciting read. Thank you to Netglley and the publishers for letting me review this book.

Another author I’m a huge fan of. I stayed up far too late into the night reading this one. I have been gripped and constantly guessing throughout this one.

I could not have been more excited to jump back into another Will Trent story and this one sure drew me in. All the usual suspects are there, Will and Faith, the ever hilarious Amanda 😂 and my favourite, Sara. So you can imagine my surprise, and excitement when we got to delve back 8 years, and back to Grant County, for the gripping story that spans two series, many disappearances, grim discoveries and lot of detective work...

This absolutely blew me away, how can we be 18 books down the line and I still can't get enough of this series?

Slaughter does it again with the mystery, the intrigue and doesn't pull punches with letting is 'see' the dark and twisty side to her stories.

Amazing.

Some time since I have caught up with Karen Slaughter forgot what I had been missing. This novel featuring Will Trent and the other members of the Grant County team and Sarah his partner is spread over almost a decade. A man jailed for other crimes but suspected of the abduction and murder of young girls but claims innocence of these crimes. A story that keeps the reader guessing right up to the very end.

‘The Silent Wife’ is the 10th book in the popular Will Trent series by thriller author Karin Slaughter. And her second addition to the series in under a year. It’s not often that I would usually opt for one of Slaughter’s books, not that I don’t like her series, but simply that I have taken a dislike to one of her major characters – to my relief, I discovered that the infamous Lena would play a rather minor role in ‘The Silent Wife’ and so I could comfortably dive into the narrative.
While investigation a riot at a nearby prison, Faith and Will from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, are contacted by a criminal with a curious tale – he swears that he is innocent of a series of rapes and murders committed 8 years ago. A recent spate of attacks seem to bear weight to his story. Numerous flashbacks to the original crimes, allow the reader to see a younger Sara and Jeffery working the case and also showcases how Lena came to be the duplicitous character we now know.
It’s fascinating to look back at the characters that we know so well but yet to see another side to their relationships, and how those interactions, impact on them in the current book. Even newcomers to the series, we see the differences from the flashbacks, although be warned there is a lot of catching up to do if you start on book 10.
The crime storyline itself is also fascinating, but it is not an easy read and I would recommend that if you are at all uneasy with the topics of abuse or rape, then to stay well clear as I did find it difficult to read at stages. However, the unveiling of the killer is brilliantly done and such an excellent twist. I’m eagerly waiting for book no. 11.

I don't know where to begin. This was such an incredible story i'm in shock. The hunt for a serial killer no one knew about; going back to Grant County, seeing Jeffery and Lena again! It was like Christmas! Karin Slaughter always writes incredible, tense, thrilling stories but the emotional impact was perfect. Sara and Will were really put through the ringer in this book (haven't they suffered enough) as they tried to find a brutal and vindictive killer. Faith is always great and Amanda is so perfectly Amanda. I really enjoyed the flashbacks to Grant County and seeing the different sides to Jeffery and Sara. It makes me want to go back and reread those books again. This was amazing.

Many readers have autobuy authors. Writers who's work they will purchase blind with no synopsis, no ratings, no information beyond the creators name.
Karin Slaughter is an autobuy author for me, and has been since Blindsighted.

I have never been more invested in a set of characters than I am with those of the Grant County series and The Silent Wife was even more of a treat with the return of characters Jeffrey & Lena.

Told with two timelines, Sara and the GBI investigate the possibility of an Atlanta serial killer with ties to a historical Grant County case.

It has to be said that Slaughter's books are not for the faint of heart. The violence against women is brutal and unflinchingly described.
In other cases I myself can struggle to ingest such content but Slaughter tells these moments in past tense, often during autopsy or medical investigations, never in first person and always with the utmost care. Combined these factors make her stories incredibly emotional but not traumatic.

Sara/Will/Jeffrey have me enthralled by a romantic storyline that I would usually cast aside and has even edged a few tears from my cold heart over the course of the Grant County Series. The tension has been building for so long that I almost threw this book at the wall with strangely enjoyable frustration.

I had an inkling as I drew towards the end of the novel as to the truth but was nonetheless amazed by the finale.

You can read this book as a stand alone, any previous history is covered throughout the book, but I will always recommend you start from the beginning to fully appreciate the character development and community Slaughter has built.

Definitely a five star from me, I cannot wait for the next chapter.

I am a huge fan of anything Karin Slaughter writes, and once again I loved this book.

Everything about this book is amazing, the story is thrilling and gritty, you cannot help but fall in love with Will and Sara and the conclusion at the end made me realise that I had seen it coming all along.

The Silent Wife is a relevant and fast paced read that leaves you on edge of your seat. It sees the return of two of Karin Slaughters most well loved characters which is sure to please long time fans of her novels. A worthy read for both new and returning readers.