I really enjoyed this book, well written and full of twists, it kept me fully engaged.
It is books like this that remind you just how good a truly well written book can be. I had no idea where this book would take me, I like books that keep the reader guessing all the way through and I particularly liked the up to date references to life in a pandemic in 2021.
I only give 5 stars to a few books that give that little bit extra and this was definitely one of those.

I took my time with this latest book by Karin Slaughter. Why?? Because she is a master of her craft. Rushing means you don’t absorb just how talented she is. Especially with the way she has put together this story.
Two young girls Harleigh and Calliope have both been in the clutches of an abuser. They have an appalling home life and are then preyed on by the father of a child they babysit for. Until one eventful night
Fast forward twenty odd years. Leigh is now a lawyer, separated from her husband Walter and Mum to Maddy. She is called in at a weekend by the partners to represent a high profile client Andrew. To Leigh’s horror he is actually ‘Trevor’ the child she babysat and Buddy’s son. He seems to know what happened the night his dad went missing.
So now to protect her life can she do the unthinkable and get a jury to acquit a man so obviously guilty for his crime.
I absolutely loved this book. Karin did such a good job of developing the characters of Leigh and Callie. Showing the two different paths life can take you when your childhood is filled with abuse. A gritty subject but a fantastic story.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an ARC

Many thanks to HarperCollins and Anne Cater of randomthings for the opportunity to read a gifted copy of False Witness for my stop on the blog tour 🤗.

Crikey what can I say? I am gobsmacked! Karin Slaughter just keeps hitting them right out of the park, and chapter one > wow! That was just about the best start to a book I have EVER come across. The content was phenomenal and jaw dropping, edge of your seat grilling and completely thrilling, but my god, how much was I deceived into thinking one thing when it was actually something else - much worse!!

To give a little insight … in False Witness we meet Leigh Collier who didn’t have the best start to life but with determination she has turned her life into something to be proud of and is now a defence attorney. As a teen something horrific happened - the worst thing possible - and it is something she has learned to put to the back of her mind, banishing it from memory. Until … she is handed the biggest case she has ever been given and what she thought had been left in the past swiftly catches up and she realises that pretending it never happened is no longer an option.

Karin Slaughter has always been an auto buy author of mine. As soon as I know she has a new book out, it’s on pre-order. She is just phenomenal with stories holding real true grit that have you awake reading into the early hours, and each time I read a new book of hers I always want to read back through her entire collection again!

With False Witness, I’d say it’s one of her best yet. Everything about it is just truly bloody brilliant. With a strong set of believable characters (mind, Buddy and Andrew would NEVER make my Christmas card list, they’re just truly awful), and a setting putting you right smack bang in Covid territory, you’re taken on a gripping journey where actions and consequences can quickly catch up with you given the right (or in Leigh’s case) the wrong opportunity.

Tense and full of twists and turns, False Witness is definitely a book you need in your life right now!

Karin Slaughter always delivers. A tense and pacy thriller about the consequences of an action taken when the girls were young. The villains are horribly villainous but our heroines are more well rounded characters dealing with the fall out of one night and the impact on their lives.

False Witness by Karin Slaughter
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: 24/6/21

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Karin Slaughter books just get better and better. I love the Will Trent series but this standalone thriller grabbed me from the outset. Unpredictable, complex strong characters and a heart stopping story, I could not put this book down. Dark storylines, including child abuse, drug addiction rape and murder , it was sensitively written and never felt exploitative or gratuitous, although I had to take several deep breaths along the way.

I have read other comments relating to it being set during, and mentioning, the coronavirus pandemic, but personally, I felt this added to the overall story, making it relevant and real, and outlining some of the very serious problems people are experiencing.

Heart wrenching but totally appropriate ending.
Highly recommended.

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.

t’s no exaggeration to say that in her latest stand-alone thriller, Karin Slaughter is on fire! Slaughter’s keen focus on what’s happening in America right now plays out between these pages with a blistering heat. As an immensely popular novelist, Slaughter takes her responsibility to social commentary very seriously and delivers not only a first class crime thriller but also a searing indictment on how US society fails to deal with a range of critical issues that are endangering people; from the drugs crisis to how the current Co-Vid pandemic is impacting on ordinary people, Slaughter does not pussy foot around, preferring to tell it as it is.

I wasn’t sure about heading into a full blown in-the midst-of-a-pandemic novel, but this is so well done and seamless that it felt natural and Slaughter has a more than a few well aimed remarks to make about those who choose to put others at risk.

Our protagonists are two sisters who are hiding a dark and terrifying secret. Leigh is a successful lawyer at a prestigious Chicago firm. Married with a teenage daughter she has a self-destruct button that will not allow her to be happy for too long and now she is separated from her husband and her daughter is staying with him. Leigh’s sister, Callie used to be a cheerleader until she broke her neck and became dependent on opioids. Now she is a drug addict who has fallen as low as it is possible to go, though she has a redeeming love of animals which allows us to see what she could have been in another life. These girls had a harsh upbringing from a mother who was largely absent and when she was present was a believer in the ‘school of hard knocks’ style of bringing up her kids.

Our antagonist is Andrew Tenant, a good looking businessman with a car sales franchise who is a dangerous psychopath. He’s accused of rape and battery and there’s really not much doubt that he is guilty.

Tenant has chosen Leigh to represent him and it soon becomes clear that he has his own very unsettling reasons for this selection and Leigh soon finds herself with nowhere to turn.

False Witness is dark and violent, even gory in places, but Slaughter provides a picture of the abiding bond of love that exists between these two sisters; she depicts the lengths each has gone to and will go to in order to keep the other safe. Her characterisation of Tenant as a toxic male whose sense of entitlement manspreads all over the pages renders him one of the more unforgettable villains of recent years. It’s not a new theme for Slaughter; she has tackled male violence, exertion of power and sexual assault before, clearly determined to shine a light on this pernicious, pervasive male behaviour until it is dealt with more effectively.


Slaughter draws her characters really well and as ever, the reader is drawn deep into the story from the opening pages. This is a brilliantly fast paced and engrossing book with characters you easily grow to love and some you hate on first meeting and never change your mind about. It is a story about love and the strength of the bonds of love. It’s undoubtedly graphic in its portrayal of abuse in various forms but that is how the strength of sibling love is able to shine through.

Verdict: I loved this book. Dark, gritty and violent it captures the imagination from the outset and is instantly compulsive reading. Ultimately a thriller about the power of love, Karin Slaughter has produced an intense contemporary crime thriller that is both explosive and volcanic in its passion.

Sisters Callie and Leigh Collier had a far from perfect childhood, with an abusive mother and both girls being sexually abused by a man who’s children they babysat for. When Callie realises that Buddy has been filming the abuse he has inflicted upon her a heated argument occurs, and seeing red Callie stabs him. When Leigh then helps to finish the job, the sisters see no way out of the situation – other than to bury the body and try to forget that night ever happened.

Years later, Leigh becomes a defence attorney and finds herself representing a violent rapist, who turns out to be the young boy she had helped babysit all those years ago. In a chilling turn of events, he reveals that he knows everything that took place back then – from the assaults Callie had to endure, to the murder the sisters committed and quickly covered up. Not only does he know about their troubled past, but he also knows all about Leigh’s husband, daughter – in fact her entire family, leaving Leigh with little choice but to do what he says or others will suffer.

This was one of those books that had me well and truly hooked from the moment I turned the first page. Karin Slaughter has such a fascinating and incredibly detailed way with words that really immerses you in the story and the lives of the characters in which she has created.

Leigh and Callie Collier are characters that your heart goes out to from the start. They have to face more in their childhood than most people face in their entire lives, and yet somehow they have still managed to come out the other side of it – granted, with a fair amount of trauma and emotional scars that carry through to their adult lives. With each passing chapter we get to know more about these women as individuals, and get a better understanding as to how they have attempted to piece their lives back together.

The storyline is utterly gripping and perfectly structured, with the tension and suspense growing gradually with every passing chapter I really did find it difficult to put this book down as I simply needed to know what would happen next. The plot is unique and intense, it ticks all the boxes you want to find within a thriller!.

I don’t think I’ve ever read an opening chapter like this book has, twists and thrills galore! I was certainly hooked from the beginning and needed to see where the story went.

I enjoyed reading about the current time along with the flashes back into the past, and I also liked seeing things from the different points of view. I think addiction has been included well into the story and I could really feel everything that Callie went through needing a fix. I thought in general the story progression was good and I liked the evolving relationships between the characters.

I did have a few moments where I wasn’t convinced it would play out as it did and that’s why I kept a star off the rating. I also guessed something near the end but have no idea why certain things didn’t happen sooner.

Overall, a very riveting thriller and actually my first from Karin Slaughter – but it definitely won’t be my last.

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy of False Witness. I think this was my first Karin Slaughter book and it won’t be the last.

What I’ll say from the offset, is that this book covers rape, abuse, childhood assault and abuse. It’s written in such a way that there is enough detail to support the story but not so much detail that it’s too difficult to read.

Great crime thriller with likeable heroines. This would have been a 5* read if not for the constant use of the phrase “Leigh’s throat worked”. It was repetitive and detracted from the enjoyment of the story.

That said, I devoured this story and it was rounded off so well. I was worried when I was at 88% and the book hadn’t started to end yet, but it was a well thought out ending that wasn’t rushed or abrupt.

The chapters were quite long but the pace of the book was steady. I didn’t find myself wanting to skip on to find out what was going to happen either which can be the case with descriptive novels.

I will be looking for more Karin Slaughter to add to my ever growing collection of thrillers! :)

Another great book from Karin Slaughter, dealing with lots of sensitive subjects,
drug dependency, graphic rape scenes, rape, murder, paedophilia.

Sisters Leigh and Callie had a bad childhood with an abusive mother and both sexually abused by Buddy who`s son they babysat for, Callie was repeatedly raped and filmed for Buddie and his friends until the night Callie finds out she`d been filmed and after a massive fight Callie knives him and Leigh finishes him off and they bury him.

Years later Leigh becomes a defence attorney and finds herself representing a violent rapist who turns out to be the boy Leigh and Callie babysat, now her past catches up with her as he reveals slowly how he knows all about Callie`s rapes and how his dad got murdered and everything about Leigh`s husband, daughter and family, so she has to do everything he says or else!

A lot of graphic contents and some repetitive sentences but couldn`t put it down.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Added to Goodreads

A roller coaster ride. A thriller with issues. This book revolved around preparation for a court case. Set in 2020 it covered covid issues brilliantly without letting it dominate the storyline. Leigh the lawyer was a feisty key heroine throughout. Lots of twists and turns to keep you riveted.

Thank you to Netgalley, Harper Collins and Karin Slaughter for my arc of False Witness in exchange for an honest review.

Out now!

The latest standalone thriller from one of my favourite authors Karin Slaughter, finds Leigh a defence attorney in Atlanta asked by her boss to defend a rich man accused of rape. if she wins this case then her career will sky rocket. But when she meets the defendant her life falls apart. Because she knows him, and he knows what she did 20 years ago. The past Leigh has been running from is about to catch up with her and the only person Leigh can look to for help is her younger sister Callie, the girl she’s spent her life protecting.

Karin Slaughter has been one of my favourite if not my favourite crime thriller author since I came across her books when I was 16, some 15 years ago. I love her Will Trent & Sarah Linton series best but enjoy the stand-alones too and this was no exception.

I must admit this one took a little getting into mainly because I found all the covid references a bit jarring. Like many others I read to escape covid after a miserable 15 months of suffering through the pandemic so I found that the references to masks and vaccines and social distancing was in a way quite distressing. However, it’s something we’re all going to have to face in future literature as anybody who sets a book in this year and the previous one will need to include information about it and then maybe it will stop feeling so jarring.

The story itself however was as usual twisty, thrilling and suspenseful. I really liked the characters and felt sad for both Leigh & Callie who had both gone through so much and found it impossible not to be left scarred by their pasts. Slaughter explored two different ways of dealing with childhood trauma as an adult and I thought both were exceptionally well done. Also as usual she did not shy away from talking about difficult subject matter that at times was quite hard to read. Another winning thriller from Karin Slaughter.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of False Witness by Karin Slaughter.

I haven’t read many thrillers before now and this is the first Karin Slaughter novel I have read, however, it won’t be the last. I was hooked from beginning to end!

Leigh Collier works as a defence attorney in Atlanta, Georgia and is called on by her boss to defend Andrew Tenant in court. Accused of violent rape, Andrew isn’t a stranger to Leigh and very quickly she is thrown into the past as she remembers what happened as she was growing up. Leigh has a younger sister, Callie, and the story is told throughout from both their viewpoints. Leigh has made a success of her life, married with a teenage daughter and a rewarding career. However, Callie takes drugs, is living in sleazy motels, and takes what she can from wherever she can.

I don’t want to give too much away in my description of the book, as for me, that spoils it and a lot of reviews just go into too much detail. Having never read a Karin Slaughter book before, I don’t think I was prepared for the descriptions she provides, from the rape, to the drug-taking, to the violence throughout. However, I was blown away by the entire story and because of the minute detail and such vivid descriptive writing, I could visualise every detail of what was happening.

This is the first book I have read that incorporates COVID and although far from the principal topic, it shows how people manage the unusual situation that we find ourselves in and how it affected daily lives as we learn to live a new normal. The author is adept at showing how strong a family bond can be as Leigh and Callie work together to make some sense of their adult lives.

Because of the topics covered, and how in-depth some subjects are, I would suggest caution to those choosing to read this book. However, if you enjoy a gritty, violent thriller then you won’t be disappointed.

wow! wow! wow!
I absolutely loved this book. A fantastic thriller full of twists and turns that keeps you guessing. Just when you think you've figured it out, it surprises you again! A 5 star read.

I'm an avid reader of Karin Slaughter so expected to love this book and I did.

Gripping from the beginning I could not put it down. Fast paced and a great read.

Highly recommend

I got a copy of False Witness for free in return for an honest review from the publishers via NetGalley.

I have read Karin Slaughter books in the past, but I do think this one has become my favourite. I loved the main characters and the problems that they faced during the story. I felt that they were relatable and as sisters were complete polar opposites, but that seemed to hold them together.

I will be honest, I would put a trigger warning on this as sex abuse is prevalent throughout as well as underaged abuse.

Over all the pacing throughout the whole book was good, starting off slow, trying to work out what was happening, getting faster and then the finale...A really good read.

I love Karin Slaughter and have read lots of her work, and this is up there with the best. The subject matter is very dark, and the way that she develops the characters is typical of her style, there are lots of twists and turns and although a long book I enjoyed it from the first page to the last. This really is a rollercoaster ride, and you feel that you are right there with her as the plot develops.

False Witness by Karin Slaughter is a 5 star read.
This was another amazing book from this author, it had me gripped from the first page until the last.
I voluntarily reviewed an advanced copy of this book through Netgalley.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins for my e-arc of this book, received in exchange for an honest review.

When a figure from Leigh's past reenters her life threatening to expose her darkest secrets, how far will she go to protect her family and the life she has built for herself?

This was one of those completely immersive books that left me absolutely reeling when I finished and had to return to reality.
I was initially unsure how to feel about Covid-19 being incorporated into the story, but for the most part-once I was immersed in the narrative-it faded into the background, although I can see how it might be distracting or take from the primary plot for some readers.
Slaughter clearly knows how to craft a mystery with impeccable pacing that will keep you guessing and theorising from start to finish. She expertly threads multiple converging storylines, dropping hints and crumbs of information early on-where you might not be sure of their significance-before later returning to them revealing their integral parts in the plot and bringing everything together to a tense and dramatic conclusion.
The characters are complex and compelling, no one is blameless and few are unsympathetic, making for a very interesting and thought-provoking read. And even though the writing gives all the necessary weight and attention to its heavy subject matter, it still finds room for moments of humour through its characters' outlooks.

A dark and compelling read, I would highly recommend although I would warn any potential readers that this book does contain a fair amount of graphic violence and deals quite heavily with rape and sexual assault throughout.

Yet another fantastic Karin Slaughter read. This is a stand-alone novel but it brings all of the key Slaughter characteristics - strong characters (many of them unsavoury), secrets, twists, and graphic descriptions that are not for the faint hearted.

At the start I felt there were a few too many Covid references - it was indeed necessary to set the scene but once it was set there were just a few too many “she put on her mask” bits that interrupted the story in my head. I also felt that the pace was a bit slower than usual in the middle. However, these are minor niggles, purely because I hold Karin Slaughter to such a high standard and general never find anything I don’t enjoy in her books!

I highly recommend this book as I do with all of her books because I genuinely feel immersed in the worlds and stories that she creates.