Review: The Kept Woman

The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had such a massive debate with myself before reading this book. I knew from the get-go that I was going to read it (I’d been counting down, after all), yet I wasn’t sure when. The OCD part of my mind said to wait until it was out in paperback, so that I did not mess up my bookshelf. After all, I’ve finally worked my way around to buying the Grant County series, and I’d told myself I would read those prior to the eighth Will Trent book. The fangirl part of my mind said to request it on NetGalley, as Amazon had messed up my shelf already through sending the prior books in the series in a variety of formats. In the end, the fangirl won out. I wasn’t expecting to be accepted – I was lucky last year, where I got to read Pretty Girls prior to release, and I wasn’t expecting it to happen again – but I was pleasantly surprised. After a week of no response, I got back from work to find a notification saying I had been accepted.

The fangirl in me went wild. The book was started that night.

Like many of Karin Slaughter’s fans, I’ve been holding out for this one. I know quite a few people have had a rant and a rave about waiting so long, but I didn’t mind at all. I loved her Cop Town and Pretty Girl books. In fact, I have my fingers crossed that she will one day turn Cop Town into the first of another wonderful series and give us more of those amazing characters. Remember, a girl can always hope. That’s a slight tangent, though. What I was actually aiming for is a few wise words. The wait was more than worth it. Karin Slaughter has come up with something wonderful with this one. You’ll soon forget that you were waiting for the release, as you’ll be pulled right in from the start.

Honestly, the book does pull you in from the get-go. In typical Slaughter fashion, the action begins instantly along with the mystery slowly building. I’ll admit that I worked out one of the main plot points. I know the woman can be cruel, but she was having too much fun to go through with what she was pointing towards. Plus, I would have been quite mad if she had. Then again, maybe not, the woman writes everything so wonderfully that I would have loved the story no matter what direction she took it in. I know I’m being vague with this, but I cannot help it. There were so many important points and I do not wish to spoil things for anyone. Honestly, it’s brilliant – one of my favourites in the Will Trent series.

Mostly, I loved how we got to find out more about Angie. I love the woman. She is brilliant in so many ways. Evil, yes, but brilliant. Slaughter writes such wonderful cruel characters. For so long the information we’ve been given about Angie has been snippets here and there, only really coming to light when it reflects upon Will. With this one, though, we get so much more. I’m not sure what the ending alludes to – but my fingers are crossed for certain things. Again, I’m inching far too close to spoiler territory. I cannot begin to explain how difficult Slaughter has made it for me to review this one. It’s one of those ones where all I can do is gush, for giving specifics is dangerous.

I can tell you there is a lot of development of Will, though. That is something I can safely say. We’ve been watching him grow throughout the series, yet I think this is the one that really shows how far he has come from the first book. As our eyes are opened to things, so too are Will’s eyes. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about the whole Will and Sara relationship throughout the book – I wasn’t shipping it as much as I was in Unseen – but I was content enough with it. That’s just me, though. I’ve been having a real shipping problem as of late. Basically, that aspect was good but it didn’t leave me with as many feels as prior books.

I really do want to say more, but I will ruin things. Just know it is great and you will not be disappointed. There are so many twists and turns throughout, so much information comes to light. My biggest problem wasn’t even related to the story. For some strange reason, the copy sent to my Kindle had some kind of fault in it. Whenever the letter ‘f’ was used, I would suddenly start losing the surrounding letters. Trust me, it’s more difficult to work out words than you would think, at times. Plus, I lost all the text messages and written information. I think it was just a glitch in my copy, but it saddened me. I guess my OCD will be content to know I’ll have to go out and buy a paperback copy anyway, just so I can work out what those missing pieces of information were. Still, even with those bits missing it was a wonderful read.

If you have read the other Will Trent books, you have to read this one.

As a final note, I would like to say a massive thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for once again allowing me to read one of my favourite authors. You cannot begin to understand how happy it makes me.

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