The Last Widow by Karin Slaughter

Good morning, readers! Today I'm a stop on the TLC blog tour for Karin Slaughter's latest, The Last Widow.

Will Trent and Sara Linton are spending a pretty average weekend together when their literal world is shaken. An explosion at the nearby college sends the two heading straight into the path of danger. But before they can get to the scene to help, they're sidelined by a car accident. The passengers in the three vehicles aren't in great shape. In fact, it doesn't take long to figure out that one has died already. But this is no average accident. In fact, the "victims" aren't victims at all. They're the bombers fleeing the site. 

Sara is kidnapped and Will is left injured on the sidelines with the knowledge that every minute that passes could mean Sara's very life. But as Will and his colleagues investigate, the plot in this particular crime becomes more convoluted and no one is sure exactly what the ultimate goal is for these criminals. 

To call The Last Widow propulsive would be a massive understatement. The plot is devastatingly fast, the kind of book that keeps you up at night (an undeniable fact, considering I was reading at 2am!).

There was one small hiccup with the pacing for me, however. For this installment in the series, Slaughter gives readers the chance to see multiple characters' perspectives of the same scenes. Which means a bit of backtracking and overlapping in the story. The effect was one I experience most with fantasy novels, waiting to get back to a particular storyline or character because I'm dying to know what's going to happen!

That said, this books still manages to move at a lightning pace! I loved that I really couldn't guess where the story was going next.

Will and Sara are a bit new to me. My introduction to them was actually the previous book in the series, The Kept Woman. Prior to that, my experience with Slaughter was pretty limited to her stand alones. As I mentioned in that review, however, the book worked really well as a stand alone and gave me the opportunity to get to know both Will and Sara so that I was really stoked to get back to them with The Last Widow. And Slaughter did not disappoint in that regard either. The emotional impact of this story is all the more heavy thanks to the character building. Not only am I invested in their careers but also in their relationship, all of which are obviously strained here.

And as each character, Will, Sara, and others, are pushed to their limits, the book becomes even more intense!

Apologies for the massive amounts of exclamation points in this review. Slaughter's books are massively exciting reads for me. Her plots are always so tightly planned and executed that even the most unbelievable points become spectacularly real in her deft hands.

Note: This is the ninth book in the Will Trent series and does contain some spoilers for book 8. I was fine beginning with 8 but if you'd like to start from the very beginning, the series order is:

Tryptich
Fractured
Undone
Broken
Fallen
Criminal
Unseen
The Kept WomanThe Last Widow

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Karin Slaughter and her work you can visit her website here. You can also like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Purchase Links: HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble