The Skimm Reads calls it “a thriller that’s part True Detective, part The Girl On The Train. All parts gripping.”
Husbands and wives. Mothers and daughters. The past and the future.
Secrets bind them. And secrets can destroy them.
The author of Pretty Girls returns with an electrifying, emotionally complex thriller that plunges its fascinating protagonist into the darkest depths of a mystery … plunges its fascinating protagonist into the darkest depths of a mystery that just might destroy him.
With the discovery of a murder at an abandoned construction site, Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is brought in on a case that becomes much more dangerous when the dead man is identified as an ex-cop.
Studying the body, Sara Linton—the GBI’s newest medical examiner and Will’s lover—realizes that the extensive blood loss didn’t belong to the corpse. Sure enough, bloody footprints leading away from the scene indicate there is another victim—a woman—who has vanished . . . and who will die soon if she isn’t found.
Will is already compromised, because the site belongs to the city’s most popular citizen: a wealthy, powerful, and politically connected athlete protected by the world’s most expensive lawyers—a man who’s already gotten away with rape, despite Will’s exhaustive efforts to put him away.
But the worst is yet to come. Evidence soon links Will’s troubled past to the case . . . and the consequences will tear through his life with the force of a tornado, wreaking havoc for Will and everyone around him, including his colleagues, family, friends—and even the suspects he pursues.
Relentlessly suspenseful and furiously paced, peopled with conflicted, fallible characters who leap from the page, The Kept Woman is a seamless blend of twisty police procedural and ingenious psychological thriller — a searing, unforgettable novel of love, loss, and redemption.
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I don’t think Karin Slaughter could write a bad story if she tried. If you haven’t read the Will Trent series, do it. You won’t regret it. I could go into detail about the individual characters, but I couldn’t do them justice, nor would I want you to judge them based on my opinions. You’ll love some and loathe others. And the storylines are packed with suspense!
They can be read as standalones but you’ll miss the dynamics between the characters as they build relationships with one another.
Go on, check them out. I swear, you won’t be sorry!
MC
PS: Ms. Slaughter, I’m ready for the next one. Yep, already. 🙂
This entire series is off the charts amazing to me!! I would LOVE a tv series about this or a movie collection!! Karin Slaughter has a way of trapping me in her books.
I am so excited for this book! Bookmarking.
I love everything Will Trent, I love Will Trent the book series, I love Will Trent, the man. This eighth book in the series was no different, but at times I wanted to slap my book boyfriend Will Trent. Don’t get me wrong, I felt for him, but I thought he should have been farther along in his recovery. If you don’t know anything about GBI agent Will Trent let me bring you up to speed.
Will has been in a dysfunctional relationship with Angie Pulaski since childhood. She treats him like dirt. She constantly demeans him and disappears for months at a time with no contact. Recently, Will has been in a healing and loving relationship with Dr. Sara Linton and is in love with her. Now there is a murder of a former cop, and it seems bloody footprints at the scene lead to Angie. Suddenly, Will is all about Angie, looking for her, standing up for her, and leaving Sara to wonder what to think. Bad Will.
I’m not as prolific as many of the outstanding reviewers who have reviewed this book. There is so much to love about the dynamics and personalities in this book. Such an outstanding series, and someday in the future, I intend to experience it all again. I listened to this on audiobook via Audible with the marvelous narrator, Kathleen Early. No other will do. Five Stars for this magnificent book!
Number 8 of Will Trent series: I wouldn’t recommend to read this one without reading a couple of the earlier novels because you need to understand the dynamics between the key characters. — One star less than the other Karin Slaughter books because she left me hanging 🙁 about what is going to happen between main characters. She has characters to love and to get caught up with like Elizabeth George, characters to hate like Patricia Cornwell, and intense, very human emotions between the characters plus interesting, varied plots that keep me on my toes (though, I admit, I don’t try to figure out the killer before the end). I will have to wait until August 20, 2019, to read number 9!
I’m not quite finished with this but what’s preventing me from giving all five stars is some of the dialogue which seems really dated and forced for the time (c.2016). Also, this may be a little thing but some of the character descriptions don’t always match their voice or names. I’ll update once I’ve finished the book.
**update**
I finished the novel and, while it was good, it became almost a chore to read. I felt like I kept waiting for it to end and was forced to endure repeated action scenes. Each one could have led to the ending but they never did. This is the first time I’ve read any books in this series so I’m not sure if that’s the normal pacing.
However, I must say, minus the wonky/dated dialogue, I did enjoy the main heroic characters and want to know more about them…which means I’ll be beginning this series from the beginning. I’m looking forward to getting to know Will, Sara, Faith, Amanda, and even Angie better.
not her best, but worth reading
I love the characters in this series and have to read these books as they come out.
Birds eye view of the fixers in sports industry. Karin always delivers. Informative and action packed.
Book 8 was mostly about Angie it was a good book and it was a FABULOUS series
Loved the book but I love the author
I’m going to have to go back and read Will Trent #1-7 now. This book was so good.
The characters are very well-drawn. That’s why I want to go back to the beginning and find more out about Will and his supporting cast.
There’s lots of good stuff going on here, so it’s kind of hard to write a short review and a long review would start giving too much away.
I’ll just say that if you like on the edge of your seat suspense, rich character development, action-packed scenes. great storytelling, and twist-filled plots. you’ll LOVE “The Kept Woman”.
There’s a twist ant the halfway point that made my head do a Linda Blair.
READ IT!
This was a one day read for me (or I guess I should say one sitting read since it’s now 3:15 am as I write this) because I did not want to put it down. It follows a familiar pattern the author has been using in the series with flashbacks but it wasn’t as jarring or annoying in this book. There were points I was holding my breath, sitting on the edge of my seat and parts where I was rigid with fury.
In this book, the body of a retired cop is discovered in an abandoned building owned by an NBA player that Will has been trying to put away on a rape charge. As the team, which now includes Sara who has joined the GBI, is investigating the scene they discover information that looks like the worst kind of bad news from Will’s past is involved in the case.
There’s coverups, and misdirects, and privileged athletes, and Amanda’s information withholding, and Faith’s gut, and Angie’s screwing with Will, and Sara’s impatience with the whole Angie situation. It’s part CSI and part soap opera.
The whole middle section of the book is so well written and suspenseful I could not move nor turn the pages fast enough. The climactic resolution is a total “holy s*#t” moment. But the ending and epilogue, dealing mostly with the Sara/Will relationship and its hurdles, left me feeling unsatisfied. Sara is really starting to annoy me. It’s a strange feeling when the book ends and Amanda comes off as more caring and empathetic towards Will than Sara does.
I have been a fan of Karin Slaughter’s since her first book about Dr. Sara Linton. One of the main characters in this book is Sara Linton and the other is her lover, Will Trent, who is an investigator for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The story begins with the discovery of a murder at an abandoned construction site, Will Trent is brought in on a case that becomes much more dangerous when the dead man is identified as an ex-cop.
Studying the body, Sara Linton—the GBI’s newest medical examiner—realizes that the extensive blood loss didn’t belong to the corpse. Sure enough, bloody footprints leading away from the scene indicate there is another victim—a woman—who has vanished . . . and who will die soon if she isn’t found.
So begins a race against time..
This one wasn’t a favorite of mine. Personally, I feel that Slaughter has written better books. There were parts of this book that were intriguing, and other parts that made me lose interest. That’s why it took me so long to finish reading it. I wanted to love this book, but parts felt like they dragged on. All in all, if you like the rest of the Will Trent series, I’d recommend reading it, only so that the rest of the series is more cohesive. Otherwise, I’d pass.
This was the eighth book in the Will Trent series. The Kept Woman was a detective story involving the murder of an ex-cop named Dale and an unknown female. Will Trent was with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He was brought into Atlanta to work the case of a dead ex-cop. A retired Atlanta police detective was found dead at an abandoned nightclub owned by a famous athlete who had been accused of rape. Expensive lawyers removed the charges of rape that Will had spent endless hours investigating.
Will was dating Sara, the medical examiner, on the same case. Will was separated from his wife Angela while trying to locate her, to deliver divorce papers.
The story began from the point of the actual crime scene, working itself backwards. Then the story referred back to the past, prior yo the crime scene.
The Kept Woman included police procedures and forensic techniques. The story had an array of characters. The story was about a murder investigation that was currently taking place at Marcus Rippy’s nightclub. An entire team of investigators were working this case which separated into different areas.
“The problem with murder investigations is you never knew which lead would take you to the solution and which one would sink you into a black hole.” Great quote from story.
Evidence linked Will’s past to the case opening up his dark and horrific upbringing. It was a convoluted story that created a domino affect of destruction. The story began to drag once Angie revealed the true sequence of events that led to Dale’s body being found in the abandoned nightclub. I felt the story might play better on a movie scene then it did reading in a book. I just could not process all the variables that she created. It was not a mystery the reader could unlock. The detectives were not even able to solve the crime. It took Angie’s POV to state the facts. I had hoped for a thrilling murder mystery and instead this was a sequence of confusing connections of love triangles where every character was part of the equation. It was not a murder mystery but a game of manipulation by the powerful men who preyed upon weak women. Karen spent a lengthy amount of time filling in the details leading up to the murder investigation. This side tracked the entire story for a long period of time. I found the dialogue going around in circles delaying the necessary answers. By the time Angie’s character finished sharing her story I forgot about the previously mentioned characters. The story returned to the present time and I had to recycle through my mind trying to reconfigure who these characters were after spending an obscene amount of time reading about Angie.
“The plan didn’t feel complicated. There were just a lot of moving pieces.” This quote from the story held true for me. The murder investigation caused more chaos trying to piece together this crime when it was quite simple. Once explained it was clever yet the delivery fell flat.
I just love Will Trent
I love Karin Slaughter. I love her series about medical examiner Sara Linton and I love the Will Trent books. I think Will may well be one of the best written characters in mainstream media these days. But here’s the thing, I wanted to smack him in his gorgeous, broken; beautiful face for about 80% of this book. I’m glad we finally FINALLY seemed to get some resolution to his twisted relationship with Angie but my god it took him wayyyyy too long to get there. (If you’re reading this and have no idea what I’m taking about, don’t read this book until you’ve read at least a few in the series before so you’ll understand the dynamics of the characters). I did really enjoy the meat of the book aka the case aka the crazy murder setup that hits you from page one and takes off like a shot in the dark. It isn’t my favorite of Slaughters books but it’s not my least favorite either.
Karin and Lisa Gardner are my favorite authors.
Haven’t read a book I didn’t like by Karin Slaughter but the Will Trent series continue to be one of my favorites. Love the characters and the plot.