I would like to start by sharing something that I didn't learn until the author's note at the very end of the book: this is a sequel. I imagine much of my confusion regarding the plot of this novel can be attributed to that fact. In short, Sara the pediatrician and her ex-husband Jeffrey the police chief are held hostage by a couple of gunmen who raid the police station. Much of the book is spent in flashbacks to the early 1990s when Jeffrey took his then-girlfriend Sara to his tiny backwater hometown in Alabama, where they witness more dirty laundry in one day than most people accumulate in an entire lifetime. People die, secrets are revealed, bodies are found. Lena, the only female cop on Jeffrey's present-day force, is part of the rescue detail and has vague issues of her own that are presumably covered in the previous book. It's a pretty good story, if a wee bit predictable. I got a little tired of waiting for the characters to get around to actually talking to each other instead of running off and looking pensive again, but if everyone were forthcoming and honest there wouldn't be nearly as much drama. While this book was a nice diversion on its own, I would have preferred to have known about (and read) its predecessors first. ( )

This a disturbing book which demonstrates that we can never truly escape from past events and is very believable. ( )

What a masterpiece! This is one of the best books of its genre I have read. The characters have been developed superbly and the changes from present to past make this an intriguing read and Jeffrey and Saras' story comes brilliantly together right at the end. Keep them coming please! ( )

Karin Slaughter is such a great author, but this book I didn't enjoy as much as her others. ( )

Needed a different mood to really like this book. A couple (if not more) implausibilities: They would have kept shooting until all were dead; they would have never gone to his hometown; no one would have looked in the cave? ( )