Firstly I would like to thank netgalley and Harpercollions uk and the brilliant author karin slaughter for an early copy of her book.


Another fantastic read from this brilliant author, and I cant get enough of this will trent series..Ive read them all...Will and Sara finally get married,Will chooses there honeymoon a family run lodges where they can hike and do activities this place looks ideal the family that runs the place have many secrets and dont get on,Mercy who runs the place ex husband treats her badly,her son is distant and Mercy has a troubled past...Mercy is murdered was it a family member or someone who works there or a guest? Will & Sara and the team Faith and Amanda investigates....A great murder mystery certainly a five star read was engrossed with this read...Recommended...

This book will be reviewed on goodreads and Amazon and waterstones...

The book starts out with very little Will or Sara. Given that this is book 12 in the Will Trent series, I did not anticipate a book so heavily focused on characters other than Will and Sara. This does change towards the mid point of the book, but this type of plot might have been better suited to a standalone that ties into the Will Trent series (book 11.5, maybe?).

There were a lot of things that kept taking me out of the story, but I won't go into detail here.

I'm sad that I didn't enjoy this book, because I love the series and look forward to a new instalment. However, the first half of this book was hard work, and even though the second half felt a bit quicker, throughout the majority of the book, I kept wondering how necessary it was for this book to be THIS long.

Jaw dropping thriller you don't want to end. Absolutely shocking. Karin Slaughter never fails to leave me stunned. I couldn't put this book down. Will and Sarahs honeymoon takes a nasty turn and we get to feel a little more of Will's abusive childhood. With a handful of suspects to murder, I never saw the final twist til it was unfolding. So much emotion and feeling in all the books but this one gave me tears. Fantastic read, love it. Would recommend all her books.

As always a fabulous book from Karin Slaughter. The plot twisted & turned and reached a very unexpected conclusion. Brilliant! Highly recommended

Karin Slaughter brings back GBI agent Will Trent and his new wife and medical examiner Sara Linton - on their honeymoon at the McAlpine Family Lodge, a five mile hike from the nearest town,

Only five couples have booked into the lodge for a week, which promises an escape from the outside world. The lodges, which have been in the family for a couple of generations, are run by Mercy McAlpine who took over when her father had an accident which broke his back. But things are not as peaceful as they should be. The first night dinner is fraught with tension between the family members and Mercy, who seems to be doing everything, is not good enough for anything her father wants.
The other couples are a real mixed bunch, and also include possible investors - a point of contention for Mercy who doesn’t want to sell. All the couple seem to have a secret to hide.
Then Will and Sara hear a scream and a call for help - and Mercy is found murdered. Who is responsible? Family or one of the guests?
Will and Sara work against time and the weather to find out what’s happened, but the family have friends who think that Mercy is responsible for all the problems that the Lodge has suffered recently.
A good read with the ever resourceful Will and Sara - but can they work out who the murderer is before anyone else is killed.
Thanks to #Netgalley for the ARC.

Oh you thought Karin Slaughter was gonna let Will and Sara’s honeymoon be chill? You thought!?!?

Love them as a married couple and this series just keeps getting better as we get to know them more deeply.

I have read other books in this series and have always enjoyed the stories. This feels different, set in a lonely mountain resort and without the usual city facilities on tap. It’s fast moving and full of action. The story is also full of horrific happenings in this remote area. It examines family and loyalty in a completely different and often dreadful way.
It’s a complex story which kept me wanting to read more and still looking for the culprit to the end.
Recommended

Very good Will Trent detective novel - not easy subject matter!

This time Will and Sara are on their honeymoon and inevitably they become embroiled in a murder mystery which turns out , unsurprisingly, to be far more involved. There are many interesting but not necessarily nice characters and the subject matter is hard-hitting which is typical of the author. For me, a little too much description of the terrain in the area which adds little to the plot or outcome. It’s a roller coaster ride and certainly engaging. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The incredible new thriller featuring Will Trent and Sara Linton….,,,This is a favourite author of mine, rattling good tale with twists and turns aplenty. If you enjoy a well plotted police procedural with realistic characters and thrills galore then this is for you! five shiny stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Will Trent and Sara Linton series is one of my favourite crime series, and every time there's a new book I need to get my hands on it as soon as possible. This is Why We Lied is slightly different to some of the others, as the murder takes place while Sara and Will are on their honeymoon (yay) staying in a beautiful lodge/camp in the mountains. I loved the setting, I loved that it was essentially a locked room mystery but in an outdoor location.

Karin is so good at making the crimes believable, at pulling out emotion while keeping things fast-paced and action-packed and making the reader breathless, and this one was no different. There was such a great cast of characters, quite a lot of whom were incredibly flawed, damaged, downright horrible, and some you had a lot of sympathy for. I spent a whole lot of time guessing who had done it, what had happened, and was – as usual – wrong footed at every turn.

The beginning is shocking, it grabs your attention and doesn't let go for the rest of the book, and the ending is just – no words, really. But because there is Will and Sara, Faith and Amanda, all of who feel like friends to me now, there's a lot of comfort to be had in the familiar relationships/bickering/tension.

I loved every minute of this, I just feel really sorry for Sara and Will and hope they get to have a second honeymoon somewhere a little less murdery.

Any Karin Slaughter is a great read, this is no different.
This is Will and Sara’s honeymoon that turned into a whodunnit and is beautifully executed too! I wasn’t into their pairing at first thanks to the Grant County Series (read them if you haven’t) but I did come round eventually and now I’m invested in Will and Sara.
The murder happens on a secluded mountain top where Sara and Will are on honeymoon at an exclusive lodge - so basically a locked room mystery and everyone’s involved one way or another.
With plenty of suspects to choose from and a tangled web of past events it’s a good fun read!

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this ARC

This was a real page turner and hard to put down. I thought I'd figured out the killer early on, then as I progressed throughout the book I thought I'd got it wrong and kept changing my mind as to who the culprit was. Turned out I was right the first time, but I could never have guessed the reasons behind it.

Although this is the 12th book in the series, I think it could be read as a standalone.

You can always trust Karin Slaughter to write a good book. I have to admit it took a couple of chapters to get in to it but once I did it was great. I really like Will and Sara and learning some more background to Will was really interesting.
There were plenty of potential suspects to latch on to and keep you guessing right until the end. It was very Agatha Christie.

Will Trent and Sara Linton? - Of course I was going to read this one.
The murder happens on a secluded mountain top where Sara and Will are on honeymoon at an exclusive lodge - so basically a locked room mystery and I really do love those.
With a wealth of suspects to choose from and a tangled web of relationships, past events and expectations to work our way through this was a beautifully executed Whodunnit of the highest calibre.

One of the aspects of This Is Why We Lied that I loved so much was that we delved into aspects of Will's past that we previously hadn't seen and seeing the development in his character and the skills he has developed from book one is such a joy.

Beautifully plotted, suspenseful and edge of the seat.
Loved it!

Will and Sara have finally got married and are honeymooning at the remote MacAlpine Family Lodge.

Their fellow guests are an odd bunch and the family who have run the lodge for seven generations are even odder.

Then Mercy the lodge's manager is brutally murdered and dies in Will's arms.

Will has to reveal he is an agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the honeymoon is over.

Battling the remote terrain and the even more remote emotions of the MacAlpine Family, Will must solve Mercy's murder.

Karin Slaughter writes a cracking tale and this is no exception!

I would like to thank Netgalley and Harper Collins Publishing for the chance to read and review this book

Spoilers spoilers spoilers


I feel a bit cheated by this book.
As someone who's been there since Will and Sara met, I can't believe we didn't get a wedding.
The second reason I feel cheated, is after everything they've been through, you could have let them have a honeymoon!
That aside, it was great. It felt darker and more twisted than some of her other books.
Poor Mercy, who never stood a chance.
The screwed up relationships of the whole family were great to read, horrifying to imagine.
I felt the murderer was pretty obvious from the start, but not the whys. I raced through those last chapters to get to the whys.
Another cracking read from Slaughter

<I><blockquote>Faith started grinning. "How did I get an Agatha Christie locked room with a VC Andrews twist?"</I></blockquote>

Which is a light moment in what is another dark book in Slaughter's series. There seems to be a mini trend at the moment in mysteries set in high-class resorts and this ticks that box and it also reminded me of some of Christie's claustrophobic families such as in her [book:Crooked House|9875107]. But any coziness stemming from the uber loved-up Will and Sara on honeymoon is soon (though perhaps not soon enough) pushed aside for a typically brutal murder.

Slaughter is deservedly a best seller for a reason but this isn't one of my favourite books: the loviness of Will and Sara is a bit nauseating and her almost maternal concern for him is particularly jarring here. Also Will's past which we've shared over the previous 11 books is, of course, traumatic but starts to feel overdone: bringing in someone he knew in care seems too much of a pointed coincidence, almost exploitative, and feels like the character is constantly being dragged backwards.

Things definitely pick up once Faith arrives on the scene: she's like a breath of fresh air as is Amanda. But the story meanders and makes little progress for hundreds of pages with some shock revelations all rushed in at the end. I also didn't really understand how the physical evidence of the revealed true story gets erased on the fatal night.

This is still a Slaughter page-turner but just not quite up there with her best: 3.5 stars rounded up.

It took me ages to settle in to this book but after a few chapters I was hooked, it took me longer than usual to finish it but that’s mainly due to having a busy week. As always the author has a way of bringing the reader in several directions before the suspect is finally revealed. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the arc to read.

I knew I made the right decision when I requested this book on NetGalley. Karin Slaughter has a way of really making you uncomfortable and distressed with the narrative.

This is a continuation of the Will Trent series, which features the pov of Will, a GBI special agent, his wife Sarah Linton, a medical examiner at GBI, Mercy (more on her ahead!), and Will's partner, Faith.

This doesn't start like a typical murder mystery where you have the detective slowly interviewing everyone, finding the clues, then having a big reveal at the end. It starts with the murder and then takes us 12 hrs back to the pov of the murdered woman. This made sure that we formed a connection with Mercy McAlpine, the manager of the McAlpine lodge. We knew about her impending death right from the first chapter, so we become extra vigilant wrt the behaviour of the people around her. We try to understand who has the most dangerous secret. Meanwhile, Will and Sarah are guests at the lodge, enjoying their honeymoon, only to have it disrupted with a shriek. Then begins the tale of finding out who murdered Mercy.

It is very much a closed door mystery. The suspects include the family and the 8 guests. This made trying to find the motive easier (or so I thought!). Every possible theory that strikes one also strikes the detectives. They go down all paths, only to stumble upon something unthinkable and devastating. This was not just a book about a murder. It was also about domestic abuse, both from the partner and her own family. Mercy led a tough life but escaping seemed impossible. More so after she took over the reins and started managing everything at the lodge herself. Then she couldn't dream of leaving behind her family legacy.

I wouldn't want to delve deep into the trauma since if I went down that road, it would be a looooooooooong review. So instead, I'll talk about the aspects I liked.

● There are three letters that Mercy wrote for her son Jon over the years. They really shed a light on her. I understood her struggles more, along with her sorrowful tale. They tugged on my heartstrings.

● The post mortem was incredibly detailed. Since Will's wife Sara is an examiner, we got to understand the level of violence as they conducted the post mortem. We see the past and present wounds that really made me glum. Post mortem of this detail is often skipped in books but the author did her homework well. It also described all the procedures such a case goes through.

● I can't not talk about Dave, Mercy's ex-husband, abuser, adoptive brother(yes, you heard that right) and an overall terrible being. He was also Will's bully in their foster children group home. He went through severe trauma as a kid and as an adult and that made him really empty inside. Many times, the author tried to make us conflicted about him but then reminded us and reinforced that now, he is an abuser. Facing childhood trauma is no excuse for becoming somebody's trauma. It is unacceptable.

● The murder mystery is not the only aspect. The McAlpine family is riddled with secrets that we slowly unearth. These are some traumatizing secrets. At the beginning, I thought it was a regular run of the mill murder mystery. But then, it took a dark turn.

● I liked how realistic this book was in the aspect that literal wounds take time to heal and need to be protected from infection. Usually, the heroes may be bleeding through several wounds, showing no concern towards infection from open wounds. N then they miraculously heal. Here, the protagonist's hand is hurt and throughout the story, he feels the pain and considers how he would manage tasks with just one functional hand.

● I didn't expect that climax at all. It is unthinkable. I was both surprised and traumatized.

At the beginning I thought it would end up being a 3 star read but by the middle, I realized it's better than expected.
Therefore, 4 stars!

It is a dark story with a lot of triggers. So tread carefully! The author's brain went to dark places to write this one. A multilevelled mystery with webs of secrets.

Special thanks to NetGalley, Harper Collins and Karin Slaughter for providing me an advanced digital copy of the book!

A new Karin Slaughter day is like Christmas. The Queen of crime thrillers. We bow down.

This Is Why We Lied is another outing for the Grant County series. The return of Will Trent and Sara Linton, this is a bottle story. Taking place in a single location over the course of 2 days.

This felt slightly different, A stronger focus on Sara and Will. The crime however is a usual masterclass in tricks, diversions and craft.