Book Review: Broken by Karin Slaughter

Sitting at the table in my room and eating fairly tasteless food I made, I have come to the realization that I cannot cook. Sure, I can put ingredients in a pot and stir them over a fire, but 90% of the time they come out tasting like what I am eating now, and I don’t like it. I don’t know where the magic went after I cooked my first meal in Japan.  Even Googling recipes and improvising didn’t work, I think cooking requires a level of patience that I am not capable of. Therefore I am now adding ‘good cook’ to the rather short list of qualities I am looking for in the future Mr. Savvy (it is not an actual list but if you must know it includes things such as kind, smart, financially stable – I know it is 2015 and I can make money for our family but er… – taller than me (I am only 5ft1inch), slim to average build, reads even if only sometimes, and a good cook.)

Broken by Karin Slaughter

The above is not entirely related to the book I am about to review, but I borrowed this book from someone who is also a good cook (I have already said too much *cough *cough). Anyway I generally like to read books with haunting characters, books that leave the characters’ impression on your mind for days, even months after reading it. Books that let you reminisce about the characters, evoking nostalgia as if you were a part of the story. This is the reason why I mostly read fiction, and when I am not reading fiction I can only push myself as far as biographies (watch out for Maya Angelou’s book review soon). Although Broken isn’t one of these books, I enjoyed reading it very much.

Broken is about crime, and solving it. A young college girl of 21, Allison Spooner, is murdered, but who is the killer? The police swoop in and arrest a prime suspect, an almost retarded kid who later commits suicide in the cells. The detective in this case is Lena Adams, who is working with Frank Wallace the Chief of Police in the county, and they are in a hurry to close the case. However when Tommy the chief suspect commits suicide in police custody, the former coroner Dr. Sarah Linton is called in for the autopsy and gets involved in the case. She does not trust the police and calls the Georgia State Bureau of Investigation for reinforcement; she needs someone she can trust to work on the case. Enter Agent Will Trent, who then begins working with Sarah to unravel the case. Agent Will Trent is the typical smart, dark, handsome etc.. agent.

Sarah was a bit too weepy for my like, I didn’t like her character very much; Lena Adams was not quite defined, you like her one moment you hate her the next… I feel like the characters were not fully developed but while Googling the image used above I came across a review that stated this is the 7th book in a series of crime books. This explains it, the characters have been developed in earlier books. Nevertheless, there was the question of the two dead characters, what is the connection between them? Who killed them and why.. there is a third character who winds up dead, there is betrayal, there is even a hint of romance, a hint of mystery (there is so much we don’t know about Lena) and there is the story of how Sarah’s husband died, which we never quite learn in the book.

It was a good book to read in between tackling Kusadikika and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

P.S. Reading is not as important cooking in the case of Mr. Savvy 😉