Also Posted on For The Love of Fictional Worlds

Disclaimer: An Physical Copy was provided via Harper Collins India in exchange for an honest review. The Thoughts, opinions & feelings expressed in the review are therefore, my own.

This is my first Karin Slaughter book; and to be very honest, I am amazed and little miffed at myself for not picking up her books before. The Last Widow takes a very well known phenomenon of survivalist and cult culture in America and their arrogance, their own feelings of superiority and their very debasement of  women and brings  forward to the reader to judge for themselves, the actual reality of our world right now.

In The Last Widow, Michelle Spivey is shopping with her 11 year old daughter, when she is abducted by unknown men. An important scientist at Centre for Disease Control, its her job and her security clearance that makes her abduction a matter of urgency, even though there has been no sighting nor any clue to her disappearance.

On the other hand, we have our protagonists, Will Trenton, an agent and Sara Linton, a Medical Examiner at Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) are basically living together, though they are having communication problems and the fact that Sara’s mother, Cathy, has been less than effusive in her welcome of Will hasn’t been helping matters. (I would like to point out here that The Last Widow, isn’t the first book for these protagonists, but I didn’t have any problems following their life, even if i had no idea about their history prior to this book!).


While they are trying to integrate with Sara’s family, bombs are detonated at critical sites in Georgia; but when Will & Sara both head towards the sites to help, they are held up at an apparent traffic accident only for it to end up in Sara’s abduction.

A traumatised and brutalised Will, supported by his close friends, Amanda Wagner and Faith Mitchell; Will goes undercover in the very group that seemed to have abducted Sara while Amanda and Faith end up investigating the crimes of not only the abductions, but also of the bombs that were set off  in Georgia.

The Last Widow, in no uncertain terms is a brutal and violent read – themes of rape, paedophilia, mass murders, child murders and racism; yet they weren’t enough to keep my attention away from the book – I flinched away, horror seeping deep into my soul while reading the book, but somehow I couldn’t stay away from the simple fact is that this is EXACTLY what is going on in this world – the white supremacy that seems to be on a rise; the Hindutva feelings of superiority in India that somehow doesn’t seem to alarm anyone except the community it seems to be aimed at; the way immigrants and some communities seem to be brutalised just for the simple reason of being born who and what they are – everything is covered in this plot; and that makes it for a brilliant read that stays with you, long after the reader seems to be done with the book!

Karin Slaughter fans will love this book for they have experience of her talent; new to her readers would be intrigued with the blurb, but it will be her factual writing style that would bring back readers to her books over and over again.



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