Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - Skin Privilege

I didn't love this book and then really hated the ending... To learn that was how Slaugther chose to wrap up a whole series is what dropped this to a single star. I can't speak for how the rest of the series is, but I'm glad I read this one first - if I'd worked through the whole series and this is how it ended, I would have been livid.

Anyway, this book was typical for Slaughter, but definitely weaker than what I've read from her before. Her penchant for torturing women was a lot less pronounced in this book, so I will give her credit for that, but that was the only redeeming quality. I didn't care much for the characters, there were plot lines that went nowhere and were irrelevant to most of the story and moving through time made the plot hard to follow. I get using time/scene jumps for drama, but in this case, it just made it hard to follow.

I think now that I've gotten a bit more into the crime/thriller genre, especially in terms of series, I'm learning some authors are just not worth reading everything from, and Slaughter might be one of those.

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

!BIG SPOILER ALERT!
Beyond reach was the perfect painful finale for this series. I spent a long time wrapping my head around how the story really made sense and who had done exactly what, but it wasn't until the very last that this became clear. Again, wonderfully done, like most of Slaughter's books.

I was genuinely surprised what turn beyond reach had taken. When I had finished reading faithless (book 5) & immediately started in beyond reach, I was so sure who was after lena & who was in the burning vehicle. In the end, I was completely wrong & it positively surprised me! You were taken into the most tensed scenes every chapter, even more tensed than in the previous books! This was specifically due to the strong interaction between the main characters, namely Lena, Jeffrey & Sara. It was also fun to read an entire book that was mainly about the main characters for once, as I did miss this at times in some previous books. When you read this series in order and not as stand alones, you also create a huge bond with these characters which makes each chapter interactfull. In beyond reach, this was huge! I was really perplexed how, for instance, Lena's mother was still alive after all these years of believing she was dead & that you were first put on a trail that supposedly Hank was the father. There was then also a tender part where Sara & Jeffrey are just about to finally be able to adopt a baby. All these together made the story a rollercoaster of emotions.
I had read a book in the Will Trent series that lightly mentioned already that Sara is widowed because her husband, Jeffrey, died in an attack. So when I started the series I thought 'oh no, so I'm going to read how the main character dies!!!'. And yes, the last 6 pages in beyond reach this did effectively happen. Unfortunately, I found this piece the most silly ever. I therefore found it very unfortunate that Slaughter just writes 6 pages of quick how Jeffrey dies a gruesome death when you have read 6 books at a stretch about him. Jeffrey's death was not given the necessary focus and grief that I feel it should have. I also really feel that this is not the end and that there must be a follow-up after all? So I don't know if the Will Trent series will pick up on this or not, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. Because of this, I also don't give it 5 stars, but 4. It was just too implausible, sloppy and also just pretty nasty to use your main character like that as a final shock effect....

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