Book Review: A Faint Cold Fear (Grant County #3) by Karin Slaughter

“An autopsy was an act of violence itself, the ultimate invasion. Everybody tells a story. A person’s life and death can be exposed in all their glory and shame simply by looking beneath the skin.”

A Faint Cold Fear is the third book in Karin Slaughter‘s Grant County series that sees medical examiner Sara Linton investigate a suicide at the local college campus. But while it looks straightforward, it just doesn’t add up to Sara. When two more suspicious deaths follow and a young woman is brutally attacked, it becomes clear that she’s looking for a murderer. The college authorities are reluctant to cooperate and Sara isn’t any closer to finding the answers she needs. With the violence triggering memories of a past she’d rather forget and the clues pointing ever closer to home, can she uncover the truth in time to save the next victim?

My 2020 Reading Wrap-Up

Over the past couple of years, I have documented every film that I have watched and reviewed them all using Letterboxd. As a way to motivate myself to read more, I thought I would do the same for what books I have been reading, using Goodreads as a way to set myself a reading challenge every year.

I initially set my target as 25 books this year, but a few things happened that meant I reached this goal quite early on. Firstly, I had a baby, so this meant that I was awake at silly hours with plenty of time to read. Then, there was lockdown. Because of lockdown, I decided to join Bookstagram and NetGalley and get more serious about reviewing books. So now, instead of reading two books at most a month, I’ve been reading up to ten.

I upped my goal to 60 around halfway through the year, and still managed to pass that by reaching 74 books. This year has really rekindled my love of books, and I can’t wait to start 2021 with this new passion.

Here’s how my 2020 challenge went:

Book Review: Kisscut (Grant County #2) by Karin Slaughter

“As if they could understand what she had been through. As if they knew what it was like to be strong and invincible one day and completely powerless the next.”

The second book in the Grant County series by Karin Slaughter and originally published in 2002, Kisscut sees Sara Linton – the town’s paediatrician and medical examiner – find herself entangled in a terrible tragedy when a teenage quarrel explodes into a deadly shoot-out. What seemed at first to be a horrific but individual catastrophe proves to have wider implications when the autopsy reveals evidence of long-term abuse. But when Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver start to investigate, they are frustrated at every turn. Meanwhile, detective Lena Adams, still recovering from her sister’s death and her own brutal attack, finds herself drawn to a young man who might hold the answers. But unless Lena, Sara, and Jeffrey can solve this case, it’s going to happen again.