Recently, I’ve really enjoyed reading crime, mystery, and thriller novels, so I bought The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter. The novel centers around a family, the Quinns, whose lives change after a horrific crime was committed to target the father, Rusty. Rusty, who is a controversial defense attorney, known to represent alleged murderers and rapists, survived the attack, but his wife did not. Him and his teenage daughters, Samantha and Charlotte, are left devastated, and have to live with the devastating crime scene ingrained in their memories. In their adult lives, Charlotte and Samantha both become lawyers like their father, and despite their separate paths in life, find themselves involved in a case in their hometown. 

I really enjoyed reading this book, and would definitely recommend it to people who like thrillers and mysteries. Slaughter does a great job of describing the initial crime in very gruesome details and gives the scene from two unique perspectives, which gives the novel depth and makes the reader feel more emotionally involved in the story. Some of the details are quite graphic, so if you are not a fan of gore and painful depictions of murder and assault, this book is probably not for you. Once the novel moves forward into the later case that the sisters and their father become involved in, Slaughter does a great job of depicting perspectives from both the victims and the defendant, and thoroughly explains the ins and outs of a court case. With that said, if you are at all interested in criminal defense law, you should definitely read this novel because it provides the perspective of a defense lawyer, and the difficult job presented when having to defend someone against such a violent, heinous crime. My only complaint about the novel, which is really just a personal preference, is that the chapters are very long (each being around 25-40 pages), which made it more difficult to read as my attention span did not normally sustain me through that many pages in one sitting. Overall, I highly recommend this novel because there are so many different layers to it, and there is definitely something for everyone to enjoy as it covers so many different interwoven subjects.