Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Blindsighted was an okay read. The gory bits were explained in explicit and excruciating detail, which were as fascinating as they were disturbing. The crime itself was satisfactorily shocking and unpleasant. These were the things that worked for me in the story. Where Blindsighted fell flat was in just about every other area, characterization, plot, dialog, and in the relationships between the characters.
The plot was very simple, someone killed a blind woman in a very horrific way and the detectives are trying to find out who did it. There was little to no suspense or building to a dramatic conclusion. Some things happened, some people reacted, then the culprit revealed himself, and it was all resolved and loose ends tied up simply and conveniently. The plot never gained much more dimension than that.
The relationships between the characters, the siblings, the ex husband/wife, relatives, friends, etc, I never felt anything about any of the characters so I cared very little about their relationship, therefore the emotional pull that is usually present in these type of stories was missing for me. A lot of personal stories of traumatic events experienced by these characters was kind of thrown at the reader I assume to create that connection, but it fell far short because of the lack of life and personality shown by the characters themselves. They never gained a distinctive "voice" within the story and were all just paper thin and lifeless, I remained completely disconnected from them which ultimately kills a story for me.
The ending was anticlimactic, mainly because I didn't really care at that point about the characters and had no idea who the villain was or why he was doing what he did. I had very little invested into the story and the ending wasn't anything resembling suspenseful or action packed. Questions were answered but only in the most basic surface kind of way, exactly like all the rest of the plot, characters, etc. It was all very shallow. The crime itself, and the autopsy, were the most interesting thing about the book.
So, Blindsighted was mildly interesting because of the nature of the crime and the shocking gory details, but is definitely not a book I would recommend, although I will say that I did finish the book which, in itself says that it is readable because I rarely hesitate to put down a book that loses me. I will continue reading this author who is highly recommended by several reviewers whose opinions I value so I assume the quality of the storytelling improves in her other books.
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