Fallen by Karin Slaughter

*Rating* 3.5
*Genre* Suspense/Mystery
*Review*
Faith Mitchell is a Special Agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) and has been partnered with Will Trent for the past 2 years. Faith is late arriving at her mother's home to pick up her 4 month old daughter Emma thanks to a seminar that went on too long. As Faith is driving towards her destination, she is unable to connect with her mother either by email, or by phone.

When she arrives at her mother’s home, she finds it destroyed and two men are still alive in the house. A shoot out soon occurs, and Faith finds that she is being questioned as a suspect, and not as a police officer with nearly 20 years’ experience.

*Positive* - It’s nice to actually see more of Faith as the main character in a story. She has the capability to lead an entire novel without anyone worrying that she will stumble or bumble along and mess things up. There are some family secrets that are finally revealed to Faith as well, and a closer look into her past as a rebel rousing teenager which nearly broke her family apart. Faith is real to me. Her struggles with her own health, trying to raise her two children in the best way possible, as well as the discovery of a secret past that surrounds her own mother, were way more interesting than the blooming relationship between Will and Sara.

Special Agent Will Trent has a sorted past with Faith’s mother Evelyn Mitchell. There are those who still question how Will and Faith can remain partners for the past 2 years after his investigation led to her mother’s resignation from the Atlanta PD. Will’s solo act as well as his sometimes brazen techniques, have left fellow law enforcement officers at arm’s length not wanting anything to do with him. He often finds that he works solo in trying to solve cases while often getting things wrong because of his inability to read. This time around he ends up stuck with his boss Deputy Director Amanda Wagner who is an enabler and couldn’t tell Will the truth even if it bit her in the ass. Wagner is also a life long friend of Evelyn Mitchell as they came up together as police officers.

Will has tried extremely hard to hide the fact that he is dyslexic from his fellow co-workers. (Sara, Amanda and Faith all know) Will is extremely smart which is typical of Dyslexic people who tend to be very creative and intuitive and are very good at hands on learning. Will is also stuck in an abusive relationship with his wife Angie; one that I sincerely hope Slaughter finds a way to end soon.

*Positive* - One of the reasons I started reading the Georgia series in the first place is because of Will Trent. Will has had such an awful upbringing, and his abusive wife just drives a stake thru his heart each and every time with her subtle threats and refusal to go away permanently. He is surrounded by bossy women, including Faith, and Amanda, who he can’t seem to get away from. Will seems to know instinctively things that no one else does. He and Amanda have a son/mother relationship that is often harsh in content, while Faith and Will are more like brother and sister.

Dr. Sara Linton once worked in her own private practice for 12 years. She was also the part time Grant County coroner while married to Chief of Police Jeffrey Tolliver. Sara has since moved to Atlanta to work for Grady Hospital. It has been 4 ½ years since the incident that changed her entire life and she is still struggling with moving on. Sara ends up in the middle of the investigation because of her concurrent relationship with Will and Faith as well as a target of Angie Trent who she comes face to face with in the book.

*Undecided* - I’ve had a problem with Sara for some time now and I’m not sure if Fallen has made me change my mind about her or not. She just seems to get involved in things she shouldn’t have access to. It’s not realistic. I know she was one of the main characters of the Grant County series from inception to finish, and now with the combined Georgia series she seems to be thrown into the mix as almost as a tertiary character who knows it all and who is having a change of heart regarding Will and their ongoing relationship.

She often comes across as smarter than everyone else no matter what setting you put her in. Or maybe it’s because I still hold resentment at what happened at the end of the Grant County series and haven’t been able to move onward with Sara in the picture. I have no problem with Sara moving on with her life after 4 ½ years of self-pity and self-doubt. I’m just not sure if I care one way or the other if Sara and Will find happiness together.

Fallen is the third book in the Georgia series by Karin Slaughter and continues the story of characters from the Grant County and Will Trent series. If you haven’t read any of the previous books by Slaughter including Undone, or Broken, I would definitely recommend that you read them before attempting to read Fallen. There’s a lot of back story including why Sara Linton is working for Grady Hospital now, and how she ended up connected with Will Trent and Faith Mitchell.