Book review: The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter

The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter is the second book in her North Falls series. I LOVED the first, We Are All Guilty Here, and was excited it was labelled #1, knowing more would come. I commented at the time how much I loved the characters and they would be wasted if we didn’t meet them again. And…. they’re back. Well… not all of them. 🙄 #ahem

We have two narrators here, Acting Chief Emmy Clifton (in the role following the events of book one) and her sister, Jude a former FBI profiler, who returned home in book one after over 40 years in the family wilderness. The case here involves a murdered cop and her barely-clinging-to-life daughter and, as the mother bore the brunt of her husband’s violent tendencies, it seems obvious he’s finally gone too far. Things change however, as a number of other factors and potential motives appear.

About this book

1601 Iris Drive looks like any other house on the quiet, residential street. But rumors are rampant about the Vickery family, and what goes on behind closed doors.

When gunshots ring out, Sheriff Emmy Clifton and her sister, ex-federal agent Jude Archer, discover a devastating crime scene. Allison Vickery has been murdered in her own kitchen, and her teenage daughter is bleeding upstairs, left for dead.

Everyone thinks they know what happened. But secrets are buried everywhere in this small town.

And it’s up to Emmy Clifton to uncover the truth…

My thoughts

This opens as Emmy is burying her mother. The pair had a complicated relationship which was exacerbated by her mother’s dementia. Again I cringed a little at some of the wording around her mother’s health as my mother has dementia (Alzheimers). Her mother’s death comes soon after another loss so in many ways Emmy is hanging by a thread, several bouts of PTSD piling on top of one another. Emmy knew the murdered cop and the pair worked together before Emmy had her son Cole (now a sheriff’s deputy himself).

Allison Vickery had married a wealthy local business man but it was no secret he was domestically violent. Though Allison often talked about leaving him, she always went back… much to the frustration of her teenage daughter Mandy.

Allison’s got some skeletons in her closet, forced out of the police service and now working as a PI… mostly on the trail of cheating spouses. However once some secrets about Mandy’s life start emerging, Emmy has to work out if she was the intended victim, and Allison, collateral damage.

Emmy’s relationship with Jude is interesting here (for several reasons!!) but she VERY begrudgingly lets Jude in (personally and professionally). She can’t forgive her for leaving and never returning, leaving Emmy (and her brother) to carry the load that was her mother’s health. But… she also realises she needs Jude’s help. And Jude certainly provides it… that calming voice of reason prompting Emmy to talk through clues, motives and actions. I must confess (like Emmy) I did often find her tone / language rather authoritarian and patronising.

Here Slaughter continues to deliver on the brilliance of book one, giving us a fully-formed and engaging cast of characters and takes this in an unexpected and, like its predecessor, quite shocking direction.

The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter will be published by Harper Collins UK in August 2026, but out elsewhere already.

I received an electronic copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes.