We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter @karinslaughterauthor @karinslaughter.com @kathleenreadsoutloud @harperaudio #NorthFalls #WeAreAllGuiltyHere

the setup…
It’s the Fourth of July and most of the town has assembled at the park to watch the fireworks. Newly fifteen year old Madison Dalrymple is supposed to be meeting best friend Cheyenne Baker who had a wicked plan for the two of them that night. When she’s late, Madison goes looking for her and sees what she believes to be the Baker car but as she approaches it’s clear that something is very, very wrong. Later, Deputy Sheriff Emmy Lou Clifton goes looking for Madison who is her best friend’s stepdaughter and gets that unique tingle that this is serious when she finds Madison’s mangled bicycle at the edge of the park. It sets off a series of events that change North Falls forever.

the heart of the story…
The Clifton family is North Falls royalty, the county bearing the family name. Gerald Clifton, Emmy’s father, is the police chief and they make an impressive team. But this is much more than the search for Madison and Cheyenne, it laying bare the underbelly of the town in the process. The layers are peeled back to expose buried secrets and some not so private. It has Slaughter’s gritty style and messy characters who are both admirable and seriously flawed at the same time. Madison and Cheyenne led secret lives despite having attentive and loving parents who were ill prepared for modern issues.

the narration…
Kathleen Early has always seemed, at least to me, to be umbilically connected to the author, mastering how to tell these stories just the way it was intended. I will always listen to them because of her and she was outstanding (again) in her performance.

the bottom line…
It’s a hard story and delivers a strong sense of the characters, the town and the driving forces and issues and Emmy leads the narrative. It does a hard transition to twelve years later and the twists and revelations had my head spinning at times. I did guess two of them but all that did was keep me glued to the story. This is classic Slaughter and she’s not only created a fascinating story but laid a heck of a foundation for the series. It is reminiscent of Grant County and that alone has me excited.

Book Info

• Release Date: August 12, 2025
• Series: North Falls #1
• Narrator: Kathleen Early
• Audio Length: 16 hours, 33 minutes
• Publisher: HarperAudio

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