One of the positives of electronic publishing is that it’s easier to get short stories out into the world without having to produce an anthology. Karin Slaughter’s The Unremarkable Heart is quite a clever bit of marketing for her full length novels, Broken (out in paperback in June) and her newest book, Fallen. You get a new short story for a few pennies and the first chapters of both books to whet your appetite.

Firstly, The Unremarkable Heart is a short story based around the last days of June’s life who is dying from lung cancer. The story is a reflection on her life and upcoming death and is grizzly in true Karin Slaughter style. Like many of her characters, June isn’t instantly likeable and you may not even sympathise with her by the end but you can understand how her life has unravelled. Certainly worth reading for 49p.

If you haven’t read any of Karin’s other books, don’t read the extracts but go back and start from the beginning with Blindsighted. Though her writing is not for the weak stomached! I am up-to-date so thought I’d read the opening chapter of Fallen (how many books have that title now?). The first page is not the first page of the novel but a synopsis that completely ruins any suspense of what follows. Don’t read it! Having then read the first chapter, I might hold off buying in hardback and either wait for the library to get it or the paperback to come out. Why? Not because it looks like a bad read, but more that it seems focused around Faith, who after the previous two Will Trent books, I have come to dislike.