One of the best books of 2017. Beautifully written and completely compelling, it is thought provoking and deep. I will be recommending it far and wide.

A very well written and well researched book. I had not heard of Ricky Langley before I read this book. The author has written a really moving account of her own life and its parallels to Ricky Langleys. It is an honest and in places heartbreaking account of her childhood. The details of Ricky Langleys crime is heartbreaking and obviously very well researched. I am glad I read this book and some of it will definitely stay with me for a long time.

It is hard to categorise this book – partly, it is the disturbing story of a murder, but it is much more than that. Part memoir, written almost as a novel, this is a painful, thoughtful account of a crime and how it affected those involved , but also how it changed the life of author Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. The author is the daughter of a lawyer and, as long as she can remember, she recalls being fascinated by the law. At the age of twenty five, she went to New Orleans to fight the death penalty, by interning with a law firm that represented people accused of murder.

The author believed her views and opinions were set in stone, but then she meets Ricky Langley, who is facing the death penalty for the murder of six year old Jeremy Guillory. Jeremy was the son of a single mother, Lorilei; who was pregnant with her second child when Jeremy went missing. Marzano-Lesnevich entwines the story of Lorilei and Jeremy, with that of Ricky Langley and with that of her own life.

I have no wish to give spoilers in this review and you need to read this book in order to discover the links between those involved. However, this is a book about how the past impacts the present. About how families have secrets and how life is not as clear cut as we imagine it to be. There are grey areas which, unlike in a novel, are not easily wrapped up, completed, finished or put away. We carry our life experiences with us and they colour our opinions, shape our present and influence our future. This is a beautifully written, very moving book, in which every person touched by events are dealt with sympathetically and with respect. I am glad that I read it. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

Ok, I'm calling it now, my book of 2017.
Which is quite something as it is non fiction. I rarely read NF and have never really found a NF read to engross me in the way this book has done.

Maybe because it doesn't feel or read as non fiction. The writing is so wonderful, so atmospheric, and at times so painful that you want to believe it can only be a work of fiction.

I was asked very early on what it was about. "Think H is for hawk for lawyers" I said glibly. And of course that's such a simplistic view but to the rare non fiction reader it might just give a hint of the style and structure. But where H left me a bit cold, and a bit bewildered how a full book could be spun out of training a bird of prey, this absolutely didn't. I could have devoured as many pages as the author could put in front of me of this book.

Will be recommending far and wide to all.