Darkness Drops Again

This was my first time reading this author but I will be looking for more. This book was so good, it was hard to put it down. It centers around a female attorney who is married with 2 children. Her employment has been threatened and to add to her woes, she has been pulled into a pro bono murder case , which will have her working with a male friend she shares with her best friend. Little does she know, the male friend brings more upheaval to her life. How? Read it and find out. I really recommend this book. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

Maeve Shaw has the perfect life ...or so people think. She's an attorney,married to a senior manager at a consulting firm, and they have two young boys. Things are slowly falling apart. She's trying to make partner, and working a lot of hours. She's not spending much time at home with the boys.

She's tapped to participate in the defense of a woman accused of murdering her adult daughter .. pro bono. With her background, she really doesn't want to do this as it stirs up long buried memories of her dysfunctional family .. a past that she has not shared with her husband.

And speaking of husbands ... Maeve is finding that her marriage may not be what it seems.

It's a balancing act trying to please everyone ... and it's not working. Eventually something has to give.

This is a page-turning legal thriller featuring a female attorney determined to keep her life on track and failing miserably. The personal and professional lives are at odds with each other. It's steady paced from the very beginning to the surprising conclusion.

Many thanks to the author / Bowker / Netgalley for the digital copy of this legal thriller. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

Are women still being discriminated against in the workplace for having children? It’s a central question in this debut legal and domestic thriller, in which the protagonist struggles to find a workable balance between the demands of family and a career in the competitive world of the law.

Maeve Shaw, associate at a large Chicago law firm, steers clear of criminal cases because of her own traumatic childhood. But when a female counsellor is needed on the pro bono team representing a woman accused of murder, she has no choice but to agree. She’s already in trouble for lower billable hours after she took her second maternity leave.

Tammy Sanford stands accused of strangling Kyleigh, a child beauty pageant winner, now an addict after being subscribed opioids for a back injury. The crime takes place in the run-down apartment of her drug-dealer boyfriend Simon where she’s been living with her young son. 

While Maeve puts in long hours on the case, she’s also on a personal mission. She suspects her husband Patrick may be having an affair, and is set on discovering the truth and sparing her boys the insecurity she suffered as a child, whether she can save her marriage or not.  

Maeve is central to this character-driven story in which personal relationships are as pivotal as justice for her clients. While I felt she came across as rather weak and self-pitying in the first half of the book, this is explained through her back story, and ultimately she digs deep and finds the courage to fight for her family and for her right as a mother to a successful career.

The case is very interesting. Did Tammy kill her own daughter? Why didn’t the police look more closely into the Simon’s alibi? Was Kyleigh in fact murdered at all? These are the questions that I suspect will keep you reading late into the night.

Thank you to Bowker and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.