Allegedly - Tiffany D. Jackson

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Mary B. Addison killed a baby.

Allegedly. She didn't say much in that first interview with detectives, and the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: a white baby had died while under the care of a churchgoing Black woman and her nine-year-old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official. But did she do it?

There wasn't a point to setting the record straight before, but now she's got Ted - and their unborn child - to think about. When the state threatens to take her baby, Mary's fate now lies in the hands of the one person she distrusts the most: her Momma. No one knows the real Momma. But does anyone know the real Mary?"

📚📚📚 

God, this book. As mentioned in my summer reading recap, it ROCKED ME. First of all, what an indictment of our justice system and how fucked it is. I mean, I know it is. But every time I read anything, fact or fiction, delving into it, I realize another dimension of just how truly fucked it is. This book in particular got into how children are treated, and...it's trash. Utter trash. Whether someone, especially a child, has committed a crime or not, mistreating them to the degree that people in the penal system are mistreated is horrendous.

Now, getting into the writing, I thought the decision to intersperse excerpts from Mary's trial and flashbacks into the present day was the best way to tell this story. The reader goes into Mary's story in basically the same way the jury and the general public did, and then we have to form our own opinions with the little bit of insight we're given. And even with the insight we're given, there's really no way of knowing what actually happened or if you're making the right call. It kind of gives you an idea of what it would be like to be in the jurors' shoes, which...it seems like a difficult position to be in, but also it reenforces that I don't ever want to jump to conclusions or make assumptions the way that people did in Mary's case.

I don't want to give any of the story away, so beyond this, I'll just say this is a heavy book. And even after finishing it, I've been thinking about it for days. If you haven't read this book, you should.