My Books

Allegedly

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? She wouldn’t say.

Mary survived six years in baby jail before being dumped in a group home. The house isn’t really “home” - no place where you fear for your life can be considered a home. Home is Ted, who she meets on assignment at a nursing home. 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 must find the voice to fight her past. And her fate lies in the hands of the one person she distrusts the most: her Momma. No one knows the real Momma. But who really knows the real Mary?

Review:

When I finished reading this book my initial reaction was, wtf?! The ending was so unexpected that it just ruined the whole book for me which was a shame as up until the ending I really enjoyed it. Unlike other negative reviewers, I liked how the story was written and I thought it was written well. I think some of the criticisms here is a bit harsh and unfair. It wasn’t the writing to me that put me off but purely the ending as it was something that actually drew me out of the book and made me react like I did above.

Call me naive but I didn’t get any “psycho” feelings from Mary, I actually felt really sorry for her and was rooting throughout the whole book for her to get a happy ending. It was like the author decided to throw in the twist because she needed an ending that was going to make the book more interesting.

To me I was already hooked on the book and didn’t need the twist of Mary being the one that was the actual killer. I was going to give this three stars initially but I’ve reduced it to two purely for the ending and it wasn’t because it wasn’t an ending that I didn’t want but an ending that I felt wasn’t in character to the whole story throughout. It cheapened the fact that I went through the whole emotional turmoil of the story, was invested in Mary getting her happy ending and then the ending happened. The ending made everything before pointless and I felt cheated.

I don’t want to be unfair though so I still highly recommend this book for reading if someone is reading reviews to decide (although it’s beyond me why you would read reviews that have spoilers). Overall it’s well written and I did thoroughly enjoy it but just be prepared for an ending that didn’t belong to the story line.