If you love legal thrillers, you’ve got to check out this award-winning book set in London and featuring themes of family, culture, gender, and sexual violence. Read my review of Take it Back!
Take it Back by Kia Abdullah. To be published on December 8, 2020 by St. Martin’s Press.
Synopsis: Zara Kaleel shattered the expectations placed on her by her family and forged a brilliant legal career. But her decisions came at a high cost. Now, battling her own demons, she has exchanged her high profile career for a job at a sexual assault center. When Jodie, a sixteen-year-old girl with facial deformities, accuses four boys in her class of an unthinkable crime, the community is torn apart. Zara is determined to fight for Jodie, to find the truth in the face of public outcry. And as issues of sex, race and social justice collide, the most explosive criminal trial of the year builds to a shocking conclusion.
Review of Take it Back
Take it Back was a gripping legal thriller with multiple twists and turns and a lot of layers.
A white, physically disabled daughter of an alcoholic accuses her four Muslim schoolmates (boys of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent) of rape. Former barrister-turned-rape-crisis worker Zara, herself a lapsed Muslim, becomes the girl’s advocate. The community explodes as everyone takes sides, putting Zara into even more conflict with her family and worsening her Valium addiction.
I really enjoyed Take it Back. While the tortured/addict protagonist is a common trope in the police procedural and legal thriller genres, this book featured a character I hadn’t seen before. Zara’s backstory, which included fleeing an arranged marriage, alienating her Muslim family, and being hooked on Valium, was multi-layered and well-developed. The public reaction to the rape case pitted advocates for victims of sexual assault against members of the British South Asian community, men against women, and student against student.
Told in multiple POVs, Take it Back managed to reasonably develop a huge cast of characters. All the twists and turns kept me guessing who was telling the truth until the very last page.
Really enjoyed this one and I will definitely keep an eye on what Kia Abdullah does next! Do you read legal thrillers? Talk to me in comments!
I just reviewed this one also. It was a very intense and good story.
Nice review. https://lindasbookreviews.wordpress.com/
Hi, Linda! Yes, it was SO intense. I’ll pop over and check out your review!
Sounds like a really heavy read with all the things it included. I like that you weren’t exactly sure who’s telling the truth. Makes me want to give it a go.
YES! I changed my mind so many times about what I thought happened. It was a really entertaining book, but incorporated a lot of issues as well.