Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book was pretty mediocre. If it was a high schooler, it would be a C average student. Nothing to see here folks. Flying below the radar and doing just enough to get by.

The novel promises to be about a young African American girl that "ALLEGEDLY" (this word will repeat itself to death throughout the entire book - you were warned) killed a white baby when she was nine and has been spending the last seven years neither denying nor confirming her guilt. And that's exactly what you get. Nothing more, nothing less....and nothing exciting or special or climactic either. At the end, you realize that you don't know much more than you did at the beginning. And what you do know isn't anything overly satisfying.

Now I won't sit here and say this entire novel was trash, because there were moments I enjoyed what I was reading and felt genuine curiosity as to where this whole thing was leading. That said, the moments I felt intrigued and excited were not fulfilled by the actual payoff. And believe me, I don't select books hoping for a deeper message about race, it's impact on social injustice and inequality, or a checklist of all of the gaps in our criminal system, but my God, this book had all the ingredients to make a really impactful statement. But then it just didn't. It decided to be a decent at best "psychological thriller" instead. Allegedly.



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