Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson (review)

Mary, now in a group home full of violent bullies, has been incarcerated since she was nine years old. That’s when a baby was clearly murdered while under her mother’s care, and Mary silently accepted the blame. Now, at thirteen, Mary herself is pregnant, having fallen in love with an older boy while volunteering at a local nursing home, and she needs to set the record straight if she wants any chance at keeping her baby. A girl at the group home helps her find a lawyer, who has been interested in her case and in the rush to judgment that surrounded a black child’s allegedly murdering a white baby. Fictional interview transcripts, psychiatric notes, and excerpts from books written about Mary’s case front each chapter, but the question remains: whom was Mary really covering for with her years of silence? While the scene transitions lack polish, the drama throughout and the twisty ending more than compensate. Mary’s character is especially well developed, particularly as she transitions from a sympathetic victim into an unreliable narrator. Seen through Jackson’s dark portrait of the legal system and the failures of parents and social workers, Mary’s environments are as grim as the stories that play out in them; readers fascinated by procedural dramas will be thoroughly hooked.