Review: ALLEGEDLY by Tiffany D. Jackson

 

Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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?


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Allegedly is the third book by Tiffany D. Jackson that I've read, though it was her first published, and I know this is going to be a book that stays with me for a long time.

This book tells the story of a Mary, a Black girl who allegedly killed a white baby when she was nine years old. She's now 16, pregnant, in a group home, and fighting to find a way to keep her baby and clear her name. And it's... ahh, I just haven't got the words. This is a book that is dark and gritty, it's disturbing and emotional. And I was rooting for Mary the whole way...

But the ending--okay, so there's a HUGE twist (and I should've anticipated that, given Jackson wrote this). And the twist completely changes the whole story--like, literally you're in the final chapter and you learn something that means you view the whole of the rest of the book differently. And I can't decide whether I liked that twist. I mean, it was shocking and impactful, but with us only having one chapter for this twist, it made the ending feel a little rushed. I'd have liked a couple more chapters to really smooth it out and delve deeper into the implications of this twist. (A twist that I did not see coming whatsoever--and it's so hard to write about this without giving spoilers!)

Mary is a complex character. We feel her pain and desperation. She's realistic and so well written. In fact, all the characters are. But it's only once you get deep into the novel that you begin to realise just how unreliable Mary is as a narrator--yet the whole time I was willing her not to be the classic unreliable narrator. It really is such good writing.

And the twist at the end really changes the way you view Mary's mother--and both 'versions' of the mother are so believable. And that's just a sign of such fantastic writing.

I found this book addictive. I could not stop reading it. It also employs some excellent narrative devices to show other sides of the story. While Mary narrates the main narrative, we have snippets of police interviews, excerpts from books that others have written about the Mary B. Addison case, and interviews with Mary's mother and the mother of Alyssa, the baby who Mary allegedly murdered. 

It's a difficult book to read. Obviously, it deals with the murder of a baby. You've also got references to child abuse and rape, as well as a lot of discourse on racism. It is such an important read, I cannot stress that enough. But I do think I prefer Jackson's later books (which also deal with unreliable narrators and racism). Still, this is a highly recommended read.

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