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beckyyreadss's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
This series always manages to baffle me and I was thinking to myself that this book won’t annoy me as much as the others and guess what? I was dead wrong. This book made me so angry and at times I had to remind myself it was a fictional book.
This book has multiple point of views, but it mainly follows Eddie Flynn who was once a con man and is now a lawyer, who had opened his own law firm with the help of Kate Brooks who we met in the last book. They are desperately after a secretary to handle the chaos of the little office and the team. As Eddie is trying to sort through his office and paperwork, someone he knows calls for a favour. He wants Eddie to go to Alabama and take down a corrupt lawyer and to save a young boy’s life. They call him the King of Death Row, Randal Korn has sent more men to their deaths than any district attorney in the history of the United States. When a young woman named Skylar Edwards is found murdered, a corrupt sheriff arrests the last person to see her alive, Andy Dubois. It doesn’t seem to matter to anyone that Andy is innocent. Everyone in Buckstown believes Andy is guilty. He has no hope of a fair trial. And the local defence attorney assigned to represent him has disappeared. Eddie decides to fight fire with fire. He plans to destroy the prosecutor's case, find the real killer and save Andy from the electric chair. But the murders are just the beginning. Is Eddie Flynn next?
I don’t think I have hated a character or had a book make me so pissed off before. This book was incredibly infuriating, I think it was since this could actually happening right now all over the world. How many times have people read about being wrongly convicted or corrupt cops? Tons. So this book felt a little bit too real for a fictional book. The number of times I wanted to through this book at a wall or out of a window especially when you were reading about what Korn and the white supremacy group was doing in this small town.
The only thing that got me through this book was Eddie and the team. I love them all. I love that they all had a massive impact and their own chapters on what they were doing and how they were helping the case. I liked seeing more of Kate becoming more and more confident in herself and in the courtroom especially with how the last book ended. Bloch is still growing on me but she reminds me a lot like Ziva from NCIS, this sort of mysterious badass women who has a soft side but you don’t really see it a lot – though we saw a small speck of it in this book – and Harry, I would die for. I thought we were going to lose another team member in this book but I'm so glad we didn’t. The courtroom chapters have you on edge with what the lawyers are going to do and how the jury and the judge is going to act and react.
My favourite chapters in any type of these books are when the main character figures everything out and has a game plan. You feel hype out for the character and want him to succeed. The one thing I would say that I didn’t like personally, a book peeve of mine, is small chapters. However, for once it worked. Especially as the tension was building and then changed to somewhere else.
This book was hard-hitting and brutal, but Steve Cavanagh’s plot twists and reactive chapters kept you on edge and wanting to read more. I cannot wait for the next book in the series and to see who Eddie is facing next.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Police brutality, and Racism
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Child abuse, and Violence
Minor: Suicide, Torture, Religious bigotry, Cancer, Terminal illness, and Chronic illness
c4rn4ge's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
The pacing of the book starts off slow but finds a good rhythm until the last 100 or so pages where it becomes quicker and snappier. The ending was kind of expected and a generic happy ending where almost everything works out so I felt like I couldn't fully commit to a 5 star rating.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Murder, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Racism, and Religious bigotry
Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Murder, Physical abuse, and Violence
Minor: Cancer, Chronic illness, Drug use, and Terminal illness
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