I’m a fan of legal thrillers, particularly those with a bit of a social/political focus, a few surprises, realistic characters…Scott Turow, SOME Grisham, Connelly…and William Landay’s Defending Jacob is still one of my all-time faves (what happened to him, anyway?). So when I read about Take It Back by Kia Abdullah, I was eagerly anticipating the copy that I received thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review. And now that I have finished it, I keep thinking about it…
The protagonist is Zara Kaleel, a bright young attorney in London, who has abandoned her lucrative, high profile legal career to work at a sexual assault center, a career choice her Muslim family does NOT understand. She is especially aggravated by her brother and, at a family gathering, she finds herself “…wishing she had the words to explain why she couldn’t “just ignore him,” why she couldn’t just be okay with another man controlling the women around her. Perhaps her mother would never understand. After a lifetime of outsourcing her choices, could she appreciate the value of making her own?”
Zara is at a stage where she is not particularly happy: “Smart people are never happy. Their expectations are too high.” She is finding her own way as a “civilian, but retains sensitivity to the opinions of her community: “She no longer wore the headscarf but the censure linked to free-flowing hair still bubbled beneath her skin…”
Zara wants to help young women like Jodie Wolfe, a sixteen-year-old non-Muslim (white) girl with facial deformities, who has come to the center to accuse four of her classmates, teenage Muslim boys, of raping her after a party to which she had gone with her best friend, knowing she was not likely to be desirable to any of the boys at the party but desperately lonely and wanting to belong. Abdullah writes beautifully, and Jodie’s pain really comes through as her accusations begin to have an effect on many people.
Jodie’s best friend doesn’t believe her story, and neither does her mother, an abusive alcoholic who is clearly unbalanced. It’s somewhat miraculous that Jodie has the strength to stand up to her and to speak out. And the alleged rapists? They are handsome young men from hard-working immigrant families, who seem to have a bright future ahead…until Jodie’s accusation comes to light.
The boys all say that Jodie is a liar, just seeking attention, that she had a crush on one of the boys and will do anything to be noticed. Their story is that they didn’t touch her, and that since they could have any girl they wanted, why would they want a girl like her? It seems that Zara is the only one who truly believes Jodie, and although things get a little bit crazy when Jodie’s identity is revealed and a media circus unfolds, everything really goes off the rails when Zara becomes fodder for the relentless tabloid media, who delight in outing her as a Muslim who clearly hates her own community, exposing her personal life and calling her a slut and a whore.
Zara wants to prove that this is not an issue of religion, racial identity, or personal beliefs. Her own history of family strife (exacerbated by her disdain for an arranged marriage opportunity and future as an obedient Musim wife) complicates things, but it seems she truly does want to do the right thing, even if it happens to coincide with dealing with her own demons and family dynamic.
So, of course we go to court, and it’s the word of the four boys against Jodie. There are some rather big surprises, a tragedy, and lots of juicy details about Zara’s life, past and present. It’s definitely a page-turner, and I loved it. Five stars.