When she was nine, Mary Addison killed 3-month-old Alyssa Richardson, allegedly.
Now sixteen, Mary is released into a group home. The girls there are violent and those in charge are apathetic and inept, creating a dangerous environment for outcast Mary who has recently learned she is pregnant.
Ted, the baby’s father, is eighteen, also in the system, and Mary’s sole champion. I came to like Ted early on, only to wonder later if I should have. I still have mixed feelings.
Mary is smart, resourceful, and upon being faced with impending motherhood, wants nothing more than to take the SATs, attend college, and provide for her child. Being ward of the state, Mary’s baby is ward by proxy and the group home intends to put her child into foster care or up for adoption. She is, after all, a baby killer… or is she?
Mary decides she needs to come clean after seven years, to assert her innocence, which she hasn’t to this point out of protection of the true guilty party. The only way to keep her baby is to clear her name. With the help of a great cast of supporting characters—an SAT prep coach and a lawyer with The Absolution Project—Mary sets out to beat the system that has taken advantage of her, perhaps because the baby that died was white and she is black.
There are articles through which the history of the Alyssa Richardson case are slowly revealed in between primarily first person narrative. Every chapter is purposeful. Exciting. I couldn’t wait to know what was going to happen next. The writing is good, but it’s the story, the circumstances and Mary’s likable character, that propels the plot forward. I came to expect the worst at every turn for Mary, who seemed to genuinely want to do the right thing.
That said, Allegedly is a page-turner that is not without its faults. I don’t want to cite specifics so as not to ruin anything for other readers, but I was wholeheartedly disappointed in the ending. I really wish things had gone differently because I was so heavily invested. Would I recommend this book? Absolutely. It is well worth reading, and some of the most tense, exciting scenes I have read in a long time. Mary is a three-dimensional, sympathetic character whose journey, I suspect, is sadly all too real, but if I could, I would ask the author and publisher to reconsider those last few chapters. I’m torn between 3.5 and 4 stars based more or less on the ending alone.
Marie Huggins
A. Thomas
Michelle Lampley