Stepheny's Reviews > Allegedly

Ugh.

I read a really great review for Allegedly and thought it sounded awesome. Sometimes when this happens we too think that the book is awesome. Other times we are let down and remember that our tastes are different; that what others look for in a book might not be the same thing we are looking for in a book. What I can say is that I enjoyed Deanna’s review more than I did the actual book.

I had to set the bad grammar aside in this book because it was told from the first person point of view. The grammatical errors were done intentionally to showcase the lack of education of our narrator. So who is our narrator? Why is her grammar so bad? What story does she have to tell us?

Mary B. Addison.

When Mary was only 9 years old she was convicted of killing a baby. The baby was in the care of her mother and the details of the death are hazy and confused. When Mary is accused, she doesn’t speak. She refuses to answer questions or talk at all to detectives. All they have is the testimony of Mary’s mother and the evidence. While the evidence indicates there may be more to the story than meets the eye, Mary’s refusal to speak leaves them with no choice.

The story is told in parts. We get Mary’s firsthand experience in the world of juvenile detention facilities. She refers to her first six years in the facility as “baby jail”. She was released to a halfway house of sorts for children who have committed crimes. The girls in this house are violent and cruel. While the house is meant to be a means of rehabilitating these girls, the “wardens” within it are worse than the criminals. They are aware of the goings-on and yet refuse to intervene. They do nothing to help aide these girls in their attempts to better themselves- merely mocking and demeaning the girls at every turn.

Mary is far from innocent. She is allowed out to work at a nearby hospital where she tends to the elderly. She sneaks off with her boyfriend, Ted, who is 2 years her elder and also housed at a detention facility for criminal youth. And Mary is pregnant with Ted’s baby.

Mary decides that the only way for her to keep her baby is to convince her mother to tell the truth about what happened that night when Mary allegedly killed the baby.

The events in this book were frustrating to me as a reader. It seemed to take forever for the author to get to the point and tell us what happened. Instead we get the everyday mundane rituals of the halfway house, underdeveloped side characters and the confusion of what actually occurred that resulted in the death of a baby.

I felt the ending was garbage. After reading almost 400 pages I expected something much better than what I was given. And I didn’t care for a single person in the book. To me, there is no worse feeling than not having a single character to pull for, or stand behind. Mary’s refusal to say outright what happened annoyed me. At the very least let the reader know. It was uneventful and I found myself bored more than once. If you want to read the great review that led to me reading this book you may do so here. The book just didn’t do much for me personally.