Stand Your Ground by A.J. Ullman – Review by Roxsanne Lesieur.

Stand Your Ground by A.J. Ullman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cady Fox is lawyer living in the big city and it is a far cry from the small Kentucky town which she grew up in, she has just left dinner with the senior attorneys of the law firm she works for, where she feels confident that she has cinched the partnership she has been working towards for the last ten years, but as she cycles home through the local park at going on midnight, she ends up in a confrontation with a man in a basketball court where she feels so threatened by him that she ends up shooting him and bringing about his death. As it sinks in what she has had to do, Cady calls the emergency services and when they arrive, she is asked a few questions and then sent to hospital to have her wounds looked over, they end up being a gash in her head and a concussion so she is sent home to recover, but not before the police take a statement from her. When she gets home, she calls her nearest and dearest to tell them what has happened before eventually falling asleep, the next day she engages the help of a lawyer to help with her case and the “stand your ground” statute of her defence.

As the days pass and word of the case, the victim and Cady slowly leak out into the media, a new danger comes to the surface, it is the world’s perceptions of the crime and who committed it which has split down the middle and Cady is bang in the middle of it all. To the people on the outside looking it is the narrative of another privileged white woman shooting and killing another black man and the prejudices surrounding this come to the fore and after recent past events, there is a public outcry which leads to Cady needing to think about the criminal justice system which she may just end up in.

As things become more heated and the debate more and more fierce, Cady hasn’t just got to deal with the aftermath of her self-defence, she also has to deal with the memories of her past bubbling back up to the surface and the reminders of a life she wished to leave behind. Will Cady’s defence keep her free and out of jail, or will her past and present collide to meet out its own kind of justice? This is a narrative which will draw you into murky waters and leave you questioning everything you think you know and leave you pondering the hard questions in life as you follow Cady’s story and are compelled to keep reading to find out the conclusion.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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