When Ellice Littlejohn, a corporate attorney in Atlanta, arrived for a morning meeting with her boss and instead found him dead in his office, she turned around and left his body for someone else to find. Ellice has too many secrets to be involved in a police investigation. But when she is asked to replace her boss, she learns that things are not so up and up at the company. There are shady deals going on and protestors out front and Ellice wonders what the real reason she, the company’s lone Black attorney, was promoted. Then she finds out that those secrets she is so desperate to keep? Someone else knows them and they’ll stop at nothing to keep Ellice from exposing what is going on at the company.
This is a fast-paced and suspenseful legal thriller. I was definitely entertained and kept turning the pages, wanting to find out what happens. The suspense drove me crazy, wanting to know who was a good guy and who was a bad guy. Will Ellice survive to the end or will she end up like her boss? There are so many dubious characters and I was suspicious of everyone.
The book does a great job of highlighting social and workplace issues, especially with regards to race and gender. The company that Ellice works at is toxic and full of microaggressions and I loved the way that the author laid everything out.
I was a little annoyed at some of the things that Ellice did. She is well-educated and attended an Ivy League law school but sometimes I felt like she had no common sense. The author did a great job of going into Ellice’s background and why she had good reasons not to trust law enforcement but you would think that a lawyer would not talk to the police if she didn’t have to, or would at least bring another lawyer along, or wouldn’t leave guilty-looking phone messages.
Additionally, I thought the explanation of the sketchy stuff the company was involved in was a bit confusing. It was explained at the end of the book in about 2 paragraphs and it just left me thinking, huh?
I do wish there had been more scenes of Ellice actually working or doing her job. I don’t think we see her do any work after she accepts the promotion and instead just spends her time going into the office and then leaving right away and driving around to places. We’re constantly told how smart and good at her job she is but we never actually see her work. Still, I really enjoyed the workplace scenes because of all the secondary characters. Ellice’s assistant was amusing and I did like that there were a couple of coworkers that were good guys.
This was a great debut novel and I will be looking forward to the next book written by this author.
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