Take It Back is so engrossing I stayed up until two a.m. reading it, then spent the next few hours replaying it in my head. Wow! Such a great book with challenging situations and legal and moral quandaries. Mariska Hargitay (Lieutenant Olivia Benson on Law & Order SVU) would be proud of how Kia Abdullah handles special victims’ cases!
The premise of Take It Back is simple yet plausible—horrifying apt in these times. A sixteen-year-old white teenaged girl, Jodie, suffers from neurofibromatosis, a condition in which tumors grow in the nervous system. She has multiple deformities from this as well as balance issues. She accuses four immigrant boys, all Muslims, of raping her. The boys back up each others’ stories. So who is telling the truth?
Zara Kaleel has left a lofty legal position to become a rape counsellor. She believes Jodie, but taking her case affects Zara on a personal level, because her career and her extracurricular activities, like dating white men, shake the status quo of her fairly staid Muslim family and brings back her conflicts with her deceased father. The case also places her in the cross-hairs of racial issues: the Muslim community rises up in arms when she prosecutes the four Muslim boys.
Take It Back is a great read for those who enjoy crime thrillers or legal thrillers as well as those who like reading about contemporary socially relevant issues. This book addresses social issues we hear about on a daily basis and highlights how divided the world is in terms of politics, culture, religion, class, and race. Its twists and turns, particularly at the end, will keep readers entranced.
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