Antoinette van Heugten
Goodreads Description:
Max Parkman—autistic and whip-smart, emotionally fragile and aggressive—is perfect in his mother's eyes. Until he's accused of murder.
Attorney Danielle Parkman knows her teenage son Max's behavior has been getting worse—using drugs and lashing out. But she can't accept the diagnosis she receives at a top-notch adolescent psychiatric facility that her son is deeply disturbed. Dangerous.
Until she finds Max, unconscious and bloodied, beside a patient who has been brutally stabbed to death.
Trapped in a world of doubt and fear, barred from contacting Max, Danielle clings to the belief that her son is innocent. But has she, too, lost touch with reality? Is her son really a killer?
With the justice system bearing down on them, Danielle steels herself to discover the truth, no matter what it is. She'll do whatever it takes to find the killer and to save her son from being destroyed by a system that's all too eager to convict him.
My thoughts: I absolutely loved this book. I really got into it starting at about page 100. It was nothing to read even those first 100 pages though, because this book is extremely well written. It doesn't have any huge unnecessary words. It doesn't go into detail for pages and pages. And the characters are all well developed and play important roles.
I assumed before I even started the story that Max didn't actually kill someone. As I was reading the story building up to when Max and the other patient were found, I was learning more and more about the mother and her extreme denial of her son's problems. I can understand that maybe she wasn't seeing things at home, but she was even in denial about what Max was doing in the facility! I was becoming extremely frustrated with this woman, which is kind of ridiculous because she is just a character. But if I saw her in real life, I would slap her and tell her to wake up! I understand that she was standing by her son because that is her son, but she was acting as if she already knew without a question that he didn't do it, when absolutely all proof is pointing to Max!
The investigation was amazing in this book. Max's mother, her lawyer, and a private investigator worked together to prove Max's innocence. Some of the things the author came up with, I would have never even thought of. There were a couple of things in the investigation part that made me think about the amount of research done by the author. I am a huge court-tv addict, but I am not an expert. I think some of the evidence brought forth by the defense would have actually been inadmissible in the real world. Therefore, the ending made me feel like it wasn't real. It made me question if the verdict would go the same way, if this were a real trial in the real world.
Overall, this was an amazing book. I questioned a couple of things the author wrote, but the shock I felt at the end of this book made me forget about everything else. After reading this book, I couldn't even move for a little while. I was just so in shock...mostly because this story could be so real.
My rating: ☺☺☺☺☺
