With all the present-day stories coming out about sexual harassment in the workplace, Anatomy of a Scandal is a timely novel about a government minister accused of rape by a female co-worker. The co-worker Olivia admits she had a consensual affair with James, the government minister and a married man, but alleges that he raped her in an elevator after the affair ended. Anatomy of a Scandal follows the stories of James’ wife Sophie and the prosecuting lawyer Kate during the fallout of the accusation.

Concurrent to the story of the court case are flashback scenes to 1992, when James and Sophie are both students at Oxford University and just starting to date. Central to this storyline is a shy student named Holly, who becomes Sophie’s study partner, and the careless antics of the Libertines, a group of rich young men that includes James and his best friend Tom. James and Tom harbour a secret from Oxford that bonds them together as James grows up to become a government official and Tom grows up to become Prime Minister. When the scandal involving Olivia breaks, the incidents of the past threaten to be brought to light.

This is a very timely, and at times cathartic, read. The promotional blurb — “You want to believe your husband. She wants to destroy him.” — is somewhat representative of the story, but in no way encapsulates the full breadth of psychological responses in the characters. The dichotomy between what Sophie and Kate want isn’t as clear-cut as the blurb suggests, and the story is far more than that of a loyal wife and avenging attorney.

Instead, Anatomy of a Scandal peels away the various layers among the women in James’ orbit and slowly reveals the various ways in which his actions have lasting consequences even long before the trial itself. The novel explores the idea of privilege, how it ebbs and flows throughout one’s lifetime and how dangerous it can be when left unchecked. As the prosecuting attorney out for justice, Kate is the more obvious heroine in this novel, yet it’s Sophie’s quieter conflict that really drew me in. I loved reading about her responses to the trial, and how any hint of doubt about her husband is buried deep between the lines for much of the story. I love how she grows through the events in the story, and how she struggles to find her voice after so many years of being defined as a wife and mother, and I love how she comes to realize the subtle elements that influenced her decisions around her family. Sophie is the heart of the book, a reminder of the ways in which women internalize pain and a welcome example that heroism can take place in the quietest of ways.

Kate has her own vulnerabilities as well. As we learn more about her story, we begin to understand why this trial is so important to her, and why she is so passionate about bringing James to justice. We realize that she lives with a complex history of her own and, unlike Sophie’s more easily apparent sort of vulnerability, Kate’s is lightly concealed under a veneer of power that she’s worked hard to cultivate. While her story wasn’t quite as compelling to me and some of her decisions were questionable, she also provided a welcome form of catharsis, and I like how she handled the courtroom battle.

Both are strong, complex women, and both are impacted in different ways by James’ trial. Anatomy of a Scandal is a fast-paced, entertaining legal thriller that posits the question of how far privilege extends and at one point does it end.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

In Resort, con artist tag team Danny and Jill are broke and desperate in Acapulco when Jill introduces Danny to a wealthy English older couple who could be their next target. Even better, the man promises to give Danny a shot at movie stardom, which has been Danny’s dream since he and Jill first met in university. Despite the credit card scams they pull on unsuspecting tourists, all Danny really wants to do is start a theatre company with Jill in a small town, and he hopes that scamming the English couple will give them enough funds to do just that.

A few chapters in, we realize that things have gone wrong, as Danny’s narration shifts from following the English couple across Mexico to announcing that he’s now in King’s Reach minimum security prison on Vancouver Island for drug trafficking. It’s a jarring shift, and one that I admit pulled me from the story somewhat, as the Mexican storyline was, to me at least, just starting to finding its legs. In prison, under the advice of the prison psychologist, Danny plans a stage production of The Tempest, a play whose significance doesn’t become clear until the last few chapters.

Resort begins as a light-hearted crime caper, but soon develops into a more thoughtful reflection of Danny and Jill’s relationship and how love has the potential to keep us wilfully blind to potentially painful truths. Told from Danny’s perspective, the narrative switches between Danny and Jill’s plot to fleece the English couple in Mexico and Danny’s present-day life in prison where directing The Tempest does little to decrease how much he misses Jill and how worried he is that she still hasn’t visited him. The story is later revealed to be an account Danny writes as an assignment for his psychologist, so the veracity of many of the things he says is suspect, but what there is is somewhat of a slow burning tragedy of betrayal.

I found the pacing too slow, and the dual storylines too drawn out. Part of me wishes we didn’t have the early reveal about Danny’s incarceration, as it removed a lot of the suspense around the Mexico storyline. We already know the plan goes awry; it’s just a matter of finding out exactly how, and while some of the reveals along the way are surprising, it takes far too long a time to unravel.

Daley is deliberately cagey about Jill’s motivations throughout the story. Even at the end, it’s never quite clear if the love story is a tragic one about an innocent person duped by their partner, or if it’s a story of true love about con artists who had the perfect partnership and pulled off an extremely complex plot, or possibly even if it’s somewhat of a hybrid of both. I can imagine any of the three possibilities being the truth, but I never quite believed in their love story enough to really feel invested in it. As a result, I felt sympathetic towards both characters for the ways in which their lives turned out, but I never quite rooted for them to get together.

Resort is a well-written novel with commentary about the lives we dream to have, the reality we end up in, and the stories we tell ourselves and other people. It’s not quite the right fit for me, as I never connected emotionally to the characters or their stories, but more patient readers may better appreciate the nuances in the unraveling.

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Thank you to Tightrope Books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In 1986, Eddie and his friends Fat Gav, Hoppo, Metal Mickey and Nicky are on the verge of adolescence. They hang out together in their small town, deal with the bullying from Mickey’s older brother, and send each other coded messages in coloured chalk. Until one day, the chalk symbols lead them to a dismembered body and leave them with memories they can never forget. As they grow older, the gang slowly drifts apart, and an incident in college leads to a drastic break in their friendship. Fast forward to 2016 and Eddie is still living in the same small town as a teacher, when he receives an email from Mickey, wanting to reconnect about the dead body they found. Long-buried secrets are dredged up, and various bits of truth about that day are slowly unearthed.

The Chalk Man is a taut, atmospheric thriller that I devoured in a single sitting. Part of it was that I really wanted to find out what had happened that day in 1986, but more than that, I found myself drawn to the characters Tudor created, and to their lives. The story switches back and forth between the past and the present, and I love the juxtaposition that shows how much the characters have changed in the interim. The Chalk Man reminded me somewhat of Stranger Things, Riverdale, and maybe some of Stephen King’s books — the 1986 scenes had a similar sense of nostalgia and an idyllic environment tinged with foreboding.

Tudor does such a great job with the 1986 scenes that the 2016 scenes paled slightly in comparison. There’s still a sense of foreboding and the immediate mysterious threat of Eddie and all of his friends receiving a note in the mail with a stick figure sketched in chalk. One of the characters even gets murdered, which raises the question of who is after the gang now, and why they’re being targeted. But it lacks the sense of place and time that made the 1986 scenes so strong. It was also kinda sad to see how the lives of Eddie and his friends turned out in adulthood, though to Tudor’s credit, it felt all too real. And while part of me felt that the twists and reveals near the end were a bit much, it is also to Tudor’s credit that, looking back at the rest of the story, I realize that they fit right in with who the characters were and how they acted.

I finished this book late at night, and would highly recommend to start reading it earlier in the day. It’s a dark, creepy tale that’ll draw you deep into Eddie’s world, and definitely not the type of story you want to read in bed. The final chapter in particular is not the image you want to end the night with.

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.