Legal Thriller Review: Her, Too | Bonnie Kistler

Part legal thriller, part contemporary fiction with a dash of revenge, Her, Too by Bonnie Kistler feels like a story that needed to be told in the ongoing dialogue amongst authors, journalists, and women continuing to add voice to the #metoo movement. In her latest thriller, Bonnie Kistler explores a fresh idea and one with troubling, messy, and complicated implications.

What is the story of the women who don’t speak up because they can’t or don’t want to risk their career? What is the story of the person whose job it was to provide a legal defense to someone who turns around and does the same to her as the woman she just faced on the stand and defeated?

This book comes with some obvious trigger warnings around sexual assault, but the story itself is powerful and more than you think it will be. More than a revenge story, more than a story about a woman being victimized by the very person she just legally defended, and more than a story about whether it is worth risking her career—this is a story about the very nature of these crimes, about there being no stereotypical victim, and about how people are much more than they may seem to outsiders.

About the Book

Characters

Kelly McCann . Her husband is Adam. Lexie and Justin are Kelly and Adam’s kids. Courtney was Adam’s daughter from a prior marriage. Kevin Trent was Adam’s top associate at his firm. Todd and Gwen are both household staff who work for the McCann’s. Todd and his husband Bruce live in the apartment above the garage.

Harry Leahy is the other partner at their law firm, Leahy & McCann. Javier Torres (Javi) is her investigator for work. Patti is a talented attorney who works for her. Cazzadee is her assistant. Paul is a cyber security expert who helps Kelly.

Dr. George Carlson Benedict is the physician and CEO of UniViro who was on trial for rape, and Kelly’s client at the beginning of the book. His wife is Jane benedict. Anton is the head of his security and driver. Rick Olsson is a respected journalist who covered the trail and Dr. Benedict’s groundbreaking research.

Reeza Patel is the victim who accused Dr. Benedict of rape and took it to trial. Ashley LaSorta was the former Chief Information Officer at UniViro and former girlfriend of Dr. Benedict. Emily Norland is a microbiologist who worked for UniViro on the vaccine research. Tiffy Jenkins is a custodian at the UniViro offices. Ashley, Emily, and Tiffy all accepted checks in exchange for signing NDAs about their sexual assaults by Dr. Benedict.

Plot

Kelly McCann is a defense attorney who has made herself a national name due to her work defending high profile clients accused of sex crimes. Her success often means defending men who may be guilty of what they were accused of (though not always). But Kelly has a family with unique needs who depend on her income. She has to admit she also is also driven by a strong desire to win, which is part of what makes her so successful.

The other part—the part less within her control—is that she is an attractive female attorney in a field largely defending accused men against the allegations from women. This puts her in the unique position of helping to level the playing field, which allows her to use her determination and laser sharp focus to win the cases.

In her most recent case, Kelly has successfully gotten the charges against Dr. George Benedict dismissed. Dr. Benedict is a renowned scientist who leads a company and research team who may have discovered a cure for Alzheimer’s. He was also accused and tried for sexually assaulting a former researcher of his, Dr. Reeza Patel.

It is a short-lived victory for Kelly McCann, however. After winning the case she agrees to have a brief dinner at Dr. Benedict’s home to celebrate, and he sexually assaults her too. In the wake of her assault, Kelly knows she can’t report it without destroying her own career and reputation in the process.

But Kelly isn’t Kelly McCan’t, she’s Kelly McCann, as her husband Adam liked to say. She doesn’t back down from a fight and she certainly won’t now. She has information on her side—she knows about three of Dr. Benedict’s other victims, and she knows how to hit him where it hurts. Joining forces, the four women set out to seek revenge.

But someone may be out for them as well, and they are going after them one-by-one. Can they get their revenge before someone gets to them?

Review

Compelling characters

This is an absolute five-star, unputdownable stunner of a legal thriller, and a book written by a woman and for women everywhere who have spent their lives having to deal with unwelcome looks, advances, or worse from men who are often believed over them by nature of their gender and status. Accuser and victim Reeza Patel muses about her assault by Dr. Benedict and the question Kelly asks her during the trial, why would she open the door to a man who brutally fired her and have a drink with him? This is a question Reeza herself struggles with:

“As a little girl I’d learned to be on guard against men who were too friendly […] Nobody ever warned me about a man who looked on me with disgust. I’d thought I was safe from a man who felt that way about me. I’d thought rape was a sex crime, not a hate crime. (Now I knew it was both).”

I went into this book with an entirely different idea of who I thought Kelly McCann would be as a character compared to who she really was. The book would have worked either way, to be honest, because the reality is it doesn’t matter who a victim is, they never deserve what Benedict did to them.

But Kelly isn’t the heartless, competitive woman I expected. She is deeply complex and empathetic. Her back story absolutely captivated me. I wanted her to succeed even more once I knew the vulnerable woman who hid behind the tailored suit, blond hair, southern accent, and pumps, deftly destroying evidence in the courtroom and helping her client’s defeat the allegations against them.

Kelly’s family situation kind of tore my heart to shreds when I truly understood what was happening. Through flashbacks, we understood each decision Kelly made that led her to this trial and then to her own assault at the hands of her client in a heartbreaking fashion. But I also liked that Kelly was fiercely strong both before and in the wake of what happened.

A broader message

Another interesting element to this book is the three NDA women, as they’re called, who she enlists to help her. These are women that Dr. Benedict admits may have a case against him to join Reeza Patel in the trial, and Kelly approaches them for a pay-off and non-disclosure agreement to keep their story to themselves and out of the courtroom.

Setting aside the fact that they were offered money to not corroborate the experience of another victim, these women do a lot for the takeaways from this novel. First, they shed light on the problematic treatment of victims in these cases. The former executive from the company settles for $1 million, while the housekeeper settles for $20k. The third woman is so traumatized that she lets her husband negotiate on her behalf, unable to function in the wake of her assault. That there is a price on what you experienced and your silence that can relate to your worth is troubling, and clearly called to light by Kistler.

The second thing these women do for the story is remind the reader that there is no profile or type who is victimized by men like Dr. Benedict. That one is a former girlfriend who is smart, bold, talented, successful, and stunning, one is a mousy, respected researcher with a PhD, and one is a meek, waifish housekeeper who would have never felt confident reporting in the first place after a lifetime of abuse by men, doesn’t go unnoticed.

The fact that a victim can be intimately known to the perpetrator, that she can be outspoken and at times unlikable, that she can be smarter than the perpetrator, that she can be a poor nobody living in a trailer, makes a powerful statement. Add to that Kelly as a victim—a woman who successfully got the charges dismissed that it now becomes apparent he was guilty of, in addition to so many other crimes—and it becomes clear that victims defy stereotyping. None of them asked for it. There isn’t a fault in the victim responsible for what was done to them. These crimes affect women from all walks of life.

Defying genre

The book starts as a legal thriller, takes a turn towards revenge thriller, turns back towards legal thriller, but ends as a compelling drama exploring the fallout of the abuser at the center of it all and what it takes to try and bring someone like that down. At the end of the book we find Kelly, a woman who was his defender, his victim, and finally the person who made it her mission to expose him. Kelly’s growth arc throughout the book and her story, both involving Dr. Benedict and outside of him, sung to me. She’s a character I cares deeply for by the end of the book and I wanted to understand how this would impact her life and family.

A gripping, compelling book and a needed addition to the #metoo movement portrayal in literary fiction. Powerful!

Check out Bonnie Kistler’s author page and the HarperCollins site for information on where to find the book. She also provides a discussion guide for the book, which would be perfect if your book club is thinking of reading this and discussing.

About the Author | Bonnie Kistler

Bonnie Kistler is a former Philadelphia attorney and the author of House on Fire and The Cage. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College, magna cum laude, with Honors in English literature, and she received her law degree from the University of the Pennsylvania Law School, where she was a moot court champion and legal writing instructor.

She spent her law career in private practice with major law firms. Peer-rated as Distinguished for both legal ability and ethical standards, she successfully tried cases in federal and state courts across the country.

She and her husband now live in Florida and the mountains of western North Carolina.

Thank you to Harper Perennial and Harper Paperbacks for my copy. Opinions are my own.