Very quick read, which was great, but it was also very interesting. The way the author set up the book was unique and although the story ended with questions left unanswered, I feel that is what makes the book special. How reliable is the narrator? What really happened? “What did she see?”... great story...probably good for late middle school early high school readers because of some of the rape mentioning a in the prison, just FYI. ( )

I enjoyed this book. I liked the journal entries better than the film script parts though. Maybe that was because I read it too fast; I don't know. But I can say I have never read a novel like this before. ( )

In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.

Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.

The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)

-Kirkus Review

A glossary runs along the bottom of the pages like footnotes. Also “Before you move on”, discussion or writing or thought-provoking questions.

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