Title: When Knowing Comes
Author: Kelly Green
Publisher: Safe Passage Press
Pages: 392
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐
The book begins in 1972 where we see an unnamed boy being abused by a paedophile. I felt a sense of anxiety in the pit of my stomach at the grooming the old man was subjecting the little boys to, far from the watchful eyes of their parents.
Then we jump to 1998 to the 3rd
person PoV of Heather Elbridge whose son, Atticus ‘Ace’ has just been accepted
into the school soccer club.
There Ace befriends Roberto ‘Robbie’
Rivelino Santos. Together the two boys became close friends, enjoying school
and soccer alike, until a sexual predator enters the elite soccer club to which
they belong. The horrible experience will blight the young lives.
Decades later, Ace is a promising lawyer,
and Robbie wants to sue the sports organization that allowed a predator to
destroy young lives. Is Ace up to the challenge? Will he be able to confront
the demons that haunt his own past to challenge the sports organization and its
powerful legal team?
The author grabbed my attention with the
first paragraph, detailing the first abuse to which the unnamed boy is
subjected. This chapter is written so beautifully, describing the sordidness
that the child is put through, without losing the sense of innocence that is
his. We are left with a feeling of anger and impotent frustration as the man
destroys the trust of the little boy and abuses him. We get a sense that he has
done this before, several times, and that he will do it again.
But after a while, I began to lose
interest. Once Heather entered the picture, there was just too much of the
other stuff happening, getting in the way of the development of the actual
plot.
I enjoy stories about legal trials, but
this one didn’t touch me. I thought the trial needed to be fleshed out a bit
more.
(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank
you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)
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