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It’s 10 p.m. on a Thursday in the spring of her freshman year of college, and April is standing at the back of a crowded Manhattan bar waiting for her friend, Rudy, to arrive. Their eyes lock the moment he enters the room, and in an instant, lives and legacies are altered forever.
Within hours, Rudy is arrested. Within days, April is expelled. Within weeks, he’s incarcerated. And within months, she meets Peter, a prodigious young attorney who makes her world recognizable again.
Nearly fifteen years later, April is happily living in Chicago married to Peter, a mother of three with a fulfilling career and standing yoga date with her girlfriends. On the eve of Peter’s election for local office, Rudy is up for parole. Headlines explode about April’s past, jeopardizing Peter’s campaign and everything they hold dear.
Suddenly, April is faced with an impossible choice: protecting the life she created, or the person who sacrificed everything to make that life a possibility. Such Good People is a captivating portrait of blurred lines, divided loyalties, and what it means to love purely, steadfastly, and interminably. (Synopsis courtesy of Amazon.)
I have been binge watching Drop Dead Diva for the past few months and it has me interested in what happens in a courtroom and how the law can work for or against someone. All I know is that Rudy DeFranco would have never seen the inside of a prison if he had Jane/Deb or any of the other lawyers from Harrison and Parker defending him.
In Amy Blumenfeld's sophomore novel, Such Good People, Rudy is given a raw deal in life, locked away for a homicide that was the result of an accident during a bar fight. The situation has a huge impact on his best friend April and a ripple effect on her life when he is released thirteen years later. Told from the perspectives of Rudy, April, April's husband, and a former college classmate, Such Good People looks at where people draw the line between right and wrong or innocent and guilty.
I loved this novel and can't stop thinking about it! It is just so captivating and well-written. It shows how easily people make judgements when they aren't given all the facts and how that can negatively impact people's lives. So many things made me angry on behalf of April and Rudy. I don't want to say too much as to not spoil anything. I just hated that Rudy didn't get a fair trial to begin with. There's a Cold Case feel to this story, as well. I liked the different perspectives and how the went back and forth in time.
My only minor issue was grammatical in nature. While everyone's perspective was written in third person, there were times the characters would slip into first person. I don't know if this was by accident and was fixed for final publication. It didn't ruin how great this novel was, but it took me by surprise. It's about as jarring as when someone changes between past and present tense or the narrative switches without any section or chapter break.
I highly recommend checking this one out as soon as possible! It's such an important and worthwhile read. There's a lot of emotional impact, as well.
Amy's debut novel, The Cast (reviewed here), came out seven years ago. I hope she doesn't wait that long to release another novel!
(Trigger warnings at the bottom of this post.)
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