Forget reasonable doubt. I had reasonable doubt about everyone in the room.
Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for inviting me to read an advance copy of This Jury Is Guilty by Laurie Blake through NetGalley. Being personally invited to read this one was a lovely surprise, and I’m very happy to say it turned out to be a five-star read.
Superstar Danny Scott is on trial for hiring someone to kill his equally famous wife, Hope Harrison. Hope survives the attack, killing her would-be murderer while defending herself, but what really happened between this Hollywood power couple is far from clear. Hope says Danny is violent and wanted her dead. Danny’s side paints a very different picture, suggesting Hope has a personality disorder and may actually be responsible for the violence in their marriage.
So who is telling the truth?
There’s just one little complication: Danny and Hope are both actors. Convincing people to believe them is literally what they do for a living.
But This Jury Is Guilty isn’t just a question of whether Danny or Hope is telling the truth. It’s a question of whether you can trust anybody in the room.
The story is told through multiple jurors' points of view, and almost no one is quite who they first appear to be. Dee has done her homework on her fellow jurors. Franny seems like a harmless little old lady, but she has secrets of her own. Michelle will do anything to be foreperson. Sofia is keeping things from her wife. And then there’s Rick, who thinks pranking people is hilarious. I hated Rick. There. I said it.
And apparently those twelve strangers have enough skeletons to open their own cemetery.
That was probably my favorite part of the book. The trial itself is fascinating, but the people sitting in judgment of Danny are every bit as interesting as Danny and Hope. Everyone brings something into that jury box, their secrets, biases, motivations, and histories. The more I learned about them, the less certain I became about anyone. I may never look at a jury quite the same way again. I’m going to be giving them all the side-eye.
The beginning felt a little slow to me, and that was the one thing that initially had me wavering between four and five stars. But by the time I finished, I understood why. Blake wasn’t wasting pages; she was putting pieces on the board. With this many characters, secrets, motivations, and points of view, the groundwork mattered. I honestly can’t think of much information that was included without eventually serving a purpose.
And the payoff worked. I figured out a piece or two along the way, but certainly not everything. I was surprised by the verdict, and Blake kept me questioning what I believed - and whom I believed - right up to the end.
That ultimately settled my rating. A slightly slow beginning that turns out to be necessary setup isn’t enough to take away a star when the rest of the book is this cleverly constructed. This book is definitely five stars.
I’d recommend This Jury Is Guilty to readers who enjoy twisty courtroom and locked-room thrillers, multiple POVs, deeply unreliable characters, celebrity scandals, and stories where everyone seems to have something to hide. If you like trying to decide who is lying while gradually realizing that the better question might be who isn’t?, this one is for you.
Just don’t assume the people sitting in the jury box are any more trustworthy than the people on trial.
Content warnings: domestic abuse, violence against women, murder.
