Manipulation of the legal system and the treatment of sexual assault victims provide a sturdy plot for Her, Too, Bonnie Kistler's third novel. Although Her, Too occasionally dips into melodrama, Kistler (The Cage) writes with a strong voice and excels at creating full lives for her characters.
Boston attorney Kelly McCann has a national reputation for her singular practice of defending male clients accused of sexual assault. She has never lost a case and destroys women's credibility on the stand--while defending high-profile men who are probably guilty. Her latest triumph results in an innocent verdict for George Benedict, a prominent research scientist who may have discovered a cure for Alzheimer's. But, later, Kelly is raped by her client. She believes she cannot go to the police, as news of the crime would demolish her reputation and career. Wanting to destroy George, Kelly approaches his other three victims, who don't believe her intentions and blame her for further humiliating them. Eventually, the women agree to help ruin George, but their complicated plans go fatally awry.
Readers' first inclination might be to despise Kelly's ruthlessness and cold-heartedness toward female victims. But Kistler depicts why Kelly takes these cases that promise a lucrative payoff: her husband has been in a coma for 10 years, so those big checks pay for a full-time home care giver, her two children's nanny, and her law staff. Kelly also confronts her own "bottomless hunger for victory." Kistler persuasively shows that victims of sexual abuse still face pushback, despite the #MeToo movement. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer