Rad Reading-October

This month I had read a book called allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson

The book allegedly is about a black teen girl named Mary. At the age of nine Mary is falsely accused of murdering a white three month old baby(Alyssa). She then gets put into baby jail for six years and at the age of fifteen she then gets put into a group home. In her group home, there are 5 other teen girls who are murders and try to hurt Mary multiple time because they think that Mary really did ‘‘murder’’ Alyssa. Mary’s mother, Dawn Cooper has mental illness and struggles to take care of Mary. When Mary was growing up she had to take of her mother, instead of Dawn being a mother Dawn is the child and Mary is the mother. In the story it mentions that Mary would take care of the bills, rent and many more things that Dawn was not mentally prepared for but Mary was. When Mary was young she had a little brother named junior but junior ended up dying in his sleep while Mary had been taking care of him. Dawn had a boyfriend named Ray, Ray would abuse Dawn and Mary. One night he tried to get into Mary’s bed and tried raping Mary and in Marys defense she bit Ray. Ray didn’t take that lightly so he told Dawn that he was just ‘‘tucking’’ her in and telling her goodnight. Dawn didn’t believe him but she had too. They ended up prescribing her medication that Mary did not need. Saying that she needed mental help and can’t control her temper. They didn’t go to a actual hospital, they had gone to Rays friend who was a ‘‘doctor’’. Junior was Rays child so when he found out that junior died in his sleep, he went wild. He abused Dawn so bad that she had a black eye and multiple bruises. Mary mentioned that, that was the worst he had ever hit her mother. During the group home Mary ends up finding a boyfriend named Ted, she ends up getting pregnant by him. Later in the book Mary decides that she wants to keep her baby and in order to keep her baby she has to reopen the case. Reopen everything from her past to keep her baby. Many times through out the book I tried to believe that Mary didn’t kill Alyssa, in the last few pages of the book it slowly starts to say that Mary did really do it. Overall I really enjoyed reading this book it does sound very realistic and could happen but what I liked about this book was that it made me realize that if you really wanted to change the way you live is that you will and you will have to put so much effort and energy till it makes you so tired you wanna give up but you don’t. Mary is my favorite character because she is so strong mentally, she protects her mother from going to jail and puts herself in jail bc they wouldn’t go as “hard” on her in jail. She is one of the most forgiving person so far in any book that I have read. In the book Allegedly my favorite quote is “And then my whole universe had opened up and he became my sun.” The reason why I like this specific quote is because it reminds me of how much my siblings mean to me and how they are my whole universe.