Book Review: Am I Guilty? by Jackie Kabler

Since listening to a certain podcast recommended by my husband, I have found myself obsessed with the first sentence/paragraph of a book. I want it to really draw me in. I want to see scene setting, character introduction and intrigue – Am I Guilty? certainly delivers in this regard. The moment I started reading the book, I was hooked!

Thea is living through every mother’s worst nightmare – the loss of a child. This situation is made all the more tragic by the knowledge that Zander’s death is all her fault…. or is it?  Can she trust her returning memories?  Will those memories return in full before the trial date?  

It is a difficult subject matter to address, yet Kabler manages to do so sympathetically. The main character, Thea, is well-rounded if somewhat unstable. You could forgive this due to the recent circumstances, yet there is suggestion that this was the case even prior to Zander’s death.  She has long been the centre of a tug-of-war between her husband Rupert and her best friend Isla. Despite Thea’s obvious flaws, I had a lot of sympathy for her and I was convinced that there was more to the story than Thea believed.

Jackie Kabler was born in Coventry but spent much of her childhood in Ireland. She worked as a newspaper reporter and then a television news correspondent for twenty years, spending nearly a decade on GMTV followed by stints with ITN and BBC News. During that time, she covered major stories around the world including the Kosovo crisis, the impeachment of President Clinton, the Asian tsunami, famine in Ethiopia, the Soham murders and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Jackie now divides her time between crime writing and her job as a presenter on shopping channel QVC. She has a degree in zoology, runs long distances for fun and lives in Gloucestershire with her husband.