I just couldn't get totally into this book. Was slow moving to me. I love anything to do with court cases but the characters just didn't flow well for me.

Thanks to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for an early release of this book.

I received this book from Simon and Schuster Canada via NetGalley.

I enjoyed the trial part of the book and some of the investigating of the case but, in general, I found the book slow. While the book did wrap up the subplots I found it would have added some excitement if they had delved deeper into these subplots, especially when they held bearing to the storyline of this book. I found the characters a bit flat also. In general the book just felt like plot points had been written down but nothing was done to blend the points together.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

I found this hard to put down and the courtroom scenes were excellent. On the other hand the references to Jilly's past were irrelevant to the story and distracting, and even Mike's reintroduction was more of a plot device than real background character development. The writing is 'workmanlike', which is fine for a plot-driven story like this one, and I enjoy the Vancouver setting. The ending was a bit much for me: I prefer justice to be done and to be seen to have been done.

Enjoyed reading Denial. The characters were interesting and I wanted to keep reading to see what was going to happen. Throughout, I had some guesses as to the ending. Must admit I was completely surprised.

Denial by Beverly McLachlin, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada is beautifully well-written and unpredictable. There is something special about a courtroom drama written by someone who know the Canadian legal and justice system so well, as both a lawyer and a judge and can write about how the system works so accurately.

This is the second novel in the Jilly Truit series and centres around Jilly, a successful defence lawyer who is asked to defend Vera, the wife of another well-known lawyer, who has been charged with the murder of her mother, Olivia. Vera is known to have suffered from mental illness and her mother had been suffering due to cancer, had asked on numerous occasions to have her life ended, although her request was refused by her doctor, as well as her daughter. While Jilly is hesitant to take the case, she ultimately does and her team must act quickly to prepare for an intense trial in a matter of weeks, as Jilly is the third lawyer on this case.

For readers with little first hand knowledge of the criminal justice system in Canada, this book provides an enjoyable and easy to understand education, in the form of a dramatic story. It also outlines the importance of everyone’s right to a defence.

The novel touches on many tough subjects including mental illness, medically assisted dying, human trafficking and of course, murder. Would highly recommend this book as well as the first book in the series, Full Disclosure.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Jilly is a criminal defence lawyer and might just be facing her toughest case yet. She is approached by a colleague, Joesph who asks her to defend his wife, Vera, who is accused of murdering her mother. The case looks like a no brainer and it’s all but certain that Vera will be found guilty. Jilly isn’t ready to give up so easily and does her best to get her client off.

At the same time this is happening a threat has been brought upon Jilly’s life from her former client. Jilly has to balance her safety while trying to stay focused on Veras case.

The outcome of both are not so cut and dry.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this book and couldn’t put it down. As I may have explained before that I was a law clerk before an insurance broker and I absolutely love the legal field and legal dramas. I was hooked from page one and was desperate to find out what the final outcome was. I found Jilly to be the perfect main character. This was a sequel to the authors first book and I definitely plan to go read it now. I would highly recommend you read this one.

I love legal thrillers -- John Grisham was my entry into adult novels -- so when I saw that a former Chief Justice of Canada had written one, I was eager to check it out.

Criminal defense lawyer Jilly Truitt is hired to defend Vera Quentin, a woman accused of killing her chronically ill mother. Vera's mom is on record as having requested medically assisted death from her daughter multiple times, and the general consensus is that Vera finally gave in. Vera's husband thinks she should just go for a plea deal, but Vera refuses to confess to the crime.

As a legal thriller, Denial is a solid novel. The court case at the core of the story was interesting, and the author's experience in the courtroom offers interesting glimpses into how court cases unfold in Canada. I also like the insights into lawyers' strategies, and how moments that, to my layperson brain, seemed fairly innocuous, may actually impact legal matters. The mystery itself was also nice and twisty. The reveals, as they unfolded, took me by surprise, and it was nice to look back at the end, and see events with the truth in mind.

That being said, I found the writing a bit dry, and as much as I liked the glimpses into the Canadian legal system during the courtroom scenes, the book never quite hooked me. Part of it was that there was too much going on beyond the main story, but little room to establish the emotional heft necessary to make these subplots mean anything. I was honestly surprised to find out that this was only the second novel in the Jilly Truitt series, since these subplots and their respective payoffs all felt like the culmination of multiple novels' worth of build-up. 

We get a glimpse of some of the other cases that Jilly's working on, and how they intersect with her personal life in some significant ways. There are also some truly dramatic moments that would create lasting impact on Jilly's life. But while I understood on an intellectual level why these storylines are urgent, they never quite pulled me in. Which is a shame, because I think there's rich material in the storyline about Jilly's second chance romance, and also in the drama between her and the prosecutor, which is tangentially connected to a past story about her biological father. There was also a subplot about a criminal Jilly defended, and a young woman in danger, which keeps Jilly up at night, and also intersects tangentially with the central case because of its timing. All of this has the potential to be fascinating, but the execution fell flat for me.

With the central case, I also found the focus on denial to be somewhat tiresome after a while. Jilly muses several times about the possibility that Vera is in denial about having killed her mom, but that felt thin to me. Why jump through so many psychological hoops to come up with the possibility that Vera's in deep denial, when there are other, easier, and more logical conclusions to draw? While I can appreciate that Jilly's job does require her to jump through all those mental hoops, it just felt implausible, and it was a struggle to keep suspending disbelief just to stay in sync with the Jilly's mindset. All to say -- denial as a motif felt like a stretch to me, and having it come up so often felt forced. 

Denial unfortunately fell flat for me, but I did enjoy the glimpse into the Canadian legal system, and Canadian courtrooms. And like I said, I didn't predict the big reveal behind the crime, and, while I wish the novel had delved a bit more into the complexity of the ethics around medical assistance in dying, I liked that it tackled such a complex topic in the first place.

+

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

Former Supreme Court Justice Beverley McLachlin brings her knowledge and experience of the legal system to the forefront in her newest novel. The story centres on Jilly Truitt, a défense attorney tasked with defending Vera, who is accused of murdering her elderly mother. The story is compelling and the cast of characters is engaging. Having not read her previous novel, Full Disclosure, I did get a sense that I was supposed to know more about the protagonist, with indications here and there of a previous case and backstory - I’ll definitely add Full Disclosure to my reading list to delve deeper into Jilly Truitt’s background.

All I can say is our former Chief Justice of Canada has a vivid imagination and a golden pen. This book was a beautifully written novel that focused on what mattered to the case but with such detail and flawless penmanship ! There are several major plot shifts within the story that you never see coming and it just makes this book one of my favourites of the early fall novels I have reviewed. Prepare to have your mind blown.

I have to admit that I was not aware that this was the second book in the Jilly Truitt series but having said that you can pick up the book and not even know that you didn't read her first novel.

Jilly Truitt is a smart independent lawyer living in Western Canada's Vancouver metropolis. She is called by another top lawyer whose wife stands accused of murdering her dying mother. Has the anxiety and stress finally gotten to Vera Quintin and caused her to murder, was she just a sympathetic daughter helping to free her mother of the burden of the cruel pain that often accompanies the end stages of life, or is there another sinister plot at play?

Join Ms. Truitt as she pulls at the threads of the story and discovers what a tangled web has been woven. This book was so good I have gone back and purchased the first novel in the series to read - and I am now a Jilly Truitt/Beverley McLauchlin fan!!

Beverley McLachlin writes a lot like John Grisham in that you can see the movie in your head (and you just know that a movie should be coming to take advantage of the writing in this amazing novel!) The book is so easy to read but also provides the opportunities to learn new words and technical details - if you want to learn more about those things. I hope that Jilly Truitt continues to feature in Ms. McLachlin's future writing as I loved this book.

Thank you so much to author Beverley McLachlin, publisher Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for the opportunity to provide an honest review of this book in return for a temporary ARC to read the novel.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Shuster and Beverley McLachlin for the opportunity to read and review the second of the Jilly Truitt legal thrillers, "Denial".

Jilly Truitt has made a name for herself as one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the city. Where once she had to take just about any case to keep her firm afloat, now she has her pick—and she picks winners. But her latest case may just stretch that definition to the max.

When Jilly is tapped by Joseph Quentin to defend his wife, Vera, on the charge that she murdered her mother (a charge that she vehemently denies, and has caused multiple delays and two previous changes of defence) Jilly is determined to find a way to exonerate her client - even though all around her say it's a losing proposition.

At the same time, Jilly and former flame Mike have found their way back to each other, and are exploring the rekindling of their romance; and she sees Mike as a refuge from the stress of the Quentin trial and obstinacy of her client. You see, Vera was alone in the house with her mother - a mother in severe pain and with limited mobility due to medication - with the entire house alarmed and special locks on the doors that require keys that cannot be duplicated. AND, her mother Olivia has repeatedly asked for MAID (Medical Assistance In Death) which she does not qualify for under the new law.

When Vera phones her husband after finding her mother deceased, a routine investigation becomes a murder charge when a syringe of with the dregs of a dose of morphine is found in her arm, and it's obvious that it was not self-administered.

As Jilly delves deeper and deeper into the case, looking for anything that might lead to a Not Guilty verdict, she finds a darkness at the core of the family; a darkness which ultimately leads to a dramatic in-court confession!

Retired Canadian Supreme Court Justice Beverley McLachlin does another masterful job of building up the story lines - including MAID and touching on human trafficking in this second installation in the Jilly Truitt thrillers. Hopefully there will be more.

A sincere thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for an early copy of Denial by Beverley McLachlin. I read her first Jilly Truitt novel in 2018, and it has remained one of my favourites. I was very pleased to receive this book in return for an honest review.

Best-selling author, Beverley McLachlin, is former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and knows well the intricacies of our justice system and how lawyers operate. Some criminal law professors used her first novel 'Full Disclosure' to illustrate moral and ethical issues that may arise during a trial.

Her novels are gripping, suspenseful, well-written, and easy to follow. This book is both a courtroom drama and an enthralling psychological thriller. It details the investigation involved in the puzzling, hard-to-defend crime at the centre of this story.

Jilly Truitt is a successful defence attorney, one of the best in the city. Joseph Quentin asks her to defend his wife, Vera. His wife is being accused of the 'mercy killing' of her mother, and the charge is murder. Quentin is a top lawyer known as The Fixer for defending lawyers from charges of misdemeanours and infractions. His wife is said to be in a fragile emotional state and in denial about the act of injecting morphine into her terminally ill mother to cause her death. Her mother was suffering in severe pain and was also in the early stages of dementia and often begged Vera to end her life. Her mother had requested a legally assisted death, but the doctor refused, declaring she was not near enough to the terminal stage to qualify. Vera had a history of emotional instability, has fired two lawyers, and refuses to take a plea deal, adamant that she is innocent. She prefers to go on trial for murder, hoping for a not guilty verdict.

Jilly is reluctant to take the case as it seems hopeless. It appears that no one was present in her mother's house except Vera when her mother died, the alarm system was set, and the doors locked. Her husband and adult son hope that she can be persuaded to take the plea deal to avoid the murder trial. When Jilly meets with Vera, she is sympathetic, and her intuition suggests that Vera is innocent.
She decides to defend Vera but tells her if she keeps demanding to have her case tried before a jury, she may end up serving a long time in prison.

Jilly and her team must come up quickly with some arguments in defence of their client. In the meantime, there is unrelated intrigue surrounding Jilly, endangering her life and safety outside of the courtroom. The trial is compelling and informative, and its legal matters made easy to follow and understand. Jilly is up against a prosecutor who is a former mentor. He is ruthless and will twist the law to win. This was so well-written that I felt emotionally connected and that I was sitting in the courtroom. I was holding my breath as the outcome looked grim for Jilly's legal team and Vera.
The book highlights some very divisive and controversial subjects, mercy killing and, to a lesser extent, abortion.

This works as a standalone, but I suggest reading the excellent first novel to get a fuller picture of Jilly's background and past struggles. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy a twisty mystery with a court case involved.