Saturday, September 12, 2020

Book Review: "You Can Go Home Now" by Michael Elias

Michael Elias' You Can Go Home Now delivers some interesting twists. It's not quite a police procedural, not quite a thriller, but it's a fascinating read.

Nina Karim is a tough, no-BS cop in Queens. She’s overcome a lot in her life but it drives her, fuels her to move forward.

Among the cases she's investigating is the disappearance and subsequent murder of a man, an ex-cop. Nina discovers that he used to abuse his wife and she spent time in a shelter called Artemis. And now he’s dead. But it’s more than that—Nina starts to find other cases in which those who abused their significant others are winding up dead, and all of their victims spent time at the same shelter.

To investigate what’s going on, she goes undercover at Artemis as a woman abused by her husband. As she gets to know the women and hear their stories, she has to figure out whether someone within the shelter is playing a role in killing the women’s abusers. If so, is that really a bad thing?

Meanwhile, when her past comes back to confront her, she must make a complicated decision: does she take on the demons that have haunted her for so long, or would doing so even haunt her more?

I thought this was a really good read and it had some interesting twists on the typical thriller/crime novel. I also liked how Elias looked at domestic violence and showed that it's not just perpetrated by men, and also examined some cultural issues relative to this type of abuse.

The book isn't always fast-moving, but Elias definitely threw in a few twists here and there. I found Nina to be a really fascinating, complex, flawed character, and I'd love to see her return in a future book. I’ll definitely keep watch on what comes in the future for Elias’ career!

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