Girls Like Her

March 11, 2024
Accused of murdering a wealthy businessman and slated to be prosecuted as an adult, white 15-year-old Ruby Monroe faces a potential death sentence while awaiting trial in a Dallas prison where she is “just another wild thing in a cage.” Only Ruby knows the truth about the purported homicide—but that truth is buried under memories of abuse, exploitation, houselessness, and neglect. While preparing for trial and reflecting upon a quarrel with an estranged friend, Ruby confides in Cadence Ware, a white social worker whose personal history of trauma enables her to see beyond Ruby’s “difficult” veneer. As Ruby gains insight into how past experiences shape impulses and decisions, she and Dr. Ware make morally gray choices that could determine the trial’s outcome. Sumrow (The Inside Battle) crafts suspense through a compelling, patchwork narrative that combines fictional press releases, letters, notes, legal memos, and close third-person prose. Skilled pacing transforms a typical ripped-from-the-headlines premise into a nail-biting investigation of financial precarity and child sex trafficking informed by Sumrow’s work as a lawyer, as disclosed in an author’s note. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jonathan Rosen, Seymour Agency.

April 15, 2024
A ripped-from-the-headlines story shines a light on children who are tried as adults. On January 7, 2022, millionaire Eric Hanson was murdered. Within hours, 14-year-old Ruby Monroe was arrested for the crime. So begins Ruby's story, which alternates between narrative chapters, court transcripts, newspaper articles, and letters. Ruby spends months in Dallas County Juvenile Detention Center, but when the judge grants the prosecutor's request to have her case transferred to adult court, she's moved to the women's jail. Ruby's previous distrust of her public defender and the social worker brought in to help build her defense has stymied their efforts to prevent the transfer. But now, with a July 2023 court date looming, Ruby slowly opens up to the social worker about earlier events in her life. As the layers are peeled away, it becomes clear that the story involves more than a simple robbery that went awry and resulted in a shooting. The events leading up to Ruby's arrest and the depiction of her time in jail are jarring and graphic. Much of the story reads like true crime, although Ruby's letters to her friend Maya feel more like a device to fill gaps in the storyline than an authentic teen voice. Main characters are cued white; Maya has brown skin. An eye-opening depiction of the criminal justice system's treatment of young, vulnerable citizens. (content warning, author's note, resources) (Fiction. 14-18)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2024
Grades 9-12 Sumrow uses her experience as a lawyer with the Dallas Court of Appeals to add sobering authenticity to this gripping legal drama of negligence, abuse, and child prostitution. At its heart is a 15-year-old girl who is both victim and murderer. White teen Ruby Monroe doesn't have much hope that she'll avoid life in prison for murdering a rich, influential businessman. The prosecution intends to make an example of her by having her tried as an adult, and she doesn't see how disclosing traumatic memories to her defense team will make a difference. But with gentle persistence and understanding borne of her own past abuse, social worker Dr. Cadence Ware gradually uncovers Ruby's life story. The truth, however, leads them on a different path. A nonlinear time line and fictionalized materials--newspaper articles, court transcripts, letters, interview notes, and pieces of a torn-up document that foretell a plot twist--add interest and suspense to Ruby's story of falling through the cracks and, unlike so many others, eventually being found.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2024

Gr 10 Up-Ruby Monroe is in a Dallas jail, the alleged killer of a beloved local millionaire, Eric Hanson. Even though she is only 15 years old, she will be tried as an adult for capital murder. Ruby's only hope for not spending life in prison is to tell the story of her childhood and the events that led up to Eric's death. Sumrow shares Ruby's story through a collection of letters, court transcripts, and articles interspersed with a narrative of Ruby's visits with Cadence, her social worker, while she awaits trial. Her life is a heartbreaking story of child abuse, family drug addiction, and sex trafficking, and the teen's anger and fear is palpable. And, while her attitude can make it hard for readers to connect with her, it is very hard not to sympathize with Ruby upon learning all the things she has suffered. The court transcripts help keep readers hooked with a desire to find out Ruby's side of the story, and what the VERDICT of the trial will be. Ruby is white. VERDICT For fans of emotionally intense reading, like Ellen Hopkins's Crank and books by Tiffany D. Jackson.-Mariah Smitala

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