Title: Anatomy of a Scandal

Author: Sarah Vaughan

Genre: Courtroom Suspense

WARNING: Rape

An astonishingly incisive and suspenseful novel about a scandal amongst Britain’s privileged elite and the women caught up in its wake.

Sophie’s husband James is a loving father, a handsome man, a charismatic and successful public figure. And yet he stands accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is convinced he is innocent and desperate to protect her precious family from the lies that threaten to rip them apart.

Kate is the lawyer hired to prosecute the case: an experienced professional who knows that the law is all about winning the argument. And yet Kate seeks the truth at all times. She is certain James is guilty and is determined he will pay for his crimes.

Who is right about James? Sophie or Kate? And is either of them informed by anything more than instinct and personal experience? Despite her privileged upbringing, Sophie is well aware that her beautiful life is not inviolable. She has known it since she and James were first lovers, at Oxford, and she witnessed how easily pleasure could tip into tragedy.

Most people would prefer not to try to understand what passes between a man and a woman when they are alone: alone in bed, alone in an embrace, alone in an elevator… Or alone in the moonlit courtyard of an Oxford college, where a girl once stood before a boy, heart pounding with excitement, then fear. Sophie never understood why her tutorial partner Holly left Oxford so abruptly. What would she think, if she knew the truth?

Received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

This book will be one I will think about long after today when I finished it. It will haunt me, and it will likely be something I hold all other court-based suspense novels up against.

I am a little bit at a loss for words, and don’t really know what to say except bravo, to Sarah Vaughan for creating one of the best novels I have and will read in 2017.

The pain within this novel is agonizing, and the characters are sharp, and human. It is a brilliant work of fiction that seems all too real in the world we live in today. It is not light reading, but the subject matter within should not be something that one takes lightly.