Ponder: In Her Defense

I found the premise of In Her Defense ©2026 by Philippa Malicka intriguing and thought-provoking, a psychological topic I'd been curious about understanding. Anna and Bonamy Finbow have become estranged from their adult daughter, Mary, and blame her therapist. Per the front flap of the book.

The whole country has been riveted by the trial: Beloved TV star and national treasure Anna Finbow, standing in court, accusing her daughter’s therapist Jean Guest of brainwashing her daughter Mary for her own financial gain. Jean insists Mary’s traumatic memories arise from her upbringing and her time studying at a prestigious art school in Rome; wounds only Jean’s therapy can heal. But as the trial unfolds, it’s Augusta “Gus” Bird, Anna’s former employee—a seemingly insignificant bystander, a nobody—who holds the key to unraveling the tangled web of lies and deceit.

If you can tolerate reading about smoking, heroin snorting, the stigma of lesbianism, and the deprived conditions within an artists' colony, juxtaposed with child abuse and the entitled wealth of an elite crowd... then this book might appeal. Plowing through these unpleasant topics to get to the core of the central conflict made this book a difficult read for me. What really are memories? Chapters about the court trial alternate with chapters about remembrances or interactions that gave background. The trial chapters were engaging but I wish I could have skipped the other chapters. I would have liked more discussion about repressed memories versus false "recovered" memories. The novel fell short in this area. In Her Defense was a disappointment for me. I rate it only one star but I did read it through to completion to learn of the trial resolution.

★☆☆☆☆ Awful but I read most or maybe even all of it