BOOK REVIEW: Sainted in Error
by Glenda Winders
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ABOUT THE BOOK (from Amazon):
What do you wear when you testify against your best friend as she goes on trial for murder? As Maggie Patterson runs her hand over the clothes in her closet and muses about the prosaic details of preparing for a shockingly personal murder trial, she is catapulted into the memories that led her to this moment. Piece by piece, she assembles the fragments of her past to make sense of a violent crime, the echoes of which ripple through her recollections. Maggie and Cynthia meet as college freshmen and are seemingly destined to be best friends for life. As the years pass, however, Maggie’s marriage and career lift her to success and wealth while Cynthia’s jealousy and untreated mental illness cause their relationship to disintegrate. As the stories of the two women’s lives unfold, Cynthia’s paranoia and anger sour every relationship she has and turn even the people who have loved her most against her, ultimately bubbling over into an event that Maggie never sees coming. Not a murder mystery in the usual sense, and spanning time and space, Sainted in Error delves into the tenacity of friendship and the damage that the stigma still attached to mental illness can do.
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The author sent me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, so here it is…
I would give Sainted in Error 4.5 out of 5 stars, but since I can’t do half stars on Amazon, I’m giving it a 5 out of 5.
Genre-wise I would call this women’s fiction. The book starts with the main character, Maggie, who is picking out what she’s going to wear to court where she’s going to testify against her best friend, Cynthia, who’s on trial for murder. Then we go back to when Maggie and Cynthia first meet in college and we follow them through the next 20 or so years of their lives—through their relationships, breakups, careers, marriages, divorce, kids, etc.
We discover that Cynthia is bipolar and we watch her mental health deteriorate over time. This part of the book hit close to home for me. One of my roommates in college was also bipolar and attempted to commit suicide one night while I was out. Mental health struggles are real and they can be very scary for everyone involved.
As the reader you know from the beginning that Cynthia committed murder, but you don’t know who she murders until the end of the book, so there’s an element of suspense there. I enjoyed the story and found it very thought provoking.