Make It Right

By: Willie Mae Jackson

Narrated by: Gina Marie Davies

Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

What lurks inside is about to crawl out...

Donovan Montgomery is Chicago’s top forensic psychiatrist, an expert on behavioral deviance, whose belief in law and order and convincing testimony has locked up the city’s worst criminals.

With her latest case, the stakes have never been higher. Violence and racial tensions are boiling over in the Windy City. A neo-Nazi is running for congress, while a white supremacist is being tried for a triple murder. It will be Donovan’s job to derail the candidate and convict the killer. But things are about to go horribly wrong with the city, the campaign, the trial, and with Donovan herself.

What nobody could have foreseen is that Donovan harbors a terrifying secret that has long been suppressed, buried so deep inside her even she’s not aware of it. But with a mind of its own, this thing has been clawing its way out. Unleashed, it is a frightening side of Donovan she never knew existed.

Her life quickly takes a dizzying twist; her pursuit of truth spins into a personal vendetta. Donovan plunges into the city’s underworld - an asylum of corruption, conspiracies, and madness. Just the kind of chaos for this dangerously changed Donovan to make right with her newfound brand of justice.

Chicago and Donovan will never be the same again.

©2020 Willie Mae Jackson (P)2021 Willie Mae Jackson

A thriller where the villain is not the bad guy

*I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.*
2.5

I initially liked the MC, who's a forensic psychiatrist working on a special murder case. She's the only character we get to know properly and the rest of them are underdeveloped; even the culprit, whose motives are not really understood.

The story makes sense but, as a forensic psychologist, I got to feel disgusted by our MC and her actions, so that and the lack of depth on the development of other characters produced a lack of interest in the dialogues and the general plot. I was just expecting for some kind of plot that never arrived.

It is a shame, because I like the writing style and thought it had potential to be a great thriller/mystery.

amazing read waiting on the next one!!!!

loved it action pack with crazy twists can't wait to see what's next from the author.

The main character is a modern day Batman.

This book was recommended by a friend and it did not disappoint. It was very thrilling.

Wow!

Wow! What a great suspenseful book. I pride myself with being able to guess what happens next but in this one I continually surprised. I can’t wait for Dr. Jackson’s next book!

"Not like it is in the movies, is it?"

Well, this is one racial tension, action packed, high body count story, with some 37 deaths in the first few pages, no, sorry, 38: another murder victim, shot in the back of the head, shortly dies without regaining consciousness. And I'm still not sure about the three beads in the freezer.
Donovan Montgomery is a forensic psychologist who, quite frankly, is in serious need of therapy herself given her 'darker compulsions'. With an unblemished history of 25 successful court convictions to her credit and a recently published book selling well, her reputation is rocked when what should have been a straightforward murder case of four black youths is overturned by the jury and the killer, a white neo-nazi, walks. What went wrong? Montgomery determines to find out and make it right in her own way.

This is an easy read, the words skimming past quickly and slickly, with hardly a policeman in sight, other than in an occasional cameo role. But loads of fear, violence and hate. Remind me never to visit Chicago! There was a lot of character development of the main character, Montgomery, who dominates throughout and was, for this teader, unsympathetic, but other readers might well find her a welcome protagonist. For me, she turned the book which had started so promisingly into almost a Gothic City comic hero story. Narrator, Gina Marie Davies was good: a voice very pleasant on the ear, good modulation and differentiation of character voices, but she seemed to speed up s the book reached it's climax and I found myself almost memorized by the fast torrent of words. Or perhaps I was just losing interest.

My thanks to the rights holder of Make It Right, who, at my request freely gifted me with a complimentary copy via Audiobook Boom. I did enjoy the earlier parts of this story with it's potential to be a rattling good thriller, but found the latter half, so dominated by Montgomery, not to my liking, though I suspect many readers would find her a great character to cheer on in her antics. It is not a book that I would recommend but it is a tad unusual, fast paced and easy to read

Interesting

"Make It Right" (2020) by Willie Mae Jackson, M.D., is an interesting story about female forensic psychiatrist Dr. Donovan Montgomery’s quest to dispense justice after a white supremacist is put on trial for murder. The story is engaging but pushed my suspend disbelief meter way too far. I listened to the audiobook, well narrated by Gina Marie Davies, but the Kindle version lacks the basic elements of paragraph formatting. Still, the story held my interest. Mildly recommended. At my request, I was given this free audiobook and have voluntarily left this review.

Kelvin L. Reed
Author of "Guilt by Association"

A good detective novel

Narration was great and the story was well written. I liked the fact that the heroine? was a female, but it was a bit unnerving that she seemed like a psychopath too. I would be interested into learning more of what made her so unemotional.

starts as court drama and ends with stealth action

Donovan Montgomery is a forensic psychologist and profiler who has been called to court as expert witness very regularly and very successfully. Until today. Character Mason Ghetz, who has allegedly murdered three people, walks free - despite the clear and decisive testimony by Donovan.
Everyone is surprised by not only the verdict but also the elite team that has been relentlessly defending him in court - someone else is obviously footing the bill.
Following his release, Donovan goes on her own journey to ... solve the mystery.

The first part of the book is very much a court drama; and Donovan is a very very awesome person and very experienced in the legal and medical fields.

Then she makes it her personal mission to find Ghetz etc. and handle the situation on her own.
I think because she was so amazing in the first part, I was hoping for this to be a suspenseful detective/expert/crime (re)solving book; however, she takes it further and sneaks her way into the inner sanctum of a criminal empire where she finds not only Ghetz but also other very negatively biased people.
Rather than setting a trap and engineering for them to be brought to proper justice by the system, she now takes matters in her own hands, murdering a couple of people along the way.

This may very well be personal, but it took me a while to reconcile these two big sides of her.

The other aspect that was - positively - very uncomfortable was the very open, direct portrayal of day to day bias against people of color in certain neighborhoods or companies/teams that show more or less thinly veiled bias among their team members. These things do happen, they are part of life so pretending otherwise wouldn't be right, but some of the comments did really make me feel uncomfortable.

The narrator, Gina Marie Davies, did a terrific job. Her narration is on point, both in the confident, clear-cut, meanness, sleaziness, sweet-dripping-with-poison'ness, control-freakness as well as bringing all that together in a very multi-faceted and nuanced performance of the book and characters within.
I always enjoy her narrations and this was no exception :)