When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland is a legal thriller at the forefront of the story but also infuses in a decades old mystery. The story in When Cicadas Cry is one that is told by changing the point of view between the characters.

Zach Stander is a down on his luck attorney looking to make a name for himself when he gets a call from a grandfather of a young black man just arrested for murder. Sam Jenkins was found covered in the blood of his co-worker claiming that he just found her there in a remote church and tried to help.

Addie Stone is Zach’s investigator and girlfriend who encourages Zach at every step in the murder case. However, without much work of her own in the small town of Walterboro, South Carolina while Zach is busy Addie offers up her services to look into some of the town’s cold cases. The case that catches Addie’s attention is one where two young women had been murdered over three decades ago but Addie is determined to look at it with fresh eyes.

Legal thrillers often feel a guilty pleasure when I pick them up since I don’t come across many to read so I was excited to jump into When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland. This was a debut novel and you could tell the author is very familiar with the legal system and also from the south where the racial tension swirls all around which all made the book very intriguing. I personally guessed one aspect of this story which seemed a little obvious but maybe it was only because I read a lot but with other twists to come the pages did just fly right one by leaving this at four stars.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

For more please visit https://carriesbook.com/netgalley35 s Amina 716 482

? 2.75 stars ?

“That’s what she wanted me to believe. But not now. Now I knew better— knew what had to be done. That’s the thing with a secret this old.

You’re not keeping it anymore. It keeps you.”

In the Southern town of Walterboro, South Carolina, that still holds on to its racial hatred and discrimination, the last thing Zach Stander, a once respectable and highly sought-after attorney now struggling to land a respectable case, would want to take on is the high profile case of Sam Jenkins, a Black man accused of bludgeoning to death a white woman with an altar cross in a rural church on Cicada Road. 'Having gone down in flames himself in the past, Zach couldn’t help but hear a small voice inside urging him to turn and run.' But, as Zach and his girlfriend, private detective Addie Stone investigate deeper into the facts of that fateful night, they discover that there perhaps may be a deeper connection to this case - one that ties into the past of a pair of gruesome murders that brings long-buried secrets to light and one that someone would do anything to keep hidden - no matter what it takes.

“This was about something older and deeper, and if Zach had not fully appreciated the magnitude of what he would have to overcome to save Sam, he felt its full force now.”

It gripped me from the start; even though it does seem a rather generic murder, the opening passage along with Sam's reserved pleas for help and the foreboding menace that seemed to creep into the crevices as Zach became more invested into the case, intrigued me - 'this wasn’t a murder case—it was a powder keg rolling through a wall of fire.' I wanted to see how Zach would piece it together, what clues would be brought forth that would shed light on the case. I wanted to know how he would figure out his innocence, what lingering darkness led to Sam's involvement in the murder, who would want to frame him, how big a part would racism play in convicting him of this crime?
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