This book is told in several parts about one girl. It was thought-provoking and gripping and I felt like it had some very interesting things to say about the media and about guilt. But for a book more than 10 years old, I felt like Looking For JJ felt very much important and relevant to the events today. Looking For JJ by Anne Cassidy was first published in 2004. You need to know what created the little girl who killed her friend. You need to know how it happened and why, what brought JJ to that moment in time and mental space. It’s a compelling read that pulls you along briskly and doesn’t let you fall behind. You can see them being real, really the way it might have been, and it makes you reconsider a kneejerk condemning reaction. The story of Alice-and Jennifer-make sense. It rips the sensational sheen off it and makes it heartbreaking. It takes the sensational case of a child killer and lets you get under her skin, see what brought her to that day, that moment when she killed her friend. This is a heartbreaking story told with incredible sensitivity. Jennifer Jones has been released on parole, and the whole country wants to know-where is JJ? Information about JJ’s whereabouts are under strict lockdown. Jennifer Jones, who killed her friend when she was only ten years old. But Alice can’t stop reading the newspaper stories and watching the TV spots about Jennifer Jones-JJ, the infamous child killer. Life is normal, and quiet, which is just the way she likes it. She has a job at the Coffee Pot, a boyfriend who loves her, and a home in Rose’s apartment. How the good and bad guys are not so clearly defined in real life situations.Īlice Tully only wants to live a normal life. The life she has tried to build is turned upside down and if she isn't careful she could lose everything, the boyfriend she loves, the friends she's made, even the identity that she's created for herself out of a past that doesn't seem to want to let her go.Ī sad novel about redemption and forgiveness. She has been forced to start a new life under a new name, but just as she begins to get her new life going, the reporters show up, the secret investigators, people sent to search for someone who no longer exists: JJ.

JJ is a person, fragile like everyone else and living with the burden of her past. You are taken into the story through JJ's eyes, you do feel anger for what she did but you feel sorrow too. It's a book that shocks you, firstly at it's content, but secondly and most importantly at the way it makes you feel about the protagonist: JJ. I've been a fan of Anne Cassidy for years and this is my favourite of her books.

Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy