Not often does it pay off to choose a book based on the beautiful cover, but in the case of Jackal by Erin E Adams, it payed off. Honestly the cover is incredibly attention grabbing and visually stunning. Despite having a beautiful l cover, this was not a warm fuzzy feel good story. What is clear is this is not only a "who dunit" mystery, but also a book with strong themes of race, poverty, racism, the injustice of inherent racism.
Liz is reluctantly back in her hometown for her best friends wedding, a town that has a history of young black girls that go missing, only to be found with their chest cavities ripped open and their hearts missing. Liz was almost one of those girls but narrowly escaped with a jagged scar on her wrist as a reminder. But now Liz is back and her young goddaughter is missing the woods, the same woods Liz escaped from.

Erin E Adams did a fantastic job of not only captivating the reader with this mystery, but also to bring to light the real horrors that Black Americans face daily. The strength of the main protagonist Liz is abundant throughout the book. To face the fear of the woods that took your friend and almost took you, but the strength to not be the "angry black woman" that the town wants to turn you into, the strength to turn that fear and to make you a stronger version of yourself is another theme that Erin makes clear in Jackal. I look forward to reading other works of Erin E. Adams.