I have read one book by this author and I didn't much like it and this was not much better so I will definitely stop deliberately reading books by this writer (accidents can sometimes occur). There were a couple of things in this book that have been poorly researched but most people wouldn't have noticed. I having been involved in the criminal justice system know that what she described never happens, i.e, a defendant who has gone to court from prison is immediately released to walk out of court with their family. They may get released from court but it takes hours and they go back to the cells in the meantime. This is a very specific error though so I can kind of gloss over this but her characterisation is pretty poor and bland. She manages to make a female character 'not-like-other-women' and a boring facsimile of femininity at the same time, it shouldn't be possible but it is.

I didn't care about the various love stories. I cared more about the restorative justice but not by that much. There's an attempt at an accent that fails so horribly I have no idea what accent it was, even having finished the book. She could not have done any research on the slang of young people because it was almost painful. Unless you literally have nothing else to do, I probably wouldn't bother.