"Not Guilty" by Teresa Pollard and Candi Pullen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Carrie Shepherd has everything going for her. She's a pastor's daughter, college senior and engaged to the man she loves with plans to go to Africa as a missionary after their marriage. Everything comes crashing down around her when she is attacked by a masked assailant on her way home from college one day, and brutally raped. Traumatized, she hides the fact from everyone until she discovers she is pregnant. Now this secret could tear apart everyone she loves along with her future.

On the whole, this is a well-written book. The trauma and emotions feel very believable. Some of her parents reactions when faced with a daughter who is obviously severely upset yet not pushing to find out what happened to her were a little less believable. Carrie decides not to tell anyone she doesn't have to about the rape even after finding out about the pregnancy, not wanting to deal with the shame. Unfortnately, that was not a good decision, and had far-reaching consequences.

The biggest negative to this book for me was the epilogue. On one hand, it's nice to know what happened to these people later in life, but it felt very fairytale-ish in that out of the 27 people covered, only about 3 of them were negative as far as how their lives played out from that time forward. That dropped this review down to 4 stars out of five. I understand it's fiction, but I prefer an underlying line of reality in this type of fiction.

This book is recommended for teens and young adults.  There is a section of resources and one of discussion questions for each chapter in the back of the book.

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookCrash.com book review program, which requires an honest, though not necessarily positive, review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.