Description (from cover): “The first in a thrilling new series from Emmy Award-winning TV Host and Journalist Tamron Hall, As the Wicked Watch follows a reporter as she unravels the disturbing mystery around the deaths of two young Black women, the work of a serial killer terrorizing Chicago.
When crime reporter Jordan Manning leaves her hometown in Texas to take a job at a television station in Chicago, she’s one step closer to her dream; a coveted anchor chair on a national network.
Jordan is smart and aggressive, with unabashed star-power, and often the only woman of color in the newsroom. Her signature? Arriving first on the scene–in impractical designer stilettos. Armed with a master’s degree in forensic science and impeccable instincts, Jordan has been able to balance her dueling motivations: breaking every big story–and giving a voice to the voiceless.
From her time in Texas, she’s covered the vilest of human behaviors but nothing has prepared her for Chicago. Jordan is that rare breed of a journalist who can navigate a crime scene as well as she can a newsroom–often noticing what others tend to miss. Again and again, she is called to cover the murders of Black women, many of them sexually assaulted, most brutalized, and all of them quickly forgotten.
All until Masey James–the story that Jordan just can’t shake, despite all efforts. A 15-year-old girl whose body was found in an abandoned lot, Masey has come to represent for Jordan all of the frustration and anger that her job often forces her to repress. Putting the rest of her work and her fraying personal life aside, Jordan does everything she can to give the story the coverage it desperately requires, and that a missing Black child would so rarely get.
There’s a serial killer on the loose, Jordan believes, and he’s hiding in plain sight.”
My Thoughts:
Let me just start this by saying “Oh MY GOD!!” This book was amazing. I simply couldn’t put it down and could not stop thinking about it when I wasn’t able to read it. Tamron Hall, is well known as a television anchor and journalist, but she really brought her “A” game to this book. She uses her own personal experiences to shape her main character, Jordan Manning, who is also a reporter. Jordan is a crime beat reporter for a local television station in Chicago who is a little out of her element as she comes from a smaller city in Texas. She is a woman of color and is frequently overlooked for career advancement due to her skin color and her gender. She is a phenomenal reporter and even better investigator.
The author really does a great job of showcasing what Black women have to face daily in their lives from racial bias to career bias and to just being overlooked by society in whole. When it comes to criminal investigations it appears that the Black community is often overlooked and misjudged and the author does a great job of highlighting the inconsistencies in the system . As we all know, Chicago is a city that is rife with racial injustice and the author uses this as her starting point in this book. Fifteen-year-old Masey James has been missing for several weeks and the police keep claiming she is a runaway, much to her mother’s frustration. But when her body is found brutally murdered in a rundown park, the police start their investigation into her death and it seems race and mistakes within the system play a big part in trying to sweep her murder under the rug. Jordan sees this as her chance to make sure Masey’s story stays in the limelight and shines the light on social and racial injustice.
Jordan’s character is immensely likeable and it’s hard not to feel for her. She is struggling to make a name for herself in her career, she is very empathetic to the people she covers in her stories and it affect her on a daily basis. This book provides an interesting view on reporters and what they have to face in their daily lives and careers. They put on a brave face in front of the camera, but no one really thinks about how the gruesome stories that they cover may really affect them emotionally. I really enjoyed this book and have told several of my friends that they must read this book. It appears that Hall plans to write more in this series and as soon as the next book is released, I will be reading it. This was a fantastic read that stays with you even after you have finished it.
Overall Rating: 5+ stars
Author: Tamron Hall
Series: Jordan Manning #1
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: October 26, 2021
Pages: 396
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Get It: Amazon
Disclaimer: This book was selected by myself at the library, and I reviewed this book without compensation of any kind. All thoughts and opinions are solely mine.
Girl Lost In a Book 