The Bottom Line: The Girl Goes Home delivers an edge-of-your-seat murder mystery years in the making, along with explosive courtroom drama and a compelling emotional arc for the series’ favorite duo.
For fans who have followed Emily Calby’s plight after the brutal murder of her mother and sister in the series’ first installment, the book’s opening feels like a triumph in itself. This, the fourth book in Dorian Box’s Emily Calby series, finds our heroine as a 24-year-old law school graduate. She has also opened her own firm in Memphis, specializing in “Victim Law” – a fact we learn in a book marketing event by true crime author Briley Carr.
Box’s introduction of Briley is both timely and provocative. At a time when true crime stories reign atop the podcast and book charts, the mere idea of Briley makes Emily fume. While Briley claims she’s one of Emily’s biggest fans, her subject feels that she’s been harassed for two years by a parasite determined to profit from an unauthorized version of her family tragedy. With these topical opening scenes, Box plants the seed for some eyebrow-raising moves by Briley that significantly deepen the tension between the two.
Meanwhile, a series of discoveries and long-buried questions put Emily back in her native Georgia for the first time since she fled for her life at age twelve. For a variety of reasons, she becomes determined to find more information about her father, who died in a suspicious farming accident. The quest takes her to interview people who knew the family decades ago, as well as to a cemetery and to court, among other places.
When petitioning the court for access to her father’s adoption records, Box delivers explosive courtroom banter (Judge Gallison Wilbur to Emily: “You can’t engage in self-representation and have a lawyer at the same time. Sit down.”), and manages to maintain that level throughout. Come for the legal fireworks, but stay for the spicy internal mind chatter as Emily struggles to fit the pieces of this latest family mystery together. The obsession quickly pays off as she follows the money trail to find a complex, long-hidden murder plot.
Elsewhere, Lucas Jackson, the former gang member who helped Emily when she needed it most, returns once again. Now a licensed private investigator, and married to a boxing trainer, he offers to work for her law practice for free. The pairing is once again a match made in heaven that elevates the fun and emotional stakes to new heights. For longtime readers invested in their stories, it’s bound to get a little “misty” in the last few chapters.
Overall, The Girl Goes Home is not only one of the best books in the series, but also five-star fan service.
