THE MAVERICK by Jennifer Valenti is a tour-de-force, answering the question: once a rape victim makes what others may perceive as questionable choices, should it impact the validity of reaching out for justice? Jane Valiente, a fictional character, rides the waves of a story based on just such an explosive issue by an author who states that sexual assault has been a personal, factual experience in her own life.  In the novel, twenty-something insomniac introvert Jane has good friends plus a loving family with whom she still lives, though her beloved mother died of cancer and her father has recently suffered a stroke. She has large college loans to pay off, mad tech skills that are currently being wasted at a boring, insurance job, and neglected ambitions of eventually moving on to employment she could actually care about and build a career around. Then Jane gets an interview with Imaigene, a super promising start-up on the cusp of creating a breakthrough tool for early breast cancer detection; the kind of diagnostic tool that might have saved her mother’s life. If she’s lucky enough to get the job, Jane could move to magical New York City where her undergrad friend Carmen — a Mexican DACA program recipient who became a public defender — already lives, and Jane could sink her teeth into a job that matters.

Meeting the company’s brilliant founder Peter Wright is overwhelming, but when he invites Jane post-interview to the company’s holiday bash, things are looking good. That is until Jane gets drunk and allows Peter to sleep it off in her hotel room where he rapes her, entirely swinging the narrative in new directions. Jane is still offered her dream job, which she accepts, purposefully shoving memories of the rape as far back in her psyche as they will go, thus beginning a steady diet of lies about the true nature of what’s going on in her life and the new job to family and friends, including Carmen, who is busy learning a good deal about how injustice plays a part in her world as well.

THE MAVERICK explores how women do and do not stand up for each other and how coworkers do and do not aide and abet crimes such as sexual harassment/retaliatory firing without just cause. It isn’t long before Jane comes to realize that where there’s smoke there might be fire, i.e. she may not be the only one and the initial hotel assault may not be enough to satisfy a clever, calculating sociopath who has gotten away with this very crime before. The book takes a hard look at whether entities such as Human Resource departments and the current justice system are set up to help individuals or aimed at protecting corporate interests.

Surprisingly personable as well as darkly humorous, THE MAVERICK by Jennifer Valenti is as riveting as it is entertaining as it follows the adventures of a sarcastic, conflicted yet compassionate young career woman who is trying to navigate her way through a modern-day ‘Me Too’ minefield.

~C.S. Holmes for IndieReader