In Her Defense Review: A Great Premise Buried Under Too Much Mess ⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Spoiler Warning 🚨
This review contains full spoilers for In Her Defense by Philippa Malicka, including the ending. If you have not read the book yet and want to go in blind, turn back now. Seriously. This review is about to walk straight into the courtroom, open all the files, and start reading things aloud. ⚖️📂
Trigger Warnings ⚠️
This book includes: mental illness, emotional abuse, physical abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, rape, sexual harassment, suicidal ideation, death by suicide, pregnancy loss, substance use, addiction, animal death, antigay bias, disordered eating, cursing, and toxic therapy dynamics.
So yes. This book is not exactly a “curl up with tea and relax” situation. More like “curl up with tea and slowly realize everyone needs a lawyer, a therapist, and possibly a locked filing cabinet.” 😬
In Her Defense by Philippa Malicka: Quick Overview 📚
In Her Defense is a psychological legal thriller by Philippa Malicka, published in 2026. The novel centers on a high-profile libel trial between celebrity mother Anna Finbow and therapist Jean Guest.
Anna has accused Jean of essentially brainwashing her daughter, Mary, and pulling her into something that feels cult-like. Jean sues Anna for libel. Caught in the middle is Augusta “Gus” Bird, an aspiring ceramicist with a whole suitcase of emotional baggage, questionable judgment, and an intense fixation on Mary.
The premise is honestly excellent. We have a messy parent-child relationship, a suspicious therapist, unconventional psychotherapy methods, a courtroom battle, class tension, family dysfunction, and the question of who is actually telling the truth.
For a while, I was completely into it. I kept switching sides. One moment I thought, “Anna is awful.” Then I thought, “Wait, Jean is terrifying.” Then I thought, “Maybe everyone here is unreliable?” Then I thought, “Does anyone in this book have boundaries? Anyone? One boundary? A decorative boundary?” 🙃
And honestly, that part worked.
The problem is that the book eventually became so tangled that it started feeling less like a smart psychological thriller and more like someone dumped five different dramatic novels into one courtroom and yelled, “Good luck, reader!”
What I Liked About In Her Defense ✅
Let’s start with the good, because there really was a lot of potential here.
The setup is strong. The idea of a therapist possibly manipulating her clients, a mother publicly accusing her, and a trial forcing everyone’s secrets into the open is exactly the kind of messy psychological drama I usually enjoy. I love books where I’m not sure who to believe.
And for a while, In Her Defense did that really well.
I found myself going back and forth between siding with Anna and siding with Jean. Anna is clearly not a warm, emotionally available mother. Jean, meanwhile, seems at first like she might be offering Mary the kind of support her family never gave her. But then Jean’s methods start looking less like therapy and more like emotional hostage-taking with better vocabulary.
That uncertainty was the best part of the book. It created tension. It made the trial interesting. It made me want to keep reading to figure out who was exploiting whom.
The book also explores some genuinely interesting themes: therapy boundaries, false memories, class privilege, parental neglect, and the uncomfortable reality that the legal system does not always deliver the kind of justice people actually need.
So yes, there was a smart, sharp novel hiding in here somewhere.
Unfortunately, it may have been buried under several layers of plot clutter, emotional manipulation, and “wait, we’re doing this now?” twists.
Full Plot Summary of In Her Defense 📖
The novel is told through a braided structure, moving between the events of the Guest v. Finbow libel trial and Gus’s memories of what happened before the trial. But to make things clearer, I’m going to summarize it in chronological order.
Gus Bird is an aspiring ceramicist who gets a residency at Creta in Rome. She is broke, ambitious, lonely, and very emotionally vulnerable. While in Rome, she meets Mary Finbow, an art student at the prestigious Melrose Academy.
Mary chooses Gus as her model for a portraiture project, and Gus quickly becomes infatuated with her. And when I say infatuated, I don’t mean “oh, she’s cute.” I mean Gus basically builds a whole fantasy future around Mary while Mary is just existing nearby like, “I need someone to sit for a portrait.” 🎨😬
Around the same time, Gus meets Jean Guest, a therapist. Jean and Gus become close, and Jean starts doing informal therapeutic exercises with her. Gus opens up about her past, including her relationship with a schoolmate named Polly, which ended after Gus’s conservative parents interfered.
Gus also tells Jean about her crush on Mary. Jean does not exactly respond with normal therapist boundaries. Instead, Jean encourages Gus’s feelings and suggests that Mary might eventually admit she has feelings for Gus too. This is where the alarm bells should be ringing, but everyone in this book seems to have unplugged the alarm system. 🚨
Gus later discovers that Mary’s mentor, Lawrence Melrose, is physically and verbally abusive toward Mary. Gus tells Jean, and Jean encourages Gus to bring Mary to her for counseling. Gus starts depending on Jean more and more, and eventually enters formal therapy with Jean even though she cannot afford it.
As Gus’s residency comes to an end, her obsession with Mary deepens. She sees Mary as her chance to stay connected to Rome, art, love, and maybe a more meaningful life.
Then Gus attends an end-of-year party and discovers that Mary and Lawrence are romantically involved. This is disturbing enough, but Mary later reveals something much worse: Lawrence sexually abused her when she was a child.
Mary also believes her parents played a role in allowing this abuse to continue because they sent her to the school where Lawrence taught. This completely changes the emotional stakes of the story.
Gus decides that Mary needs to get away from Lawrence and that Jean can help her. She brings Mary to Jean, believing Jean can provide safety and guidance.
Then Gus goes on a short trip to Venice. When she returns, both Jean and Mary have disappeared from Rome.
Mary later sends an email to her family and friends saying she needs to go through a healing separation from them in order to recover from her childhood trauma. Gus is confused and hurt. When she visits Jean, Jean tells Gus that her obsession with Mary scared Mary away.
Jean then steers Gus toward Stoke-on-Trent, where Anna Finbow owns a ceramics factory. Anna, furious over Mary’s email and convinced that Jean has manipulated her daughter, publishes a newsletter accusing Jean of running something like a cult and planting false memories in her clients’ minds.
Jean sues Anna for libel.
That lawsuit becomes the center of the novel.
Jean convinces Gus to infiltrate Anna’s household and gather evidence to help Jean win the case. Gus does this because she is loyal to Jean and still caught in the emotional web Jean created.
But once Gus gets to know Anna, things become more complicated. Anna is flawed, cold, and neglectful in many ways, but Gus starts to see that Anna may not be the villain Jean has made her out to be.
Eventually, Gus is exposed when Lawrence recognizes her as Mary’s former model. Around this time, Gus realizes something important: Jean has manipulated Mary into believing Anna knew about Lawrence’s abuse and helped perpetuate it.
In reality, Anna did not know Mary had been abused by Lawrence.
This is a major turning point. Gus begins to understand that Jean has not simply helped Mary recover memories. Jean has shaped Mary’s reality in a way that cuts her off from her family and makes her dependent on Jean.
Gus agrees to testify for Anna.
At trial, things are not looking good for Anna. Jean’s case is strong, especially because Anna really was a neglectful mother. Anna’s legal team needs Gus to prove that Jean planted false memories and manipulated her clients.
But Gus is torn. Despite everything, she still feels loyalty to Jean. Jean had become a mother figure, therapist, friend, and emotional puppet master all rolled into one extremely concerning package.
Anna’s lawyers offer Gus information about Mary’s whereabouts to help persuade her. Gus goes to see Mary and discovers that Mary is now pregnant. Gus realizes Jean had been stringing her along with the idea that she might reunite with Mary someday.
Jean then threatens Gus not to testify. But Gus has secretly recorded their conversation, catching Jean in witness tampering. Gus uses this recording to blackmail Jean, forcing her to agree to distance herself from Mary.
Then Gus makes a surprising decision. Instead of helping Anna win, she sabotages Anna’s case by presenting herself as an unreliable witness. Her reasoning is that if Jean backs away from Mary and Anna loses the case, Mary may finally be free from both Jean’s control and Lawrence’s abuse.
The court rules in Jean’s favor.
Several months later, Gus’s prediction seems to come true. Mary moves into new accommodations with her baby and begins repairing her relationship with Anna. Lawrence is exposed as an abuser of multiple students and removed from his position at the academy.
Gus finally recognizes that her crush on Mary caused her to idealize Mary rather than truly see her. Later, Gus connects with Lucy Ayres, the mother of one of Jean’s former clients who died by suicide. Gus offers Lucy the incriminating recording of Jean, suggesting that Jean may still face consequences after all.
So the ending is somewhat hopeful, but also very strange. Jean wins legally, Anna loses publicly, Mary gets some independence, Lawrence is exposed, and Gus becomes the keeper of the recording that may bring Jean down later.
Basically, the legal system does one thing, emotional justice does another thing, and the reader is left sitting there like, “Okay… so do I need to draw a flowchart?” 🧍♀️⚖️
My Review: Great Setup, Messy Execution 😵💫
I really wanted to like In Her Defense more than I did.
The first part had me. I loved the uncertainty. I loved not knowing whether Anna was a terrible controlling mother or whether Jean was a manipulative therapist. I loved the back-and-forth of the libel case. It had all the ingredients for a really juicy psychological legal thriller.
But then the book started dragging.
For a thriller, especially one built around a trial, the pacing felt slow. There were long stretches where I understood what the book was doing, but I did not feel the urgency. It was like the story kept circling the same emotional drain instead of moving forward.
And then there’s Gus and Mary.
This was one of my biggest problems with the book. Gus is obsessed with Mary almost immediately, but I never really understood why. We are told that Gus is smitten with Mary, but I never felt what made Mary so magnetic to her.
What was so special about Mary? Why did Gus build her whole emotional life around this girl? Why was Mary the person Gus could not let go of?
I can understand obsession in fiction when the author lets us feel the spark, danger, chemistry, longing, or delusion behind it. Here, I just didn’t get enough. Mary felt more like an idea than a person, which made Gus’s obsession feel underdeveloped.
And then, in the last third of the book, we get the huge revelation that Lawrence had sexually abused Mary since she was a child.
That is obviously horrifying and important. But narratively, it felt like the book suddenly threw a much heavier story into the middle of an already complicated legal and psychological drama.
At that point, I was already trying to keep track of the libel case, Jean’s therapy methods, Anna’s parenting, Gus’s obsession, false memories, class exploitation, and whether anyone in this book had ever heard of professional ethics.
Then the book adds childhood sexual abuse, Lawrence’s ongoing abuse, Anna’s possible complicity, and Jean’s manipulation of Mary’s memories.
It became a lot.
Not “layered and complex” a lot.
More like “I opened one drawer and seventeen more drawers fell out” a lot. 🗄️💥
The Therapist Plot Was the Best Part 🛋️
The most interesting part of this book, by far, was Jean.
Jean is such a disturbing character because she does not come across as a cartoon villain. She is persuasive. She uses the language of healing. She makes people feel seen. She offers emotional shelter to people who are hurt, lonely, or neglected.
That is what makes her dangerous.
The book does a good job showing how therapy can become harmful when boundaries disappear. Jean blurs the lines between therapist, friend, savior, and controller. She does not just listen to people’s stories; she starts shaping them.
That part was fascinating.
The idea that someone can use therapeutic language to isolate people from their families and make them dependent is genuinely chilling. Jean’s manipulation of Gus and Mary worked as a psychological horror element, even though the book is technically more legal thriller than horror.
I just wish the novel had stayed more focused on that.
Because somewhere in the middle of all the abuse revelations, trial drama, obsession, family dysfunction, and art world politics, the sharpest part of the book got diluted.
The Libel Trial: Interesting, But Also Frustrating ⚖️
The trial itself had good moments. I liked the way the book forced the reader to think about the difference between legal truth and emotional truth.
Anna may be right that Jean is dangerous, but Anna is also not exactly Mother of the Year. Jean may have manipulated Mary, but Mary really was abused. Gus may have evidence, but Gus is also deeply unreliable.
That moral messiness should have worked beautifully.
And sometimes it did.
But the ending left me frustrated. Gus sabotaging Anna’s case because she believes it will ultimately free Mary from both Anna and Jean is an interesting choice, but I’m not sure it fully worked for me.
I understood the logic. Kind of.
But emotionally, it felt messy. Jean still wins in court. Anna is publicly defeated. Gus holds onto the recording for later. Mary is somehow on the path to freedom. Lawrence is eventually exposed.
There is a version of this ending that could feel poetic and morally complicated. Here, it felt a little too convenient and a little too muddled.
It was like the book wanted to say, “Justice does not always happen in court,” which is a strong theme. But the route to get there felt so twisty that by the end I was less emotionally devastated and more mentally exhausted.
Final Thoughts on In Her Defense ⭐⭐
In Her Defense had a fantastic premise and some genuinely compelling ideas. I loved the uncertainty at the beginning. I liked being pulled between Anna and Jean. I liked the exploration of dangerous therapy dynamics and how vulnerable people can be manipulated by someone who seems to understand them.
But the execution did not fully work for me.
The pacing was too slow, Gus’s obsession with Mary was not convincing enough, and the late introduction of Mary’s abuse by Lawrence made the book feel overloaded. Instead of becoming more powerful, the story became messier and harder to connect with.
This is one of those books where I can see what it was trying to do, and I respect the ambition, but the reading experience itself was frustrating.
A great premise? Yes.
A smooth thriller? Not really.
A book that made me want to send everyone to a properly licensed therapist with very strict office hours? Absolutely. 🛋️📋
Final rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
Book Recommendations 📚
If you liked the idea of In Her Defense but want something with stronger pacing or cleaner execution, try:
The Push by Ashley Audrain — for complicated motherhood, trauma, and uncertainty about who to believe.
The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy — for media pressure, parenting panic, and psychological suspense.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides — for therapist-patient tension and a twisty psychological setup.
The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth — for family dysfunction, unreliable perspectives, and emotional suspense.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins — for obsession, blurred memories, and messy narrators.
Defending Jacob by William Landay — for a stronger legal-thriller angle mixed with family crisis.
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty — for abuse, secrets, social status, and women trying to survive the mess behind polished lives.
Comments
Post a Comment