This book had some neat parts, particularly the bits focusing on judicial dilemmas. These are engagingly described and make up good little mini-narratives.

The core plot starts out as just another such case: a Jehovah's Witness three months shy of eighteen refuses a life-saving blood transfusion, and our judge protagonist Julia must choose whether to side with his parents or the hospital. An interesting case, and one the book wraps up as satisfyingly as possible, and the stronger part of the book by far. Even though it's clear where the author's sympathies lie, I didn't find the story to get unpleasantly heavy-handed about it.

Unfortunately, the largest part of this book concerns Julia's interpersonal relationships, which I did not care much for at all. Her crumbling marriage with her husband is described through painfully cliched events and conversations, while her growing fascination with the aforementioned seventeen-year-old is intriguing but painfully unexplored.

Although the book tries to make some kind of point about class divide between Julia's muted wealth and the working-class poor that flock into her courtroom, it felt a little too ambivalent about it all to deliver more than a token nod towards the issue, which I think was a missed opportunity.

The end result is perhaps one-fourth of a good book stapled to three-fourths mediocrity, never really bad but hardly entertaining. It's just all a bit disappointing.