The Eleventh Floor by Kylie Orr

Title: The Eleventh Floor

Author: Kylie Orr

Genre: Crime

Publisher: HQ Fiction/HarperCollins Australia

Published: 31^st January 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 416

Price: $32.99

Synopsis: Will one mother’s lie cost another woman her life?

Sleep deprived, struggling and at breaking point, first-time mum Gracie Michaels books one night – alone – at The Maxwell Hotel. A king-size bed all to herself. No demands. With time to recharge she’ll be able to return to her family more like the unflappable mother she pretends to be.

Instead, she wakes in a room she doesn’t recognise after an encounter with a man who is not her husband. Then she sees something she wishes she hadn’t.

Being drawn into a crime was not something Gracie had planned for her hotel stay but when a distraught family appeals for information and a police investigation heats up she is trapped in a maze of lies.

To speak out jeopardises her marriage, but her silence threatens her son, her sanity and her safety. Will Gracie destroy her own family by telling the truth or devastate someone else’s by keeping her secrets?

*This book was sent to me for review by Sisters in Crime*

~*~

Gracie Michaels is a new mother to Theo, and she’s been struggling ever since he was born – with sleep, with feeding, with everything. So, her husband, Joe, packs her off to the Maxwell Hotel in Melbourne – and as the night starts, everything seems okay – she has time to recharge before heading back to Theo and Joe. Gracie’s night starts out okay – until she meets a man at a sales conference at the same hotel. Then she wakes up in a bed next to a man she doesn’t remember in the middle of the night with torn clothes, unsure of how she got there and what happened. That’s when the story picks up – Gracie sees an assault in a flat across from the hotel – and is terrified. Unsure of what she has seen, and determined to get home, Gracie leaves the hotel and remains quiet – until a devastated family asks for help from the public and those who were registered as staying at the Maxwell Hotel on the night in question. Days later, an investigation ramps up, and Gracie’s life begins to fall apart as she’s asked why she didn’t speak up, and as she tries to recall what happened that night. But something is stopping her – and she is scared about what might come out. She’s caught between telling the truth – whatever that may be, and keeping her life safe.

As things start to unravel, Gracie is thrust into the world of criminal justice and what this means as she deals with police and the advice from her friend, Saskia, who is trying to encourage Gracie to do the right thing and stay within the confines of the law – especially as Gracie starts flashing back to what happened that night, from the time she arrived at the hotel until she saw what happened to Phoebe Maidstone. This plot triggers many things, namely an examination of the #MeToo movement, and what justice looks like and who gets justice and media attention when bad things happen. It highlights the discrepancies in how the media reports crimes, as well as what it means when people – in this novel, women like Gracie – report crimes and make witness statements as she navigates the reality of what happened to her that night through a tumultuous time navigating a second pregnancy and STI that affects her family whilst grappling with what it means to be a mother, the realities of being a mother, and what society expects from mothers – and Gracie feels she is letting people down because she doesn’t love every aspect of being a mother. This can be seen throughout in all her interactions, and her desire to hide that she’s a mother for one night.

Divided into two halves, the first half revolves around the Phoebe Maidstone case and the search, and Gracie’s witness and victim statements that bring truths about what women reporting crimes against them have to face, and what crimes are taken seriously. In conjunction with this, Gracie has to deal with threats to her family, and the idea that people like Tom will be believed because of the way they are seen, and the impression that they give. It highlights the inequities of the legal and justice system, as well as the expectations. The detective in charge of Phoebe’s case gave me the impression that he wanted the perfect witnesses first off – that he wanted Gracie to know and remember everything as soon as they met. I felt for Gracie in these moments  as she grappled with what to say and what she remembered, especially as her memories of the night returned later – and Kylie examined how this is dealt with in a way that I felt was sensitive and realistic, and allowed the voices of women who have been through what Gracie has gone through to be heard and supported by women and men who stand by them and cannot fathom that something like this would happen whilst also pushing for a change in attitude. The Eleventh Floor takes the he said, she said idea and looks at it from the angle of the victim, and how she is affected across the spectrum of emotions and memories, and the constant changes in her life that affect everything she faces. I felt that in doing so, Kylie has revealed a kind of truth about these cases – the idea that the fight is still going on, because as this novel shows, women are still being assaulted and doubted about their experiences.

I also liked the way Gracie grappled with her guilt that I felt was unfounded for much of what she went through prior to what she witnessed. It highlighted the fear that sexual assault victims have – the fear of consequences, the fear of how they will be seen, and the fear of what will happen if their report is thrown out, and in The Eleventh Floor, the complexities and the realities of these cases where the outcomes are not always what those involved – the investigators and the victims – expect or want. It also highlights what can happen when someone oversteps the boundaries of the law and what they are meant to do. How far are people willing to go to see justice served. I also got the sense that the novel explored what justice means to different people as well as the lengths people are willing to go to so they can protect themselves. Everyone in this novel has an aspect of being unreliable – some more than others and Saskia is like the moral compass for Gracie and Joe.

And that was the powerful thing about these characters – they weren’t black and white, they were mostly shades of grey that highlighted the contrasts of morals and ethics with the law and justice, right and wrong, and people’s impressions of their actions. I felt that this book communicated that powerfully without casting anyone as only good. These characters are allowed to have their flaws, particularly Joe, Gracie, and Saskia, and to me, that is what has made it work so well to become a very successful novel that is about the realities of being a woman, a mother, and how sexual assault is dealt with in society and the justice system. An intriguing read that is quite thought-provoking.