Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - The Stranger Beside Me

I think Ted Bundy's Wikipedia page is heavily based on information from this book... which means that at the time it was a lot of inside information and now it doesn't really add a lot if you've already read his Wikipedia page.

The audiobook is read by the author, which adds an interesting layer, but she definitely does not have a trained voice.

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cmorehouse's review

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dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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miggyfool's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

3.0

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christikb's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

5.0

This is not by a long shot my first time reading A Stranger Beside Me. I first read it when I was 11, a burgeoning true crime afficionado, a fact that somehow simultaneously concerned and intrigued my parents. It was my second true crime book (behind Helter Skelter) and I knew clearly what murder and rape were, knew that they were crimes. But the true wrongness of these young women's deaths and assaults, the sheer emotionality of it, eluded a young me. This is my most recent re-read, completed at 32 years old with 1/6 of my M.S. in forensic psychology, six years of practicing law and writing about mental health in the law, and a thesis on the qualitative lifeworld of serial killers under my belt. As an adult, this book hurt. It isn't a great serial killer book; it is a phenomenal true crime novel. In a way that few true crime authors can because most will never have the experience to do so, Ann Rice is able to analyze the vast confusion of mourning the death, not of a person, but of something that you thought a person was. Bundy committed unspeakable crimes against women, victimizing them for years. But he created victims of the living too, those who survived their loved ones, his family, and those who knew him, cared for him, were hoodwinked by him. This book isn't just a factual accounting of the Ted crimes nor is it just for the women he murdered and assaulted; this book is for every person of whom he created a victim. Rule meanders through her account because to be snowed under so deeply by someone creates confusion of its own, a confusion that she replicates beautifully in this novel. I highly recommend that every woman read this book at least once.

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puglover's review

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challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

3.75

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bookishbabe93's review

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dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0

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