Reviews - Before You Knew My Name

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1.03k reviews for:

Before You Knew My Name

Jacqueline Bublitz

3.8 AVERAGE

roseblushriver's review against another edition

3.75

dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

esinpaksoy's review against another edition

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

dobsi's review against another edition

4.0

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

hoarderoftomesandtales's review against another edition

5.0

challenging emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Jacqueline Bublitz’s Before You Knew My Name is a beautifully written, gut-wrenching novel that feels both tender and furious. It’s a rare kind of story — one that takes the too-familiar narrative of a murdered woman and turns it inside out, giving her not just a name, but a voice, a history, a heartbeat.

Told from the perspective of Ruby, a young woman whose life was brutally taken, the book refuses to let her become just another nameless victim. Through Ruby’s voice and Alice’s grief-filled journey, Bublitz draws us into a story that’s both intimate and unflinching, asking us to really see the women behind the headlines and statistics.

This novel doesn’t shy away from the realities of violence against women, but it doesn’t sensationalise it either. Instead, it asks: what if we truly paid attention to who these women were, what they dreamed of, and what was taken from them?

Before You Knew My Name is a love letter to lost girls, to the power of female connection, and to the courage it takes to care in a world that so often looks away. Honest, heartbreaking, and deeply human — this is a story that matters.