miachimochi's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

dustghosts's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.75

+ a thoughtful, personal, and empathetic reflection on the carceral system, and specifically the death penalty, couched in memoir and a specific case. by speaking on her own story and the case that complicated her point of view, the author captures the intricacies and emotional impact of the debate over the death penalty on victims, perpetrators, and the civil servants tasked with the decision to put someone to death without grandstanding or lecturing. this is not a gentle piece of writing, but larger themes are carefully handled in a way that feels true and appropriately weighty, almost too subtle.

o lots of reviews mention the authors tendency to imagine/picture real moments of the true crime to paint a scene. this is an element of the true crime genre that always bothers me in the way that it creates fantasy/fiction of real, horrifying events. but i do think it’s worth mentioning that it’s exactly that: a touchpoint of true crime as a genre, starting at least as far back as Truman Capote. this author using the genres tropes to speak on her own trauma and the complicated, divisive discussions around
pedophilia and crimes against children
and how we punish those crimes feels, to me, more genuine and introspective than more sensationalistic applications of the same trope. I think it’s more complex than the impulse to dismiss the book out of hand as excusing or explaining the perpetrator’s actions. it’s a book that challenges empathy, and which was obviously challenging for the author to mire through, too. I think the author asks questions about communal culpability, forgiveness and love/care and how the two are not the same, the failures of the justice system and the availability of mental health assistance, our fascination with finding the root of blame— and so on that make things more difficult than a yes or a no on the question of morality.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

johoha93's review

Go to review page


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

shieldbearer's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

Rating memoirs always feels strange to me, but this is not a pure memoir, this is also a nonfictional account, and it is on those grounds I find fault. I am aware the author says upfront that several events around the events of the Langley trial/murder are composite, compressed or otherwise altered, but frankly I deeply disliked the aspect where the author is clearly ascribing and assuming the thought processes of the real people involved in this. "[y person] MUST HAVE [felt/thought z thing]" got extremely, tediously old. It also got irritating when the author frequently ascribed personalities and descriptions onto people we could get only glimpses from fact. Why is every person we have such glimpses of imagined by the author to be young and naive?? I would much have preferred a straight forward account of all the contradictions and complexities, even if it was more complicated. The writing is beautiful but I couldn't get past the framing.


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

greatexpectations77's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

Whew, this book is so so hard, and probably because it's so well-written. I think it's as close to poetry as prose comes. So much research, so much hurt, so much trauma. Incredible. Would read anything Marzano-Lesnevich wrote.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

lepremieraccroc's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

4.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

bi_n_large's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

5.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

sorcha's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

jbellomy's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings
More...