Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

Every Breath You Take: A True Story of Obsession, Revenge, and Murder by Ann Rule

1 review

angela_juniper's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

2.5

I don't know if I've outgrown True Crime or this book just didn't sit right with me. Probably both.
It didn't age well in terms of the language used around some of Allan's proclivities, but the thing that bothered me the most was the victim-blaming of the children by the adults in the story, even at times by Ann Rule (who minimized the physical abuse they endured by Sheila and her new husband). They were only *girls* -- to be honest, Shelia failed all of her children by not protecting them from their father, particularly when she knew he was sexually abusing them. And her new husband is made out to be some macho savior when in reality he's hitting and beating the kids just like their sociopathic father. The nail in the coffin for me was the fact that the step day blamed Daryl for Shelia's death when she was a CHILD whose mother abandoned her in a YMCA shelter at 12 years old and was easily manipulated by the last person who pretended to care about her, her father. Not to mention she just lost her mother and was abandoned by her abusive father. The fact that Jamie refused to adopt those girls after Sheila's death is absolutely atrocious. I had a harder time feeling sympathy for anyone but the children who were forced to endure the mistakes and abuses of the adults all around them. Thank god for Sheila's sister, who seems to be the only hero in this story. Even one of the detectives had a nice quote about how he couldn't be a state policeman in PA "because of affirmative action quotas". Ugh.
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