Reviews tagging 'Rape'

I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

244 reviews

kittyj21's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Rape, and Death

kyliesh's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Likely the scariest book I’ve ever read. McNamara has a way of writing non fiction really well and walking the line of being empathetic toward victims but not holding back on details that are important to the case really well. Extremely sad that she was unable to see the GSK identified and imprisoned but her letter in the epilogue was truly amazing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Violence, Rape, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, and Stalking

winifred_k22's review

challenging dark emotional informative medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Murder, Blood, Sexual assault, Stalking, Violence, Sexual violence, Rape, and Death of parent

alexisgarcia's review

dark informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Rape, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Blood, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Grief, and Murder

valmai's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense fast-paced

5.0

We’ve lost a great author in McNamara. Her obsessive chronicling of the hard to find details of the Golden State Killer translate into a thoughtful and terrifying blend of memoir, true crime reporting, and rigorous research. I read this in two days. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Murder, Rape, and Sexual violence

haileyeh's review

dark emotional informative medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Torture, Violence, Sexual violence, Rape, Death, Stalking, Murder, and Physical abuse

theunfinishedbookshelf's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Rape, Murder, Stalking, Sexual violence, and Sexual assault

knkoch's review against another edition

dark informative mysterious medium-paced

3.0

An ambitious project that is unfortunately incomplete. Michelle McNamara was a really gifted writer, and her prose in the beginning of the book is really lucid and deft, powerful even. I didn't mind the sections where she wrote about herself, the way some readers seemed to. This was obviously an extremely personal project that consumed her over several years, and it made sense to me that she included her personal experience with a crime in her neighborhood in Chicago. However, the other side of the coin in that regard is that creeping icky feeling that McNamara's true crime passion is more an obsession, a little lurid, a little too fascinated. 

But she doesn't lean too far in that direction, thankfully. I appreciate her ultimate aim, bringing justice and awareness to these cold case crimes against women. I watched the documentary about this book a few months ago, and this certainly raised my awareness of the sheer ubiquity of these types of crimes in the 1970s and 80s. The documentary was structured more clearly, and certainly benefitted from the successful discovery of the offender, which occurred right after the book was published. The book, with the unfinished chapters that friends and writers tried to finish and fill in as McNamara may have intended, can never be complete in the way she wanted, as neither a solution or summation in her voice is possible anymore. It's unforgettable in that way.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape and Murder

wintery1's review against another edition

dark informative tense medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Sexual assault, Torture, Death, Violence, Murder, Sexual violence, Rape, and Drug abuse

wandering_canuck's review

dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced

3.0

Although this book pulled me in from page 1, it lost me about midway through. Though McNamara was obviously thorough in her research, I found my mind wandering throughout the second half. To be fair, this book was cobbled together by other writers after McNamara's early demise, so one can't judge it too harshly. I, of course, wanted the book to end with the capture of the Golden State Killer but, alas, McNamara didn't live long enough to witness his arrest and conviction. Though well written, the test of a great book for me is whether I would recommend it to others. Sadly, this one falls short of the mark. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Stalking, Gore, Rape, Sexual assault, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, and Murder