jflux 's review for:

The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy by Molly Kendall, Elizabeth Kendall

2.0

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I've been trying out the Dublin Library's borrowbox app to borrow audiobooks that have nothing to do with my PhD so I can get my mind off of it for a little while, usually while doing housework or whatever. This was an impulse borrow, as I'm kind of entranced not by serial killers but by people who can completely manipulate other people, in this case to hide who they really are. What I got was an incredibly depressing account of an abusive relationship, written while still in Bundy's thrall, that gave me whiplash as she flew back and forth between jealous anger, fear that her boyfriend might be a murderer, and justifications and assertions that he could never and pleadings of love that were really difficult to listen to. I've been too close to similar relationships (minus the murder, i think) and it just made this mostly depressing and difficult. The preface and afterword where Kendall speaks directly to these issues was refreshing, and hearing her daughter's experiences at the end, in her own voice, was probably more along the lines of what I was looking for.