A review by henrygravesprince
The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by

Did not finish book. Stopped at 71%.
This author has officially made it onto my permanent “never read again” list, for not only handling the true crime genre in an incredibly unethical way, but also for being a self-admitted animal abuser and for often speaking about Appalachia in a pretentious, voyeuristic manner. All three of these things bloat the book and take attention away from the murder at its center and the injustices that followed it. Overall, I’m going to echo a lot of other negative reviews and say this is far more memoir than true crime, to its detriment.

True crime authors, take this book as a lesson I didn’t know people needed to learn: when writing a book about a very real tragedy that had nothing to do with you, don’t make the book more about yourself than the people actually involved in the case. And, while you’re at it, don’t randomly recount stories of yourself abusing vulnerable animals in the middle of your book. What a disappointment, and how utterly disrespectful to the victims, to the wrongly accused, and to the people of Pocahontas county, who the author seems to think of herself as a savior of.

Also, the amount of times in which she says the N word in this book—completely uncensored in the audiobook as well—feels irresponsible for a white author to do; she could have talked about the word being used without using it herself.
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