Book Review: Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll

Bright Young Women
Publisher: Macmillan
Pub Date: 28 September 2023
Genre: Historical Crime Fiction

Panda Rating:

_{(5 pandas)}

📖 SYNOPSIS

An extraordinary novel inspired by the real-life sorority targeted by America’s first celebrity serial killer in his final murderous spree.

January 1978. A serial killer has terrorized women across the Pacific Northwest, but his existence couldn’t be further from the minds of the vibrant young women at the top sorority on Florida State University’s campus in Tallahassee. Tonight is a night of promise, excitement, and desire, but Pamela Schumacher, president of the sorority, makes the unpopular decision to stay home—a decision that unwittingly saves her life. Startled awake at 3 a.m. by a strange sound, she makes the fateful decision to investigate. What she finds behind the door is a scene of implausible violence—two of her sisters dead; two others, maimed. Over the next few days, Pamela is thrust into a terrifying mystery inspired by the crime that’s captivated public interest for more than four decades.

On the other side of the country, Tina Cannon has found peace in Seattle after years of hardship. A chance encounter brings twenty-five-year-old Ruth Wachowsky into her life, a young woman with painful secrets of her own, and the two form an instant connection. When Ruth goes missing from Lake Sammamish State Park in broad daylight, surrounded by thousands of beachgoers on a beautiful summer day, Tina devotes herself to finding out what happened to her. When she hears about the tragedy in Tallahassee, she knows it’s the man the papers refer to as the All-American Sex Killer. Determined to make him answer for what he did to Ruth, she travels to Florida on a collision course with Pamela—and one last impending tragedy.

Bright Young Women is the story about two women from opposite sides of the country who become sisters in their fervent pursuit of the truth. It proposes a new narrative inspired by evidence that’s been glossed over for decades in favor of more salable headlines—that the so-called brilliant and charismatic serial killer from Seattle was far more average than the countless books, movies, and primetime specials have led us to believe, and that it was the women whose lives he cut short who were the exceptional ones.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Rape, sexual assault, sexual partner violence, murder, kidnapping, misogyny, forced institutionalisation/corrective therapy for being queer (lesbian) recounted, lesbophobia, paedophilia and grooming recounted, depictions of grief

This review was originally posted on Goodreads on 7 November 2024.

TL;DR: I just finished this book and I’m still feeling heated by it. Anything I say right now probably won’t make much sense since I’m so *emotional* because this book made me SO MAD! I’m mad at the media, at police incompetency, at how society treats women, at how men are given passes and chances and leniency because “they have bright futures, have so much potential and blah blah bs”, and at how pointedly this book shows that after all these years, while so much is different so little has changed. Bright Young Women was just utterly heartbreaking.

I buddy read this book with Becky and it was the best decision because we needed someone to vent to while reading this. We got more emotional and angry the further we read but this also ended up surprising us and has ended up on both our last of 2024 favourites.

What Knoll does in this book by taking the narrative away from the serial killer and bringing the focus to the women whose lives were forever changed was fantastic. I don’t know if this has been done before though if it has, I haven’t ever seen or heard of it, but I loved how she rightfully makes this story about the women whose lives were brutally cut short and the women who have to endure and survive in the aftermath of this pathetic man’s actions. The author intentionally never names the serial killer instead calling him The Defendant, taking away the power of his name and again, giving that power back to the women he murdered. Also, just thinking about how such an action would’ve enraged this small, pathetic, beady-eyed pig of a man, brought me so much satisfaction while reading.

Bright Young Women is told in alternating POVs from the time of some of the earlier murders (early 1970s) up to the present day (2021). The first POV is from Pamela, the best friend of one of the sorority house victims and the sole individual who saw the Defendant leave the scene of the crime. The second POV is from Ruth, one of the women whose lives got cut short in the early 70s. A third very important character is Tina who, although she doesn’t get a POV, is the link between Pamela’s and Ruth’s stories. I loved all three of these women and I was absorbed by their stories. As women, they have all experienced so much pain and yet they grew stronger because of everything they endured. They were complex and empowering characters whom I greatly admired and I know I won’t be forgetting them anytime soon. Pamela in particular grew on me a lot and I loved her fight and determination as the story went on.

This isn’t a fast-paced action-crime thriller but it is an in-depth look into stories of the women whose lives got cut short. It’s heartbreaking, agonizing, and infuriating, and there’s an unsurprisingly large amount of justified anger woven through these pages. As we see men be dismissive of and condescending to Pamela and Tina because they are women, so naturally they are not to be trusted or they don’t know their own minds. Also incredulously, although not altogether surprising, we see multiple men be disgustingly supportive of the Defendant and even lament over his wasted potential because he is a man. It doesn’t matter that Pamela outshines the Defendant in every respect, especially intellectually, she is the one who is made out to be untrustworthy while he is the one who is mourned.

The author does not hold back as she dissects the role of the media in sensationalizing and even sickeningly glorifying this man, and highlights the total ineptitude of the police as they fumble not once or twice but multiple times in their handling of his case across multiple states. I have to admit that when I started reading, while I felt horrified by his actions, I was uninvested/indifferent to what I was reading. That completely changed the further I read and the more enraged I became at the indignities, injustices, indifference, and ineptitude displayed by people in positions of power and influence across society. It also made me saddened to think of everything women have gone through over the decades and how still, there is still so much hatred and fear of women even today (frankly, it’s incredibly depressing to acknowledge).

I could honestly go on but ultimately, I would just recommend reading this book that gives the bright young women whose lives were stolen a moment more of recognition and respect. I would highly recommend it to those who love reading true crime or crime fiction. This was fully unexpected but it might be one of my favourite reads of 2024. I know for sure this story and its characters will live rent-free in my head for a while to come.