Reviews with content warning for Violence - Bright Young Women

This novel was everywhere last year and so I was excited to be picking up this novel at last; and was left having had a good reading experience but not one that I think will stay with me in the way that I wanted it to.

Bright Young Women is a fictionalised look at the final murders and arrest of Ted Bundy, told from the perspective of women whose lives were changed forever by him - one, Pamela - the president of the sorority shaken by the murders of their friends and the other, Ruth, who is learning to find herself and her identity away from her overbearing mother after the death of her father.

Knoll clearly has a message that she wants to share through this novel - which is that a fascination with serial killers and the rise of true crime risks further magnifying and amplifying men who were not that special, and whose stories shield those of the people whose lives they have either ended or affected forever. Bundy goes unnamed within the text, and his smart suaveness that we've come to hear as a given from numerous stories about him is consistently disrupted through the pages of this novel.

However, Bundy is not the only man who comes out poorly within this novel. There are bad boyfriends, journalists who see the potential of a career gain as of greater importance than reporting the truth, police forces who want to take the most straightforward way out and members of the judicial system who struggle to see a charming man as anything other than a potential victim. Knoll is excellent at building this just pile-up of male incompetence throughout the novel, in direct contrast to the women who are coming together to support each other and never let the truth go. Knoll also brings to life the pain of women with bright lights and lives ahead of them being cut short which are usually buried in our considerations of true crime narratives.

I did feel that there was a lot going on within the pages of this novel though, and did feel like there were opportunities for it to be tighter. The fictionalisation also didn't necessarily always work for me, it was slightly distracting knowing we were talking about a real man but that the women in the story were largely creations. Whilst I'm sure this was out of respect for the real victims, it felt that the narrative was almost saying that their real stories were not of interest enough for a novel to be created about them. I would have almost preferred Knoll to create an entirely fictitious scenario, with nods to Bundy, instead.

Content Warnings

uniquelymace's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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srutiramesh's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

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izzy_v's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I devoured this book — it might be the first book I ever re-read (it was that good and there were a bunch of details I might pick up on better the second time).
I’m not usually a thriller/scary book fan and there were definitely very dark parts of the book but it wasn’t so graphic and detailed or suspenseful that it kept me up at night. I really enjoyed the tone shift away from glorifying the killer, and instead empowering the women involved. Really phenomenal, would read again (which I never say).

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miss_amzzz's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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hannahyorkey's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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jenlengland's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Content Warnings

lillieapplepie's review against another edition

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sad tense medium-paced

4.0

A unique and empathetical way of retelling true crime events with focus on the victims, survivors, and the lives impacted.

I could only read a few chapters at a time because it'd get too intense for me. The intensity came from knowing these horrific events happened in real life. I also struggled getting into a rhythm with all the different characters and timelines, and the writing style had my head spinning at times. I kept wondering if my eyes had skipped a word or if the sentence construction was just too complicated for my understanding! Not the whole book was like this, but enough to make me work for it.

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