amy_lynnn's review
3.0
I picked up this book because I'm fascinated by true crime but bored by reading about white dudes. Aileen has always fascinated me because she's a woman who is also a serial killer, and there aren't nearly as many examples of this as there are of male serial killers (obviously). I was looking for a book that would give me insight into her life, her background, and her crimes.
SO, my thoughts:
PROS- this book was obviously really, really well researched. The writing style was easy and accessible (some true crime books can be so dense and heavy and I didn't really feel like this one was). I got what I wanted as far as learning about her background/childhood/circumstances that probably led to her committing her crimes.
CONS- the book was... overly bloated with unnecessary information, in my opinion. Like, this was a 550+ page book that could easily have been 300 pages. There were times where I was reading page after page thinking to myself, "Is this actually necessary to the narrative?" A specific example were the bits where the author goes into immense detail about every neighborhood kid that Aileen grew up with (their names, the streets they lived on, their families, etc)--this section in particular was so dense with random names that I started to keep a list so I wouldn't mix anyone up....only to find that they never came up again later in the book, which made me wonder why on earth so much space was devoted to talking about these people to begin with. Again, I appreciated the incredible amount of research that went into this book and it was super well-done but I do feel like the author had a tendency to include EVERY fact she uncovered about Aileen, regardless of whether or not it really was necessary to get to the point.
Overall though, I liked this book!
SO, my thoughts:
PROS- this book was obviously really, really well researched. The writing style was easy and accessible (some true crime books can be so dense and heavy and I didn't really feel like this one was). I got what I wanted as far as learning about her background/childhood/circumstances that probably led to her committing her crimes.
CONS- the book was... overly bloated with unnecessary information, in my opinion. Like, this was a 550+ page book that could easily have been 300 pages. There were times where I was reading page after page thinking to myself, "Is this actually necessary to the narrative?" A specific example were the bits where the author goes into immense detail about every neighborhood kid that Aileen grew up with (their names, the streets they lived on, their families, etc)--this section in particular was so dense with random names that I started to keep a list so I wouldn't mix anyone up....only to find that they never came up again later in the book, which made me wonder why on earth so much space was devoted to talking about these people to begin with. Again, I appreciated the incredible amount of research that went into this book and it was super well-done but I do feel like the author had a tendency to include EVERY fact she uncovered about Aileen, regardless of whether or not it really was necessary to get to the point.
Overall though, I liked this book!
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