CBR18 Book 52: "Bright Young Women" by Jessica Knoll

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Monthly Keyword 26: Bright

Reading the Rainbow: Yellow

CBR18 Bingo: Versus (The brave, tenacious and determined women vs the spineless and depraved serial killer

Official plot synopsis:

Tallahassee, 1978. Sorority president Pamela Schumacher wakes to a shocking scene of implausible violence and death, and is drawn into a mystifying crime that grips the nation for decades . . .

In Seattle, Tina Cannon connects her best friend's disappearance to the Tallahassee tragedy, and is convinced that a single man is responsible.

Determined to find justice, the two join forces as their search for answers leads to a final, shocking confrontation . . .

This is probably going to be my most surprising 5-star read of the year. If you had told me before I started it, that not only would I have trouble putting it down, finishing it in less than 48 hours, but that I would absolutely love it, I likely would have seriously side-eyed you. True Crime is not a genre that has ever really appealed to me. Serial killers creep me out. I find violence towards women and children incredibly distasteful and upsetting. So tremendous kudos to Jessica Knoll for writing so well that I not only devoured this book, but found myself regretting my compulsive need to check the Wikipedia entry on Ted Bundy (never named, referred to as «The Defendant» throughout the book). This book made me care deeply for the brave female protagonists, and at several points throughout, I cried. 

While I knew it was going to upset me and creep me the f*ck out, I couldn’t help myself from reading about the real events this book is based on. The fact that such a sick, sad, thoroughly mediocre man was able to keep abducting, terrorising, sexually assaulting and murdering women for so long – it didn’t seem possible. Sadly, truth is frequently a lot stranger than fiction, and most of the time, women still aren’t believed in cases like this. It was so much worse in the 1970s. 

This will very likely end up in my top 10 of the year. I tend to be very safe in my reading choices, and rarely read things that may force me out of my comfort zone. Thanks to the Monthly Keyword challenge, I decided to read this book, and I’m so glad I did. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 46: "Listen for the Lie" by Amy Tintera

Page count: 384 pages

Audio book length: 9 hrs 17 mins

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Truth and Lies

CBR17 Bingo: Review (this was very favourably reviewed by Pooja, Narfna and Chairbrarian)

Five years ago, Lucy's best friend Savvy was murdered and Lucy was found wandering along the road, absolutely covered in Savvy's blood. Unfortunately, Lucy also had a pretty severe head wound, which resulted in amnesia, and can't remember anything about the night in question, before or after the murder took place. There wasn't enough evidence to convict her, but most people in her home town of Plumpton, Texas made up their own minds.

Since absolutely everyone back home is convinced Lucy is a murderer, she's been living and working in LA, writing romance novels under an assumed name and doing her very best to try to stay as anonymous as possible. Unfortunately, podcaster Ben Owens has decided to dedicate the second season of his very popular podcast 'Listen for the Lie' to investigating Savvy's murder, and all the sordid details are being dragged back into the light. In short order, Lucy gets fired from her job, and it becomes clear that her throroughly average boyfriend is too scared of her to actually break up with her, but very much would like her to be gone, from his life and apartment. So when Lucy's grandmother calls and emotionally blackmails her into coming back to Texas for her 80th birthday, Lucy doesn't really have a lot of options.

Of course, back in Plumpton, Ben Owens is going around interviewing people and asking intrusive questions, making Lucy's life oh so much more awkward. That he turns out to be handsome and very charming, and that Lucy's grandma is a big fan of his, makes the situation even more annoying. Did Lucy actually kill Savvy? If she didn't, who was the actual murderer and why have they managed to stay hidden for the past five years? Lucy wants Ben to find out the truth, but also fears that it may turn out she was guilty all along.

As I mentioned above, several Cannonballers whose opinions I trust recommended this book, and I had Audible credits to spare, so I figured it might be an entertaining Spring read. There is a tradition in Norway, that during the Easter holidays, you do very little (if you're outdoorsy, you go to a cabin in the mountains somewhere and ski, either cross-country or downhill) and you read crime novels. The various television networks all show mystery mini-series and the book stores put all their crime novels front and centre on their displays. We even have a specific term for it 'påskekrim', roughly translated as Easter Crime/Mystery. It's a whole thing. So listening to a novel about murder and true crime around Easter seemed very fitting.

The audio book is very well done. It alternates between chapters narrated by Lucy, who is a very sarcastic and cynical individual. January LaVoy does an excellent job conveying her snarky tone. Then in between, there are the 'podcast' sections, narrated by Will Damron as Ben Owens. I don't listen to podcasts, really (they take time away when I could be reading, or watching something with my husband, who is already a bit cranky about how much time I would rather be reading than watching stuff with him). So I'll take other people's word for it that these podcast sections are well-done and feel realistic. Based on what I heard, if I had ANY interest at all in true crime (I do NOT - the world is an awful place and I do not need to find out about all the horrible things people to do one another this way), 'Listen for the Lie' sounds like it would be a good podcast to follow.

I really liked that Tintera let Lucy be a quite spiky and hostile character. Convenient though it may seem, the amnesia makes her life more difficult, because there is always that nagging doubt that something horrible happened, and she actually murdered her best friend. Her complete lack of memory of the whole evening (including the events leading up to the murder) also makes it impossible for her to help the police investigate and find the real killer, when she desperately wants justice for Savvy. So a little part of her is relieved that Ben Owens is investigating the case again. It's obvious that a lot of people have been lying about and keeping secrets about the night of the murder, but he manages to ferret out the truth and uncover a lot of information the police never discovered.

This was very entertaining, and I'm impressed that this was Tintera's debut into crime fiction She seems to have only written YA fantasy before this. Nevertheless, I didn't love it as much as Narfna and Chairbrarian. There were some story developments that I found a bit unneccesary. I would absolutely read more of Tintera's books in the future, though. 

Judging a book by its cover: Not the most exciting cover, really (and it also seems like it directly ripped off the cover design of Good Girl, Bad Blood, which came out four years before this book. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR16 Book 59: "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup" by John Carreyrou

Page count: 352 pages

Audio book length: 11 hrs 37 minutes

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo: From a genre you've never read (true crime)

CBR16 Bingo: Fiasco (Theranos was a massive fraud and a fiasco)

I've owned this book since 2020 and am pretty sure I picked it up in an e-book sale because of the many Cannonball reviews I've read about it over the years. Not being particularly interested in the tech world or medical science, and certainly, not someone who reads a lot of business news, I didn't really hear about this case as it was unfolding, and I'm aware that there have been podcasts, a documentary and a mini-series starring Amanda Seyfried about the scandal, but this book was pretty much forgotten in my e-book collection until the Nowhere Books bingo required me to find a book from a genre I've never read.

Readers of my reviews will know that I have certain genres I prefer - romance, fantasy, YA, the occasional mystery or sci-fi novel. If I read nonfiction, it's usually historical biographies, celebrity autobiographies or something I need to read for work. Nevertheless, I like to challenge myself, so over the years I've read a LOT of different books in so many different genres. It was genuinely a challenge to come up with one I hadn't already tried. My husband suggested I look up subgenres of nonfiction, as it was clear that was where I'd find something that might fit the bill. When True Crime came up, I realised that would work. I know that lots of people find True Crime fascinating, but I just don't really see the appeal in exploring grisly murder cases or other horrific crimes. This book, which I remembered that I had on my shelf didn't seem to involve any murders, so it would probably not traumatise me too much. 

John Carreyrou is the journalist who wrote the Wall Street Journal articles which began to expose Elizabeth Holmes as a fraud and brought attention to the very shady business practices of her tech company Theranos. He later developed his thorough research into this book, where he details how Miss Holmes, a young and charming Stanford dropout managed to bamboozle the tech and business world for years, promising her company could deliver quick, accurate and almost pain-free blood tests with devices so small and portable they would be possible for the public to have in their homes. At one point, Theranos was valued at 10 billion dollars, without ever having actually managed to produce the testing machines or blood testing results they were promising.

Holmes was beautiful and persuasive, and clearly excellent at fundraising for her company. Along with her boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, who was COO of Theranos, they managed to perpetrate their fraud for so long by intimidating and threatening their employees, firing anyone who spoke up about their suspicions of underhanded dealings, and because very few of their investors actually understood the science behind what they were trying to do. Holmes was featured in a number of highly flattering articles, and the board of directors of Theranos at various points included several senators, former secretaries of state (including Henry Kissinger), a former secretary of defence, an admiral, and a general - all seduced by Holmes' promising tale of deception. 

Once Carreyrou started investigating the case, he had a hard time finding people willing to talk to him, since Holmes and Balwani made all their employees sign iron-clad NDAs and were fiercely litigious towards anyone they thought might be a threat to their company. However, Carreyrou were able to publish several critical articles, which again led to investigations into Theranos' business practices and inspections of their laboratories. The results were disastrous for the company, proving that not only were the test results their labs produced extremely unreliable and could endanger patients because of it, but they were mostly using equipment from other producers to get their results since none of the proprietary machines made by Theranos worked at all. They had not only misled their investors, they had put countless patients' lives in danger with their inaccurate blood tests. 

It was a fascinating story, and I will probably check out the HBO documentary and the mini-series at some point as well. Now, having read this, I can't really think of any genres I haven't tried at least once.

Judging a book by its cover: Some editions of this book feature a gloved hand holding up a tiny vial of blood, but my edition, and most that I've seen, have this fully black cover with the bold red title. Not exactly the most exciting, but the contents of the book more than might up for it.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read