Review: Bright Young Women

Jessica Knoll redacts the name of a killer to make room for the more interesting characters and the most powerful story in a historical novel based on a terrifying attack on a sorority by one of the deadliest serial killers in the United States.

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jessica Knoll takes us on a female guided journey of a deadly serial killer's attack on a sorority house and the way it effects the lives of everyone involved as the coverage and investigation drag on. The women, regardless of what they survive, or the changes they make to put the grizzly attack behind them, never enjoy the limelight the serial killer does. Knoll conveys this through the reactions of young women in courtrooms and press headlines.

Bright Young Women is one of the first books I've encountered that praises the bravery, caring, and ingenuity of the women who survived and ensured that the killer was held accountable for his crimes in spit of multiple failings in the criminal justice system. The serial killer (a famous one) is never named in the book even though most true crime aficionados with immediately recognize him. Knoll even delves deeper into the reality that even though rumor has it that the killer studied law enough to defend himself in court, he wasn't very good. Overall, he was just ordinary. The only thing that made him famous was he killed women in horrible ways.

This isn't a work to look to for romanticization, but it is a book to look to for an honest multiperspective view on how different people process an impossible situations and try to find a way to decide who they are on the other side of it.

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