Bright Young Women
- Crius Paulus
- Jul 24
- 4 min read
The Book Basics
Title: Bright Young Women
Author: Jessica Knoll
Print Published: Feb. 15th, 2024
Audiobook Published: Sept. 28th, 2023
Publisher: Pan MacMillan
400 pages/777 minutes - 13hrs 17min
*Audiobook Read by: Chris Henry Coffey, Corey Brill, Imani Jade Powers, Sutton Foster
*I would like to note that I listened to the audiobook through Spotify, and that is why I do not have page numbers/time stamps for today's review.
Summary
It’s Tallahassee, 1978, and Pamela Schumacher (sorority president) wakes in the middle of the night to what becomes a scene of immense violence. She is drawn into the brunt of a criminal investigation that has ties across the country. As she tries to make sense of her circumstances, she befriends Martina Cannon who believes the string of cross country murders can be tied to one man, one serial killer. The two women bond over their shared losses and support one another as they try to understand the American criminal justice system and who it platforms.
Review
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll is a really good example of a book that made me wish I did more research on it before reading. Admittedly, I prefer to go into books knowing next to nothing about them. I know that probably would make my previous literature professors shed a tear or two, but I love to take a book by its blurb—and maybe a recommendation—alone. This book initially caught my eye because I saw “true crime” and “serial killer” somewhere in the description I read and thought: oh, well, True Crime is a special interest of mine; let’s read it! Ultimately, I give this book 3.5/5 stars because, while it has a strong thesis and good prose, the execution of the book falls flat.
The Good: Voice and Thesis
I like to give credit where credit is due, because writing is hard and almost always a labor of love. In the case of Bright Young Women, Knoll really nailed the voice and thesis of her book. Bright Young Women consistently served with an intelligent, educated voice that also came off as confident. Nothing ever made me doubt the narration of Knoll’s characters, and she utilized language that matched the context of the story but wouldn’t isolate the average reader. I found her writing to be accessible and easy to follow.
The star of this book is Knoll’s thesis. Early in the book she states: “Right here, right now, I want you to forget two things: he was nothing special, and what happened was not random.” Knoll consistently reminds her readers of this thesis throughout the novel. With the events of Bright Young Women being based on some of Ted Bundy’s crimes (an infamous American Serial Killer), Knoll utilized the “celebrity” of Bundy’s case to her advantage. Knoll frequently alluded to his case which allowed her to position her arguments in a context many Americans are familiar with. We can see this in quotes such as these:
“The Defendant did not like to be told what to do and when to do it and once jammed his jail cell keyhole with toilet paper so the guards couldn’t get in when they arrived to escort him to his arraignment. For this he was called cunning and clever, though I had a dog who also tore up toilet paper when he didn’t get enough attention.”
“But mostly, I continue to be drawn to mediation because I know better than anyone that All-American Sex Killers are not born, that they come from broken and battered homes, human systems that fail them well before they reach the penal ones, and then they go out into a world that tells them that women are deserving depositories for their impotence and rage.”
The Bad: Execution
While Knoll’s use of Ted Bundy’s case provided her with a strong history to allude to, it also was the ultimate downfall of her book because her thesis was so clear. Bright Young Women is a fictional retelling of real events. The characters are fiction; the events are inspired by real life. In this way, even if the book is meant to platform Bundy’s victims and tell the stories of the women rather than the criminal who attacked them, they still utilize Ted Bundy’s story and legacy in popular media. Because of this, Knoll’s book falls into the same category as the media she is trying to criticize.
Don’t get me wrong—I want to credit the author for her thesis. She makes some incredible commentary about America's fixation with true crime and the commodification and glorification of killers and what they do. She also humanizes victims of violent crimes and does a good job capturing what they experience in our criminal justice system. Where she falls short is that she wrote a fictionalized novel of some of Ted Bundy's victims. The use of real life cases with fake people doesn't work well. A fully fictional novel OR some type of creative nonfiction essay would have been just as equally effective and more ethical. Ultimately, I applaud the author's effort to convey the thesis she did. I think it's a really important thing that more people need to hear, because she encapsulates real social problems in the United States and discusses genuine structural problems that exist in the justice system. Unfortunately, though—because she wrote a fictionalized story based on real events to critique the narratives of others who do similar—the novel as a whole didn’t land quite right.
As always, thanks for reading! Share your thoughts about this book in the comments.
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