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literaryrachael 's review for:
This Book Will Bury Me
by Ashley Winstead
✨ currently my favorite read of 2025 ✨
The protagonist, Jane, and her character arc is hands-down the best part of this book. The groundwork done in establishing Jane as a character is incredible. The depiction of her grief after losing her father was so raw and powerful. Even when I hated the choices that her character made, all of her choices made sense because they were all so obviously informed by her grief. Jane's journey in understanding the life and death of her father and its parallel into her journey into true crime grounds the plot (which I think would have felt exploitative without being tied to Jane's father) in real emotion. The themes of grief, guilt, blame, and legacy were explored in really nuanced ways because of this parallel between the benign personal tragedy and the spectacle of true crime-tragedy.
This book does exceptional work with the found family trope,which makes it so devastating when Citizen betrays the rest of the group . The reveal of Citizen as the second murderer and Elizabeth as the first murder is a bit anti-climactic, but I didn't care because I was so deeply invested in the characters.
I think that the main criticisms of this book will be how much inspiration it takes from the 2022 University of Idaho Massacre (which I admit got a bit flagrant in some places). The book poses the question of whether true crime sleuthing is ethical but we never really get any resolution to this question (although I think leaving that question unanswered is in itself an answer). Lastly, I think that readers will criticize that the twist ofCitizen being one of the killers was obvious (which I agree that the twist was obvious, but I disagree that it makes the book worse for being obvious).
The protagonist, Jane, and her character arc is hands-down the best part of this book. The groundwork done in establishing Jane as a character is incredible. The depiction of her grief after losing her father was so raw and powerful. Even when I hated the choices that her character made, all of her choices made sense because they were all so obviously informed by her grief. Jane's journey in understanding the life and death of her father and its parallel into her journey into true crime grounds the plot (which I think would have felt exploitative without being tied to Jane's father) in real emotion. The themes of grief, guilt, blame, and legacy were explored in really nuanced ways because of this parallel between the benign personal tragedy and the spectacle of true crime-tragedy.
This book does exceptional work with the found family trope,
I think that the main criticisms of this book will be how much inspiration it takes from the 2022 University of Idaho Massacre (which I admit got a bit flagrant in some places). The book poses the question of whether true crime sleuthing is ethical but we never really get any resolution to this question (although I think leaving that question unanswered is in itself an answer). Lastly, I think that readers will criticize that the twist of
A quote that I feel sums up the experience of this book:
“Maybe other twenty-four-year-olds would’ve gone off the deep end after losing someone they loved in cooler and more romantic ways. But I suspect I was born to fall into rabbit holes. So I spiraled by sinking deeper and deeper into the screen, forgetting about life outside it, convinced I was chasing seven women, a killer, and my missing dad across the universe.”