I was given a digital copy of The Crowns of Croswald in exchange for a review, but all thoughts are my own!

I was given a copy of the second Crowns of Croswald book, The Girl with the Whispering Shadow, from the publisher, just like I did with the first book. It was pretty good, but I didn’t like it as much as the first book, so I gave it four stars! I felt like the pacing was off. There wasn’t much that happened that during the summer and yet a good chunk of the book was spent in The Town during summer. Then at the school, again not much happened, and then suddenly it was the end of the year and the book was over. I am still curious to see what will happen in the third book, but I just wish the pacing in this book had been a bit better!⁠

Starting off 2021 with a book filled with murders. That's a good thing, right? I loved the book though, even with the darker content. I listen to the Murder Squad podcast and love it, so I was very excited to read Billy Jensen's book when I heard about it! Even if I don't want to put myself at risk to solve crimes, I like reading about other people doing it.

Honestly, parts of this book were terrifying because Michelle did such a good job of describing the series of break-ins of GSK. I actually had to double check that all the doors in my house were locked before going to bed because I kept thinking, "everyone thought THEY were safe!" It's heartbreaking that Michelle died before finding out who GSK actually was, but I'd like to think that all the hard work she put into her manuscript went a long way towards helping to discover his identity.

This was an absolute whirlwind. I didn't actually know much about Bundy before reading this, other than that he lived in Washington (I grew up in Tacoma and currently have a sister living in Ellensburg, so lots of the locations are familiar!). I now understand why people are so obsessed with him. Who would ever suspect the handsome, charismatic young man of being a brutal murderer of young women?

I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. I was hoping there would be more discussion of the suspects, but I feel like most of them were kind of glossed over until the end when one was focused on more than the others, as "Bob Starr" was Graysmith's favorite suspect and the one he most suspected. I do wish the others had been given their fair share as well though.