nerdyprettythings's Reviews (515)

I will maybe write something more later but: I cried for the last quarter of the book, and I miss Austin so much, and I wish I had been different in college, and “He loves Texas — he believes in Texas. But he doesn’t know if Texas still loves him” wrecked me. This isn’t exactly an objective 5-stars, it’s a feels-like-this-book-knew-I’d-read-it 5-stars.

The upsides: For one, I think this book’s rating is helped by the fact that the second half is infinitely better than the first half. Even I, despite ragging on this book for the full first half of it, ended up enjoying how it wrapped up.
Also, toward the end this book reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, “Will the real Martian Please Stand Up?”, where the characters are attempting to find out which of the diner’s patrons wasn’t on the bus with them. That’s always a way to get on my good side.
The downsides: I found the first half of the book nearly unbearable. There’s a weird condescending second person voice for a while and a lot of *wink wink* *nudge nudge* stuff going on. Most of that got knocked off when the main plot got going, and with it gone, the tone was much better. Throughout the book there’s a lot of repetition, and not always in the you-didn’t-get-the-full-story-at-first way that I think is pulled off successfully with one part of the story.
I could go on (there’s no surprise about the bank robber parent’s identity, no matter what the author wants to think; wtf was that forced “these are the two single people” romance?) but I’ll stop before this rating goes down. I did like the ending and the sweet old lady.

I'm finally giving up and sending this book to DNF at 65%. It's not good. I love the premise, but it's the kind of story that's done so much better elsewhere. And the incessant pining for the husband who left her alone to die while she was pregnant was too much.

This book needed an editor who would put their foot down (it's so rambly and long), or one with a different vision for the book (this could have been so good).
Once the case was solved, this book could have gone in a really interesting direction with academia and its treatment of women - those discussions were the most engaging parts to me.
But instead, we spend most of the book acting like this is a whodunnit with a long and detailed list of suspects and

it turns out the real killer isn't among the list because it wasn't a personal killing. The vast majority of the book's research is now excess if it stays a whodunnit.

In the right hands, this story could have been about the fact that this murder went unsolved in large part because of who the community was afraid they'd find out was the killer. Sexism in academia lingers in these tight-knit circles. When the author got into some of that research, it seemed like the book was getting somewhere.

Instead, the book was true crime with a heavy helping of memoir - the author got so close to the story that she felt it was hers. She says as much - she didn't want journalists or reddit commenters to take it from her. She pads the already long book with lots of detail about how she compares her own relationships to Jane's and where she is when she hears certain parts of Jane's story. Rather than grounding the book and making it more readable, these personal details add unnecessary information to an already too long story.