I have decided to not finish this book for many reasons, but the final straw was this thoughtful and heartfelt essay written by Dylan’s English teacher, the one who received the eerie short story he wrote:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/judithkelly/opinion-i-taught-at-columbine-it-is-time-to-speak-my-truth
I read almost half of this book, trying, trying, understanding that she was a mother above all. But she minimized and deflected, and retold incidents that had several witnesses—like the time at the river with friends when Dylan accidentally got wet and tantrumed-raged-because he was embarrassed.
In this book, Dylan is this family-centered, amazingly sensitive boy who makes his bed every morning, as if good people—or people with good traits—cannot do horrible things.
And then this article. Mrs. Klebold changed many significant details about her and her husband’s meeting with Dylan’s teacher about the school shooting fantasy short story. In Klebold’s version, they were told little, knew less, and were instructed not to worry. I can’t continue listening to her read her words and tell her journey on this audiobook, because that is a significant lie. I trusted her to share her heart truthfully. She didn’t do so, so I have to walk away from the dialogue and not continue reading. Which, on the 20th anniversary of Columbine, breaks my heart a little. Because I wanted to feel for her. Her true story is so painful; it doesn’t need to be embellished. And if she so fears still being judged, perhaps a memoir was not for her.
And shame on the publisher: this information specifically about this meeting with the teacher is in the FBI files, testified to under oath. Klebold’s manuscript should have been vetted more carefully.

First, this author uses a strange (and which I consider sloppy) literary device: they changes characters without specifying them by name. A new paragraph/chapter/section will just start talking about “he” and “him” and the reader has to guess between four, then five main male characters who “he” is.
Also, once before I stopped reading, the POV radically changes and “he” starts talking to the reader. What?

Second, this novel blatantly and loudly fails the Bedchel test. Women flit in and out, never to be seen again, only known as this person’s lesbian friend or that person’s coworker. The one long-standing female character exists to be a wife, and never has s conversation about anything but her husband or the main focus of the novel, the wounded main-child. All the women are two-dimensional props.

Which brings me to the main reason I cannot finish this novel:
Third, I truly feel this novel fetishizes/glorifies (choose your verb) trauma, self-harm, and resulting toxic behavior and relationships. I say this as someone with CPTSD and currently in CPTSD immersion therapy, someone who is chronically ill with an autoimmune disorder and who has to use a wheelchair in public. The behaviors that draw people inexplicably to Jude—violent self-harm over years, egregious medical self-neglect, strict and seemingly random friendship rules (don’t ask questions about x y z, don’t take my photograph, I need to be checked on twice a day or Bad Things Might Happen)—are personality-disordered behaviors that in real life either drive people away or create horribly toxic relationships.
Granted, both Andy and Jude so far seem to understand that their relationship is both inappropriate and toxic, but Jude has this dreamy ideal vision of his rescue-victim friendship with Willem...and Willem seems to think it’s completely normally to be living only half a life because the other half is being sucked up by Jude’s ever-growing needs. And what bothers me is this doesn’t feel like storytelling—I have read many, many well-crafted novels about horrific relationships. It feels to me as reader that the writer feels this is normal, or that this is fantasy-fulfillment to the writer. I know I am getting rather personal in this review, but this novel has upset me in a most uncomfortable way, to the point that I may need to discuss it in therapy. There is something wrong here. I wish I could flush the 33 percent I have read from my system.

I couldn’t finish this. Too many other books I desperately want to read, and too many things about this book bothered me. Errors (Gypsy Rose Lee was a burlesque dancer, not a fortune teller), oddities (the nursery rhyme about counting birds is specifically about crows, not magpies), and word overuse (I stopped at the umpteenth usage of “shivered”. It was sometimes used twice in the same paragraph, and was pulling me out of the story. Finding it over and over was like hearing an unwanted beat in my head.) I truly wanted to like this novel, and I hung on longer than I wanted to out of hope.

Have to DNF shelve this for right now. Put off by the cutesy Karen Kilgariff intro

(“OMG I didn’t want to meet him but then I did but I thought I would hate him but OMG we totes love each other now true crime besties forever he totes listens to my podcast and you should too”)

but I forged ahead. How Jensen became interested in true crime had my attention and was truly unusual (and might be considered parental enmeshment?)...but then he goes into meeting Michelle McNamara...

And I was right back into the tone of the intro. What is it about a certain small corner of the informal true crime community (i.e., those that come at it from a paraprofessional angle) that becomes a such co-self-congratulating echo chamber?
If you are really into the work for seeking truth and helping victims, then why do you spend so much time squeeing about knowing each other and knowing other people? I stopped when he admitted that he and McNamara had a squeal fest (only a gentle paraphrasing on my part) upon getting the chance to speak to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in the phone. That has nothing to do with the murder victims not seeking justice.
If my murdered best friend were the subject at hand, and her case’s prosecutor were the celebrity they were squealing about, I would be horrified.
I may return to this book. But right now I am really turned off, and there is so much more I want to read. And I will be reading it in print. Jensen’s narration sounds in part like he has a cold. I’m going to be returning it to Audible. What a disappointment.

This book is nothing like its misleading premise. It’s about three women who either desperately want to get pregnant or who are unhappy moms whining because a mommy blogger influencer has gone offline. It’s a miserable, sad read.

Also, it employs an odd gimmick: the author inserted the acknowledgements into the novel’s action! Very jarring. You read an intro page from the stalker of the blogger, jumping right in the action (supposedly), turn the page, and the author is thanking everyone for supporting her for writing her novel and assuring readers they are going to love it, for two pages worth! Then Chapter One starts. Rather off putting start to what turns out to be a misleading and depressing book about fertility, not at all a thriller.

There were many factual errors in the prologue—about what a serial killer is, about the history of serial murder, about the facts concerning the Jack the Ripper case, for crying out loud. But I held on.
Then the first chapter was on pornography and sexual serial murder. Oh, no.
In it, the authors actually stated that rape and rape-murder were not as prevalent when sex workers were more prevalent and brothers and sisters slept in the same beds. Seriously. More sexy time all ‘round, and rape, and I quote, wasn’t worth going to the gallows for.
That’s not how that works. I went to grad school for this, and I refuse to read further in a book that has this statement in it. It insults my intelligence.

As a chronically ill and disabled person, and as a fan, I am so disappointed. There’s just so much complaining—an entire chapter devoted to his love/hate relationship with golf, plus more wry grousing about it elsewhere, complaining about things in his movies (cool scene but they unfortunately used “Walking On Sunshine”), complaining about being sick to the nth degree, and more. There’s discussing your negative feelings about your symptoms, and about the before and after of being disabled, and then there is complaining.

Five chapters in, and kinda getting the impression that Michael thinks he and his people are awesome, and everything and everyone else needs some work. I didn’t want to know that.

I ordered this book via Amazon's iPhone app at work, because I needed to research a client's problem. Conduct disorder is such a serious diagnosis, I expected to receive a serious work tome. I received a book smaller than some graphic novels--74 pages! I returned it promptly in disgust.