After her father dies suddenly, Jane Sharp drops out of university and retreats to the online world of TheRealCrimeNetwork.com, where she befriends four amateur sleuths from across the country. When three college students are viciously stabbed to death, seemingly at random, it sets the world of amateur sleuths ablaze and the team travels to small-town Idaho to find answers—only to discover the truth is more shocking than any other case they’ve investigated.
"If you're reading this, chances are last year you flipped on the news and saw me getting shoved to my knees in the dirt, hands wrestled behind my back, gun-toting FBI agents swarming like ants around me into that three-story house. God only knows what the headline below my face must've read."
Review:
I can’t lie — I’ve had a strange curiosity about true crime, why it happens, how it happens, how people get caught and get away. But I’m also curious about whether it’s possible to ethically consume this kind of content whether for education or entertainment. For some, it feels like preparing, learning, maybe even finding community - and to others, it’s just an amusing, disconnected pastime, stories told over the newest contour technique. And this book goes for the jugular with an incisive commentary on the commercialisation and fanatical consumption of true crime today both by the consumers and the reporters, including certain real-life crime cases that made it all feel so very real.
Our narrator Janeway starts us talking right to the reader, inviting us into her mind to explore how she got involved with true crime fans with a personal, direct tone and plenty of thoughts trailing off. Her voice was almost professional, polite - but we get to know her as the pace picks up and more of her personality starts to creep in. But do we know her? Or create that strange para-social relationship based on what we think we know, what she tells us?
It moves slowly, snippets of grieving, investigation, talking with fellow sleuths, scouring the internet for clues and dealing with the intricacies of armchair detective work. It felt longer than it was. And unfortunately it felt so, so stretched out that I struggled a lot to keep interest. Not enough happened for so many words despite the first third of the book building up tension that for me just lost momentum in the space between.
Now, there’s a lot of discussion in the bookish community about the similarities between the actual book and a current case that hasn’t even been tried yet. And whilst at first I respected the authors note saying she referenced other true crimes, using such a recent tragedy as the basis of your own story when you comment on the immortality of that in said story is not the meta punchline it may seem but is actually quite careless but I’m hoping Winstead will address this and explain before I jump on the witch hunt.
Some people will very much love this and parts of it were fascinating with a brilliant concept but the execution and length just didn’t match the clearly creative ideas for me.
Our narrator Janeway starts us talking right to the reader, inviting us into her mind to explore how she got involved with true crime fans with a personal, direct tone and plenty of thoughts trailing off. Her voice was almost professional, polite - but we get to know her as the pace picks up and more of her personality starts to creep in. But do we know her? Or create that strange para-social relationship based on what we think we know, what she tells us?
It moves slowly, snippets of grieving, investigation, talking with fellow sleuths, scouring the internet for clues and dealing with the intricacies of armchair detective work. It felt longer than it was. And unfortunately it felt so, so stretched out that I struggled a lot to keep interest. Not enough happened for so many words despite the first third of the book building up tension that for me just lost momentum in the space between.
Now, there’s a lot of discussion in the bookish community about the similarities between the actual book and a current case that hasn’t even been tried yet. And whilst at first I respected the authors note saying she referenced other true crimes, using such a recent tragedy as the basis of your own story when you comment on the immortality of that in said story is not the meta punchline it may seem but is actually quite careless but I’m hoping Winstead will address this and explain before I jump on the witch hunt.
Some people will very much love this and parts of it were fascinating with a brilliant concept but the execution and length just didn’t match the clearly creative ideas for me.
⭐⭐
- This Book Will Bury Me will be available from Aria & Aries/Head of Zeus from March 25th. I received a reviewers copy of this title.
- This title includes subjects that may be upsetting including death, violence, eating and weight issues,
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