Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for this arc!
I had a hard time pushing through this book. It felt very repetitive and I just couldn’t connect with the writing. Just not for me.

This is an amazing true story! Everyone that likes true crime, knows Ted Bundy. Is amazing to know the history of this fantastic and strong woman!

This was an INTENSE read. Please review trigger warnings, as the events that happened to this survivor are described in detail, as they should be.

Kathy Kleiner survived the Chi Omega attack in Florida where Ted Bundy murdered two women and injured two others. Her details and vivid descriptions decades later are haunting, upsetting, and alarming. The narrative about Ted Bundy being a charming man is challenged here and I absolutely trust and believe in Kathy’s account of what happened to her. The end of this book is probably the most important, with an impassioned plea to remember the victims and take back the narrative of their suffering. Well written and documented.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Kathy Kleiner was one of the few women to survive an attack by one of the most notorious and infamous serial killers ever to exist— Ted Bundy. The interest in Bundy has always been high, not only for the amount of women he killed, but for his supposed "charm," "intelligence," and decent looks. He also garnered many headlines for his escapes from prison, his circus-like trial where he defended himself and got married in court, and was eventually put to the electric chair. Add in that well-known true crime writer Ann Rule penned a bestseller about him, and you have a sick criminal who has all but completely blotted out his young victims who had their lives ahead of them.

Post MeToo, the focus is beginning to change. There has been a docuseries from the POV of Bundy's ex-girlfriend, a Netflix series that focused more on the women than Bundy, a popular YouTube channel run by another survivor, Carol DaRonch, and now this memoir by Kleiner, who is determined to correct what she feels is Bundy's unearned and blatantly false reputation as smart and charming. She points out that, contrary to lore, Bundy didn't lure his victims with cunning acts that fooled them into willingly entering his car, but that he normally overpowered his smaller prey when the women were alone, or cracked them over the head with something. Kleiner is determined to set the record straight—his victims were not naive women who fell for his wiles, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. (The vaguely woman-blaming theory that Bundy was avenging being dumped by his fiancee is also disproven.)

Kleiner was fast asleep in her room at Omega Chi sorority in Florida when she became one of those women in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bundy entered the house through a broken door and quickly killed two college girls with a wood log to the head, then almost killed two more. Kleiner is one of them. She testified against Bundy and helped get him the electric chair.

The book covers other times Kleiner had to overcome being dealt an extremely difficult hand—being diagnosed with lupus as a young girl, divorce, single parenthood, a breast cancer diagnosis in her 30s, and being a refugee of Hurricane Katrina for months. Somehow, Kleiner and her cowriter, Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, manage to make the book interesting and entertaining without being maudlin or depressing.

Kleiner has had far more than her share of terrible luck, and I sincerely hope that the rest of her life is nothing but sunshine and rainbows. If anyone deserves it, it's her.

Thank you to the authors, NetGalley, and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I just reviewed A Light in the Dark by Kathy Kleiner Rubin; Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi. #ALightintheDark #NetGalley

This book ended up not being my cup of tea, unfortunately. Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read it anyway.

After getting burned out by so many Bundy books, this is a refreshing change from the typical. It’s long overdue to hear about things from the victim’s perspective and the author does so quite well. This was a page turner for me, and I liked reading about the author’s experiences.

I was very keen to get into this book as it had been a while since I’d read a true crime. I regularly digest numerous true crime podcasts every week with the same layout of: talk about the murders, talk about the murderer, briefly mention the victims, and continue.
However getting to see a survivor story from one of Ted Bundy’s victims shone a whole new light on the story. I for one was definitely someone who watched the ‘Ted Bundy Tapes’ and hollywood movie ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile’ and thought wow how could someone like that be a killer. However, throughout this book Kathy repeatedly makes note of the fact that Bundy was a creep and girls were afraid of him not swooning over him and I know that shouldn’t shock me but it did.
Getting to see Kathy’s view on the entire situation gave me a whole other perspective and made me understand how poorly victims are treated, especially if they weren’t the ones on the official death tally. Hearing her childhood story and family life prior to the attack made Kathy feel much more like a regular kid and not a glorified piece of evidence, which really tugged on the heartstrings. I felt tense reading the recounts of the attack at Chi Omega, Bundy’s death, and The victim list (Appendix B) and they ended up bringing me to tears. This story was so well written by Kathy and I became so connected and invested in her story.
I would highly recommend to anyone who loves true crime, if you have prior knowledge on the Ted Bundy murders… this book will turn your life around.
An incredibly put together read that tugs at the emotions and well done to Kathy for the bravery you have displayed by not only speaking up and telling the world your story but by powering through everything life has thrown at you.

This book was a good read it went into more detail then I expected.. Some parts of the story were harrowing to read due to it being written from the survivor’s perspective, it made it harder to process on occasions!! It shows truly that did she not only survive she lived..

There was a couple of things I wasn’t so keen on.. One of them being how long the chapters were, I feel like some bits could have been taken out to make them shorter.. Also i didn’t think it needed to have the few chapters after Bundy had been killed to explain what Kathy went on to do with her life! I felt like that bit was a bit of waffling on..

Overall I did enjoy the book but felt some bits didn’t need to be included..

Thank you NetGalley and Independent Publishers Group for sending this book for review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Chicago Review Press for an eARC of this book.

**5 stars**

I don’t normally rate nonfiction, especially if it is about someone’s life and personal experiences but for this I did because it was an ARC.

“It’s time that Bundy’s legend diminishes and people stop thinking of him as charming and smart when he was neither. It’s time to stop considering what his life could have been if he hadn’t ‘went another way.’ The total waste of humanity was not Bundy’s death sentence. The waste of humanity was the loss of Margaret and Lisa.”

I have been waiting for this book for years! Victims do not owe anything to anyone, but I am very appreciative that Kathy Kleiner has told her story of survival from not only Ted Bundy, but other obstacles in life. I absolutely recommend this book to people that like true crime but want to advocate for the victims more so than feed into the serial killer industrial complex the true community has seemed to create with their interests. I do not fault anyone for wanting to read about true crime, I think it is a natural reaction for people, but I hope to see more books like this in the future of true crime writing.

You can feel the hatred that Kathy has for Bundy as you are reading this.
And rightly so.
This book goes into a lot of detail on the attacks and explains exactly what brutally happens.
As much as I enjoyed this book. I did find it had alot of parts that were just telling the authors life story. I know it proves that she lived and didn't just survive. I just felt there was a lot more than what was maybe needed.
The main thing I didn't like is how she picked on a particular book and how they told the story. They didn't need to be named.
Kathy also states that not enough is written about each victim in other books, documentaries etc. But I felt she did the same. Yes she included a paragraph per victim in the back of the book. But personally, not everyone is going to read that.

Thank you to Net Galley for my ARC Oof, this was a difficult read. Not only due to the subject matter and the horror these girls and women went through but also at the frustration and anger i felt while reading what this monster did. I loved that Kathy wrote this book wanting to debunk the narrative that Bundy was intelligent and charming, and that she gave a name to all his victims.

From the publisher: The first book by a confirmed survivor of Ted Bundy, and the only memoir to challenge the popular narrative of Bundy as a handsome killer who charmed his victims into trusting him.

I haven’t read that much true crime. I’ve read a lot about John Wayne Gacy because I was in high school in the Chicago area when his horrors were discovered, but I didn’t know much about Ted Bundy going into this memoir. I held the popular beliefs that he was charming and intelligent in addition to being a serial killer. Kathy Kleiner Rubin was one of the young women he attacked when she was sleeping in her sorority bedroom, and she has a lot to say about how Bundy is viewed in popular culture.

The author makes the case that what we believe about Bundy is wrong. He was not charming; most women he approached found him creepy. Most of his victims were not lured into his car by a sad tale that he spun but were attacked in their beds or from behind by Bundy. He was not intelligent or learned; he was a poor student who had no aptitude for the law or anything except killing.

I had no idea how many suspected victims Bundy had. I knew he was brutal but didn’t know his preferred technique was to bash his victims in the head first, before violating them. The author is only a few years older than me, and I found her passionate defense of Bundy’s victims very moving. The memoir very much gave me “there but for the grace of god go I” vibes.

Kathy Kleiner Rubin is very resilient and a true survivor. She has one son, Michael, and he didn’t find out until he was 37 years old that the attack she suffered in college was at the hands of the notorious Ted Bundy. When he found out, he called her in shock. Toward the end of her book, she writes, “Michael was a big part of my happiness in life. During that phone call, as he kept repeating ‘you were so normal’ he brought up the pool parties I hosted for his birthday and other things I did to make his life as ordinary as possible. To me, this was one of my great accomplishments in life. Bundy was on a sick and twisted journey and he dragged his victims down the path. After I survived the attack, I dug in my heels so that he could pull me no further.”

There is some information about the author and her husband surviving Katrina which felt like filler, but aside from that the narrative flowed. The author has a lot of encouraging words for others who are fighting battles. Her words and memories are very inspirational. Appendix A is a list of the women and girls who lost their lives to Bundy, which is very reverential and which I read with great care. As the author points out, none of them are to blame for being murdered by a monster. Appendix C has a helpful list of ways to replace his narrative with remembrances of his victims.

If you like memoirs of people who have overcome great obstacles, or if you’d like to know more about Ted Bundy’s victims, I recommend A Light in the Dark. I read an advance reader copy of A Light in the Dark. It is scheduled to be published on October 3, and the Galesburg Public Library will own it.

I have read nearly every book on Ted Bundy, and this book by Kathy Kleiner Rubin is an important addition to the serial killer’s history. She is right in saying that the victims are rarely mentioned, other than as a footnote to his gruesome killings. It was good to read about her life, and how she survived that awful night. I applaud her bravery coming forward and writing her story. Highly recommended.

I don't know what to say about this book.

This is book is about a victim of Ted Bundy's
And let just say you can feel her hatred for this man. The way she talks about him and the victims. You can feel her how she must have writing it.

She also talks about her lupus and how that affected her as a child.

There are definitely things in this I didn't think needed to be in here like picking on a previous book. I think everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Overall it is an interesting read and take on a very well known story.

This book deserves the bad review which follows. It is written by a survivor of Ted Bundy. Apparently the author thinks this gives her the right to bore the reader with any and all of her current and past life trials and medical details. And that is the content of the many first pages, which we have to suffer through while we're wondering where and how and why she crossed paths with this serial killer. It is mind numbing, Doesn't she realize that the Bundy part of it is why we're here? We want to know. But she goes on and on and on about herself, her family of origin and all details of her childhood. Wasn't an editor working with her?
She bellyaches that prior witers on this subject limit their descriptions of the victims to a few sentence. THEN at the end of this book she gives us a short paragraph on each of them. She does the same thing! Got to be kidding.
Between her childhood and these last sad pages she describes Bundy's activities in the most gory, disgusting detail as possible. Just awful. Lots of body part details. I guess she loves it! But we don't That's because insight is not to be found here.
I would go WAY back to the drawing board with this book. I am being tactful. Can I give it no stars?

I received an advance reader copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for this honest review. The true crime world is saturated with works about Ted Bundy, the notorious serial killer. From "The Stranger Beside Me" to "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile", works about Bundy tend to portray him as handsome, likeable, almost incapable of the depravity that he committed in the 1970s. Yet, few - if any - of these works give voice to the many girls and women whose candles Bundy remorselessly snuffed. "A Light in the Dark" is an exception in the extensive Bundy canon, as Kathy Kleiner Rubin - a tenacious survivor of Bundy's Florida State massacre - refocuses the Bundy narrative by sharing her own story and humanizing that of her fellow Chi Omega sisters, all of whom were victims of Bundy's violence that fateful January night. Kleiner Rubin also excoriates the media-driven mythology that Bundy was highly intelligent and charismatic and instead highlights his sub-part grades in law school, self-aggrandizing behavior, arrogance, and contempt, all of which resulted in multiple guilty verdicts and, ultimately, the death penalty. For avid readers of true crime, this is a must-read. 4.5/5.

An extremely important book that I started and finished in a day.

This book was very well written and provided insight into the lives of those who were impacted by Bundy. It also refocuses the narrative from being solely about Bundy to being about what really matters, his victims. They are no longer just statistics, but human beings who had their lives forever altered by a madman.

The book also makes extremely clear that Bundy was not a suave genius who charmed each of his victims. He was a petty, cowardly, and arrogant man. This viewpoint was much needed. Bundy was not a handsome mastermind, but a monster who does not deserve the amount of “popular” attention he gets.

Bundy’s victims were real people with real families. Each had to face the pain of the attack itself and the aftermath of lives forever changed.

An excellent book that changes the narrative and puts the attention back on the people who matter most…the victims.