Carrie Carolyn Coco was an emotional and well spoken ode to a loved and missed friend. I found it to be interesting, well written, and informative, and definitely suitable for those interested in these kinds of topics.

Carrie Carolyn Coco is a book written by a friend of hers. With that being said, it's hard to rate stories bearing truth, especially when it's someone who was sincerely loved as Carolyn was. I read this thinking it was about what had happened to Carolyn, and while you do get those details, the focus on the book is more about who Carolyn was and what she stood for, her path growth, according to her friends. It's touching, raw, and it feels a little...like the curtain has been pulled back and you're peeking directly into her life, which can feel a little bit unnerving, considering the type of contemplative person she was. With that being said, I really feel as if I 'knew' the type of person Carolyn was, as Sarah Gerard has brought her to life within the pages, and for that, I thank you for sharing her with the world. She really seems like someone worth knowing and remembering.
*I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is my own opinion*

I wish I could have been friends with Carolyn. What a loss. Sarah Gerard absolutely captured the love that so many people had for her and the injustice that came in the aftermath of her murder.

Wow this book had it all. Background, psychology, mystery and a conclusion I didn't see coming.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book which I received from the author. All views expressed are only my honest opinion.

Carrie Carolyn Coco is an often raw, compelling, and honestly written true-crime novel by Sarah Gerard, about the life and murder of her friend Carolyn Bush. Released 9th July 2024 by indie publisher Zando, it's 368 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.

It's a straightforward memoir, respectfully written, and definitely not a lurid thriller. The author is a long term friend of the victim, and her personal recollections, observations, and experiences as well as interview materials with people in Carolyn's wider circle make up the bulk of the book.

There are a relatively huge number of people involved in the case, from the family and friends of the victim and her murderer, neighbors, emergency services, police, and healthcare personnel, to the wider legal services involved in the aftermath. The author has included an extensive dramatic personae to help readers keep them straight/reference during the read.

The prose is unvarnished and accessible, and is more effective for being direct. Her pain at the loss of her friend, and her anger and bewilderment are palpable. It's often disjointed and discontinuous both in narrative and timeline.

The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 10 hours 39 minutes and is read by the author herself. She has a well modulated alto voice and does a good job. She reads surprisingly dispassionately and clearly. Sound and production quality are high throughout the read.

Four stars. Not lurid or sensationalist (thankfully). It would be a good book club selection, buddy read, or for library acquisition.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Unfortunately I don’t know that this was a story that needed to be written, other than for the author and those close to her. It’s not unsolved, not especially sensational, I’m not trying to be cold- or heartless, but while grotesque and a very good example of how mental health falls to the wayside in America, it wasn’t riveting like you want a book of this genre to be.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

A riveting personal book that is investigative journalism, true crime and personal memoir -- the author was friends with the woman who was murdered by her roommate. The book is well researched - and she includes as much of Carolyn's voice via texts, conversations, emails, blogs, poetry, etc. She also does extensive interviews with family and friends and others who knew her.. This book places the circumstances of the murder in the context of privilege, upbringing, families and college. Bard College and its President do not come off well here at all and this book and the news media speaks for itself about his dealings. Even though she was only 25 when she was killed, she left quite and impact on her friends and community in Queens. I honestly could not put this book down. Tragic all around!

Thank you to Netgalley and Zando for an ARC and I left this review voluntarily.

This is a true story trying to figure out what led to the tragic death of a young woman who was murdered by her roommate, all written by a friend of the victim. There’s so much backstory that doesn’t feel necessary. I’m sure this was very cathartic to write and also to read for anyone involved or familiar with the case, I just felt like I was on the outside looking in when I wanted to feel engaged.

An unconventional "crimoir" that may not have benefited from certain traditional trappings of the true-crime genre....but if I'm right about what the author was trying to do here, it's successful. Unadorned prose that lets other voices come forward; excellent research; evocative about the terror of the event and the broader anxieties and grief following it. Maybe needed a more forceful framework, in terms of being a memorial more than a true-crime story, but very readable and compelling. 4.5 stars.

Carrie Carolyn Coco is about Carolyn Bush, who was murdered in 2016. The book is written by a friend, but I read 60% of this book and still do not understand how the author knows her. This book is not written in any coherent manner -- it is not chronological, as it begins with Carolyn's death, and it feels extremely random and stream of consciousness. The author went deep into Carolyn's history in a way that felt completely unnecessary. Honestly I was so lost and bored. I read other reviews, and it seems that the ending goes further into why Render murdered Carolyn. I tried, but I just could not get past the numerous deep dives into Carolyn's life in ways that did not matter to me.

It's sad, because this book is about a girl who tragically lost her life too soon. The author notes that she had been told not to write this book, and it seems to me that that would have been the better idea. This book feels like the author's healing process, and doesn't do much to serve Carolyn or her family.

Thank you to Zando and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

A young woman was senselessly murdered by her roommate, and an acquaintance spent six years researching a book about her. When I saw the advance reader copy was available, I was intrigued enough to read it.

As someone who didn’t know Carolyn Bush, I can’t say this book by her “friend” does her any favors. Carolyn comes across as unbearably unlikable (for example, descriptions of her as punching people as hard as she could for fun, “she’s so intense” (p. 311), I’ve never liked anyone who is physically abusive to “friends” and thinks it’s funny) and incredibly pretentious. I mean, a lot of us are pretentious in our twenties, especially if we fancy ourselves writers, but although I think the author means the reader to find Carolyn as unique and incandescent, that’s not actually how she paints her.

If feels weird to be criticizing a book about a murdered young woman, but I’m criticizing the author, not the victim. I hope the author found the exercise cathartic. I honestly can’t guess what the author is trying to achieve with this book. The book’s subtitle is “My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable,” and the author is definitely obsessed.

Throughout the book, astrology is presented as fact, which it’s not. “On November 19, 1990, Carolyn Hilton Bush was born. The moon was a waxing crescent on its path to conjunct with Saturn. A Scorpio, Carolyn’s ruling planet was Pluto, but she was born in the third decan of the sign, so she was also blessed with the moon’s influence. Pluto gave her power and determination. The moon made her sensitive, nurturing, and compassionate. As a Scorpio, Carolyn was resilient and perceptive, daring and brave, creative and enterprising. She planned and strategized. She hated pretension.” (p. 113 of the advance reader copy) Nonsense like this made it hard for me to take the author seriously.

This book desperately, desperately needed an editor. There were so many times when I thought, what in the world does this have to do with the murder of Carolyn Bush? Parts are almost stream of consciousness, and the author seems to think that every single thing she came across while researching the book HAD to go in the book. Trust me, it didn’t. Sometimes I wondered what I was reading. The text is also repetitive, and jumps dizzyingly around in time.

The book also serves as a nonstop criticism of Bard College and its president. It might have been better to bundle all the criticisms together, making a case for the criticism, instead of sprinkling stories, some of which had nothing to do with Carolyn Bush, throughout the narrative. The murderer, Render Stetson-Shanahan, honestly comes across almost as an afterthought.

For me as a reader, the book fails as “a gripping work of true crime” and as a character study of Carolyn Hilton Bush. I suppose it works best at capturing a group of artists and writers in a specific place over a specific period of time. For the people who know and loved Carolyn Bush, I hope this book is illuminating and helpful. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who did not know Carolyn Bush.

I knew nothing about Carolyn Bush or Bard College before reading this book. I read an advance reader copy of Carrie Carolyn Coco.

sorry I don't currently have the mind for reading true crime, but I wish the author all the best and I hope the book brought her what she hoped to get out of it.

While initially interested and hooked by the first chapter of this, the narrative quickly stalled out and got too lost of the details of distant relationships with the victim. i think my preferred format wouldve been a longer article or essay.

Gerard is an outstanding writer so that made for a good and highly engrossing read, but I'm not sure an entire book-length format was warranted for this story. It also got very confusing at times because of the massive cast of characters. It will be very interesting for those interested in the shortcomings of the university mental health system. It's also an excellent example of someone writing true crime memoir without making the story all about them, which is no small feat.

This is a heart breaking true crime story. Carolyn Bush was stabbed to death in 2016. Carolyn Bush was also Sarah Gerard's friend.

As her friend, Gerard wants to determine what led to this senseless death, reviewing police reports, court records and media sources. She interviews friends and family, all in an effort to find out why.

While the author was warned against writing this book, and even questioning her own motives, the end result being that she just wanted to know her friend more.

Carolyn wasn't an angel, she had a bit of an old Hollywood air about her. One described her as modern Mirna Loy. She wasn't the easiest person to love or to know.

The story of this senseless murder is a deep look at a friendship and at the failure of an educational system. I hope that Sarah Gerard got what she wanted out of writing this, and that she is no longer living in the pain of the loss.

Carrie Carolyn Coco seeks to tell the story of the 2016 murder of young Carolyn Bush. In doing so, it also shines a light on mental illness and violence against women. It is a profound true crime story that is told in a very journalistic approach which was difficult to follow at times but, overall, informative and enticing.

Sarah Gerard is a strong, compelling writer, whether penning fiction or non-fiction. CARRIE CAROLYN COCO is no exception; the writing is very strong as are the characterizations. That Carolyn was not "likable" didn't matter; I still felt for a young woman who lost her life. Where the book fell a bit short was in creating and holding an immediate "why" for reading this. What was the author asking? I don't know, but I wanted to, and that would have helped me be more engaged in the author's "obsession" with the case.

Powerful, Disturbing..
A powerful, factual and disturbing account of a true crime - the murder of Carolyn Bush, stabbed to death in her own New York apartment in 2016 - and authored by a close friend of the victim herself. This deep dive into the crime and into the victim herself is handled deftly and with a keen authorial but empathic eye throughout to its shattering conclusion. A tragic and deeply disturbing unravelling of a crime and its aftermath as well as an homage to its victim.

Thank you NetGalley and Zando for the early access to Carrie Carolyn Coco, in exchange for a truthful review.

Deeply disturbing case, vividly rendered in places, but with frustrating repetition in others, and strange deviations.

This is a tough one to talk about. If it was fiction it would be open to criticism about the large number of unlikeable characters, but these are real people - and young people at that - who have suffered a loss, even if the reaction to that loss frequently feels a little narcissistic and performative.

I’m also not sure how I feel about the book having ‘my friend’ in the title, which implies a personal perspective filled with connection and insight, when the author states in the text they’d only just started to form a friendship when Carolyn was murdered. Then, when we discover the actual nature of their relationship, revealed in an email towards the end, the whole enterprise feels even stranger.

There’s an early moment where one of Carolyn’s friends talks about feeling uncomfortable about writing an essay about her after her death, when they hadn’t had very deep conversations when she was alive, and he was ‘nervous about claiming more than is my right to claim.’ This feels like one of the most revealing moments of the book, in a genre where exploitation of tragedy is always a risk.

As a document of our age, it feels genuinely essential - though I’m not sure if that was the actual intent. I might be wrong though! Truly, one of the weirdest non-fiction books I’ve read.

After losing her friend Carolyn in 2016 to a shocking murder at age 25, the author spent years digging into the story. This book is the result of all those interviews she undertook searching for answers and it includes the trial and its outcome. Very in depth and thorough.