I found the beginning of this book to be incredibly disorienting-- diving into the quotes, listing so many names in the beginning chapter that I had trouble keeping track of people. Jumping from X who knew Y when they were kids and Z who lived with X and was friends with X's dad (I'm paraphrasing) was enough to make someone's head spin. In my opinion, that opening does a disservice to the thoughtfulness of the rest of the book, which is an earnest, empathic investment in the life of Carolyn by someone who knew her. The book takes so long to get to who the author is, that, coupled with the wild quotes, the book almost starts off on a weird National Enquirer tabloid vibe, except that the writing is better. I overlooked that, and I found the rest of the book to be much more interesting, if still chaotic in how it's strung together. My wish is that the. book were organized a bit better to give grounding to the reader. The en media res beginning is interesting, and from a "true crime" perspective has lots of payoff because the reader is in the action before they know who and what is happening, but I found it also added to the sensationalized feeling of the writing, instead of making me trust the author and focus on Carolyn, so I feel like the opening does exactly what the author doesn't want. That being said, I found the whole thing interesting, especially once the author begins to include background on their shared hometown of Saint Petersburg, Florida.

This is an incredible piece of non-fiction. Thinly veiled as true crime, but much more a literary examination of mental illness, men killing women, and institutions that do nothing to help or support victims. Sarah Gerard's breakdown of her friend's murder by her roommate in 2016 was impossibly hard for me to put down. I was fascinated by this story, by the victim Carolyn's life, and by Gerard's fantastic writing.

Sown together through interviews with both Carolyn and her killer's friends, family, and colleagues, this could so have easily been a straightforward piece of investigative journalism. Instead, Gerard takes the time to teach us about who Carolyn was as a person, why her murderer may have done what he did, and the institutional failures that contributed to this horrible attack.

A lot of time is spent at Bard. where both of them went to school. So much of Bard's history is horrific (what is WRONG with that college??), and while there isn't a direct correlation between the college and the murder, it is impossible to ignore the backstory of the school, and the history associated with the killer's family of Bard and the town of Rhinebeck.

Also living in NYC at that time, frequenting the bookstore both Gerard and Carolyn worked at, and being familiar with the types of houses and roommates you're forced to put up with in NYC in your twenties was fascinating and weirdly nostalgic. It's an incredible work by an incredible writer.

Like all of Sarah Gerard's books, this was very well written and compelling from start to finish. Gerard's personal perspective on the murder case (she was friends with the victim) adds a rich layer to the story and prevents it from feeling exploitative. I enjoyed all of the passages about other things that happened within the Bard community, it gave the story more layers.

The book covers the 2016 murder of Carolyn Bush, 25, who was stabbed to death by her roommate Render Stetson-Shanahan in their NYC apartment. The author, who was a friend of Carolyn’s, seeks to determine what led to her death and goes through court transcripts, media sources and countless interviews to attempt an answer. She was warned against this project, “a book about her will flatten her for easy consumption, turn her into easy entertainment, glamorize murder,” but while the author admits many motivations for the book, “a thirst for justice? Fear for my own safety in a sexist culture? Grief…? Entertainment, fame, or money? Fascination and curiosity with death? A desperate desire to know why?” She believes at base she really just wants to fully know Carolyn.

Both Carolyn and Render were once students at Bard College, and that is one weird place. Carolyn flunked out. The President of the school wrote a letter to the court on Render’s behalf, as did a number of other Bard administrators and faculty (Render’s mother was with the Office of Admissions) and, in addition, the President comes across as one of the biggest skeeves on the planet. Ick. The Bard student body is nearly as bad. “They’re living like squatters, not putting the heat on, talking about literature like they understand it when they don’t, and then they have this super-fancy bottle of whiskey? This is rich kid shit.” That pretty much sums up the Bard ethos right there. Rich, pretentious, entitled kids, slumming.

To be honest, Carolyn falls right into this as well….she’s not at all easy to like. A friend describes her thusly, “I feel like she has kind of this reincarnation of Mina Loy. She definitely wanted to be. The kind of ‘swathed in fur, holding court in a smoky parlor talking about the firmament and the fixture of the stars?’ That’s the world she wanted to inhabit.” I just can’t with these people.

Yet despite all this, and the cast of thousands that got a bit confusing at times I quite enjoyed the book. Don’t let the author fool you, this is true crime, no matter how one might try to dress it up, but add in a fairly novel legal defense, an interesting victim and the fairly loathsome nature of Bard and, especially, its President (who is connected with Jeffrey Epstein for the love of all things holy) and it is entertaining true crime. And, in line with what the author wanted, we do get to know Carolyn. So there’s that. Recommended.

True crime writing at its best a heartbreaking book about the murder of the authors dear friend.The authors investigation kept me turning the pages and the path her investigation took was fascinating shocking..#netgalley #zandobooks

well written and very sad true crime tale written by someone who was close with the victim. .... thank you for the arc.

I have never heard of this case before so it was definitely an interesting read to learn more about Carolyn but also to delve deep into the case with the research that Sarah has done and their relationship adds another layer to this.

This was an interesting book. I have never read such a deep dive into one person before. Oddly, I wish I had learned more about her parents because while they seemed nice, Carolyn really seemed to have checked out of family life once she got to high school and spent most of her time in bars and punk clubs but also was a good enough student to get into Bard? The book was exhaustive with detail but I couldn’t get a good feel for that time in her life. Punk shows were one thing but spending time studying in a bar seemed off. Why didn’t she ever want to go home?

My biggest suggestion is for the author to explicitly spell out what Wendy’s Subway is. It is mentioned constantly and unless you are part of a niche scene in NYC, it sounds like a bad fast food sandwich shop. You can piece together what it is with the drips and drabs she gives you but even when I searched for it, I couldn’t find any section where she told you what it was. I had thought I had missed it or didn’t focus on it because I didn’t realize how much it would come up but I think the info wasn’t there.