Bright Young Women-audio by Jessica Knoll

 

Bright Young Women-audio by Jessica Knoll

Narrated by Sutton Foster, Imani Jade Powers, Corey Brill & Chris Henry Coffee

My thoughts:

I'm new to audio and at first found this hard to listen too. I like holding a book or ereader. Seeing the words. But I kept going and am glad I did. This was definitely one to listen too. 

The story is told between two women: Pamela Schumacher and Ruth Wachowsky. Pamela is in college in Tallahassee, FL where she is president of a sorority house. Ruth lives in Sammasish, WA. 

One night the unthinkable happens at the sorority house. Someone assaults the young women killing two maiming two others. Pamela is unharmed but she sees the man who did this. Her best friend is one of the murdered and how she was assaulted is so horrible that it literally made me cringe when listening to the descriptions. The whole thing is horrendous but that scene is just beyond horrible. 

Pamela fights hard to bring justice for the girls. She never gives up. While at the hospital she meets Tina Cannon who was a very close friend of Ruths. She believes the same man killed both her friend and the girls in the sorority house. 

This audio goes back and forth between Pamela and Ruth with each describing their lives. You get to know each of them. Ruth had a pretty tough life it seems. Her mother didn't approve of anything she did and wanted to hold her down all the time. Because Ruth fell in love with another woman her mother thought her mentally ill and thus big problems occurred between them. 

This is a hard subject but it's about a real life serial killer. The book never mentions his actual name but you know it's Ted Bundy. There is never any doubt there. I learned a lot listening to this audio. Things I never knew about the case. Also how he managed to escape not just once but twice. If they had done their job most likely some of the murders would never have taken place. But they did. Families suffered. Women suffered. It was sad to hear about. Sad to know this actually happened.

In I believe it's chapter 36 when Ruth tells what happened to her I cried. I knew what was coming and wanted so bad to warn her. To keep her from going in that house. To keep her from getting in that vehicle. I kept thinking, RUN, RUTH, RUN... But she didn't. She was raped and murdered. She was only trying to help someone and that was her payment. Death. How sad. 

You'll hear about him. In the courtroom when he's defending himself. How the judge bragged on him. (sickening). You feel the emotion that both Pamela and Tina feel when going through all of this. The feelings Ruth has and in her last moments how scared she was. How she looked back and only wanted to be with Tina. Watch Tina eat cheese while Ruth cooked. 

Yes this is a very awful thing but it happened. It's real. It did take me a few chapters to start connecting with the audio book but now I know that I will listen to more. It was ok. 

Synopsis:

From the author of the New York Times bestseller and #1 Netflix movie Luckiest Girl Alive comes an extraordinary novel inspired by the real-life sorority targeted by America's first celebrity serial killer in his final murderous spree.

January 1978. A serial killer has terrorized women across the Pacific Northwest, but his existence couldn’t be further from the minds of the vibrant young women at the top sorority on Florida State University’s campus in Tallahassee. Tonight is a night of promise, excitement, and desire, but Pamela Schumacher, president of the sorority, makes the unpopular decision to stay home—a decision that unwittingly saves her life. Startled awake at 3 a.m. by a strange sound, she makes the fateful decision to investigate. What she finds behind the door is a scene of implausible violence—two of her sisters dead; two others, maimed. Over the next few days, Pamela is thrust into a terrifying mystery inspired by the crime that’s captivated public interest for more than four decades.

On the other side of the country, Tina Cannon has found peace in Seattle after years of hardship. A chance encounter brings twenty-five-year-old Ruth Wachowsky into her life, a young woman with painful secrets of her own, and the two form an instant connection. When Ruth goes missing from Lake Sammamish State Park in broad daylight, surrounded by thousands of beachgoers on a beautiful summer day, Tina devotes herself to finding out what happened to her. When she hears about the tragedy in Tallahassee, she knows it’s the man the papers refer to as the All-American Sex Killer. Determined to make him answer for what he did to Ruth, she travels to Florida on a collision course with Pamela—and one last impending tragedy.

Bright Young Women is the story about two women from opposite sides of the country who become sisters in their fervent pursuit of the truth. It proposes a new narrative inspired by evidence that’s been glossed over for decades in favor of more salable headlines—that the so-called brilliant and charismatic serial killer from Seattle was far more average than the countless books, movies, and primetime specials have led us to believe, and that it was the women whose lives he cut short who were the exceptional ones.