This book opens on a Saturday night in 1978, hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house with deadly results. The lives of those who survive, including sorority president and key witness Pamela Schumacher, are forever changed. Across the country, Tina Cannon is convinced her missing friend was targeted by the man papers refer to as the All-American Sex Killer—and that he's struck again. Determined to find justice, the two join forces as their search for answers leads to a final, shocking confrontation.
Historically, thriller and true crime writers are notorious for sensationalizing and eroticizing violence against women. Bright Young Women turns this misogynistic tradition on its head: Knoll’s depiction of violence is more personal than graphic, filtered through Pamela’s emotional reactions. Women are the warriors in this story ... With plenty of procedural details and satisfying plot twists, Bright Young Women ticks all the page-turner boxes. More importantly though, it alters the true-crime perspective — shifting the locus of power from the assailant to a determined, young woman. In so doing, Bright Young Women delivers a spot-on feminist takedown of a kind of masculinity that is not only toxic but lethal.
Knoll only refers to the intruder as 'the Defendant,' which is a canny, important choice, because too often serial killers are portrayed as diabolical masterminds instead of the hideous life leeches they are ... Knoll recounts the night of the crime in a tense but frustrating way. Suspense builds, occasionally at the cost of the story’s flow ... Knoll teases at darker turns in later chapters one too many times, so I found myself keeping track of clues when I should have been experiencing the immediacy of her prose ... As the narrative jumps forward and backward in time, with Pamela and Ruth offering alternating points of view, it’s a testament to Knoll’s skill that you’re never rudderless in the story. The women are distinct and memorable ... Knoll doesn’t make Pamela’s journey (or ours) an easy one, but it ends in a cathartic, long-bottled-up scream that more people need to hear.
Knoll has a sharp ear for the myriad ways women, especially young women recovering from tragedy, can be discounted ... Bright Young Women is a smart, absorbing book, but it's in the Cannon story that it loses its grip. Knoll's structure is way too elaborate.
