As a huge fan of "Luckiest Girl Alive" and true crime, I was thrilled to get to read this in advance. And it did NOT disappoint!

Pamela is the president of Chi Omega at Florida State in 1978, and the only one to see the face of the man who broke into the house and brutally murdered and assaulted her sorority sisters. If you, like me, have a guilty pleasure true crime obsession, you think you know exactly where this is going. We've all heard so much about this man. How good-looking he was, how charismatic, how intelligent--such a "bright young man".

But if you take a closer look, as Jessica Knoll did in this story, you might wonder, why did he only get into one law school, and with falsified records? Why was his spoken and written English below high school level? Did he actually engineer two escape attempts because of sheer genius, or because of lax security? Were all these claims of his greatness accurate, or merely strategy by more mediocre men to cover for their own incompetence?

And besides that, what of all the bright young women whose lives he cut short or otherwise impacted? This is a story told from 3 perspectives--Pamela in present day and in 1978-79, trying desperately to get justice for her fallen friends, and Ruth in 1974, leading up to her disappearance that same year.

I read a lot of horror, and this is marketed as a thriller/mystery (IMO it had a strong women's fiction slant), so I didn't expect for it to scare me, especially considering how familiar I am with the real case. But there were some scenes in this that genuinely chilled me--particularly the deposition scene.

I loved Pamela, and overall, this was a really compelling read that brought out some #femininerage and made me reconsider what I thought I knew about an infamous American serial killer (if you were still unsure, yes, it's Ted Bundy). I definitely recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers, & the author for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.