Liz's Reviews > Bright Young Women

Bright Young Women is based on the real life murders of two sorority members by Ted Bundy.
Pamela Schumacher is the president of her sorority in 1978 and has chosen to stay home on Saturday night to catch up on paperwork. In the early hours, she hears a noise and goes to investigate and sees a man leaving the House. From there, the story goes back and forth between the present and past. She meets a woman who has flown in from the west, a woman convinced she knows who the killer is. The two team up, doing their own investigation when the Sheriff seems focused on another man.
There’s also a side story about a woman named Ruth, a young woman finding her own identity and becoming comfortable with her true self.
I loved that this wasn’t the typical criminal or psychological thriller. It was much deeper than that. The characters felt fleshed out and real. Knoll has done an excellent job of getting the feel for the period, especially that weird polite mindset of young women not yet caught up in the women’s liberation movement. She’s created a consistent tension, a current of suspense that runs throughout the story, but that never veers into the sensational.
The title is a play on the words of the Florida judge who called Ted Bundy “a bright young man”. Because the story truly is about the young women here who are the bright ones, finally recognizing their own worth and intelligence. But it’s also a story about male incompetence; men wanting The Defendant to be smart to mask their own mistakes. Or in the case of a reporter, to use The Defendant as a stepping stone to his own fame and glory.
My thanks to Netgalley and Simon Element for an advance copy of this book.