True Crime Story

i've truly never read a thriller novel in this format! the audio was absolutely amazing, wonderfully produced! however, the book dragged a bit for me. i feel like many small details that were included didn't have any impact on the actual case. i also guessed the murderer correctly after about 3 chapters... sigh. another average thriller. but extra points for creative storytelling! 

TW: (posible spoilers): Sexual assault, kidnapping, physical abuse, drug use, alcoholism, suicide, hints that either incest occurred and where never confirmed or Robert at least had inappropriate thoughts about his daughter based on his actions towards girls who looked like her...

Originally I gave this four stars but after a few days I think 3 is more aligned with how I actually feel about this book. Don't get me wrong I had a lot of fun reading it, it's told through interviews with some emails and newspaper clippings thrown in there. Plot wise there is a lot that goes on and I honestly had no idea how this book was going to end, I doubted everyone at some point and even wondered if the murderer would be someone outside the main cast of characters. But the reason for the 3 stars is that I wasn't a fan of the reveal and thought the ending was super rushed. We spend so much time on building up the tension of the reveal and then when it happens it's like a couple of pages and that was that. We do get a where are they now wrap up but I would have liked an interview with the others to get their thoughts on the aftermath.

I don't recommend this to people who don't enjoy interview style of story, and those who don't like lots characters and plots being introduced only to be used as red herrings and in the end not even being fully explained/solved (examples of these in the spoiler section).

I guess this book is supposed to mimic real life and play out as if it were a real murder case, so in that way it's understandable that some elements are pointless, dead ends, unsolved etc. but I'm someone who likes reading a murder mystery that has everything solved/explained at the end. So somethings didn't work for me. But that's a me problem and not the books problem, so if you are like me you may not enjoy it as much. But I still do recommend because the journey was at least fun.


SPOILERS AHEAD: if you want to know what happens in this book:



Basically the murderer is Finton, zoeys “friend”, turns out that they didn't even know each other nor spent time with each other and he didn't even attend the university. Finton isn't even his real name it's actually Connor he legally changed it because he had a sexual assault charge. Having two ID's made it easy to conceal his identity. I wonder if in real life it would have been that easy to hide your real name from the police because with a case this big wouldn't they take their finger prints or something? and also wouldn't you changing your legal name be on record somewhere? Surely the police would do a background check on all those involved in Zoey's life. Not sure though so I'm not going to be too critical on that.

I'm going to be honest with you guys, I finished this book a few days ago and already forgot a lot of things because there are so many different plot lines. Like at one point Kim (zoeys twin sister) mentions that she gets kidnapped (before Zoeys disappearance) then gets let go because she lied about having this metal plate on her knees and thinks those same people were responsible for Zoeys disappearance. In the end they had nothing to do with it but with another murder that took place in France. Then we had comments from people saying how Zoey was really close with her tutor etc. etc. but turns out that she never went to class and that tutor didn't even know her...and so no one knew what Zoey was up to during the day when she was supposed to be in class and it never gets revealed either. They didn't even find her body nor do we find out the reasons as to why Finton took a special interest in Zoey because he ended up killing himself. Honestly we would be here all day if I tried to explain every side plot, every twist so I'm not even going to bother because the only relevant thing to know is that Finton did it and he hid himself so well. Especially since he ended up helping Zoeys dad with a charity to raise awareness for her disappearance, and it ended up being this huge organization that helped other young women with scholarships to the uni Zoey attended.

Also Zoey's dad is possibly the worst character out of all the them, he was such a pig and sexually assaulted all these women who looked like/reminded him of his daughter. A disgusting human being and I hated him so so so much. Not only was he a predator but also treated everyone so horribly then had the audacity to act as a victim.

I was kind of hoping the murderer would be Liu Mae (roommate/friend of zoey's) because I found that the way she was throwing everyone under the bus and never keeping focus on herself and low-key obsessed with Zoey to be very suspicious. It was disappointing that she wasn't or didn't contribute in some way because it just made her really pointless to the story. Well I guess she served as a red herring but meh.

I am in the minority, but this was garbage. Everyone was awful, we learned nothing about Zoe, no mystery was solved except maybe where the Rolex ended up? Actually, no! It went missing again in the end! Knox's inclusion of himself in the story was the most unnecessary thing and a true waste of time. So much of this story was a waste of time and important points brought up were never followed up on. And then all of sudden a killer is revealed and end scene. Blech.