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Reviews tagging 'Murder'
Every Breath You Take: A True Story of Obsession, Revenge, and Murder by Ann Rule
4 reviews
momma_bri15's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
tense
medium-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Body horror, Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, Grief, Murder, and Gun violence
angela_juniper's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
2.5
I don't know if I've outgrown True Crime or this book just didn't sit right with me. Probably both. It didn't age well in terms of the language used around some of Allan's proclivities, but the thing that bothered me the most was the victim-blaming of the children by the adults in the story, even at times by Ann Rule (who minimized the physical abuse they endured by Sheila and her new husband). They were only *girls* -- to be honest, Shelia failed all of her children by not protecting them from their father, particularly when she knew he was sexually abusing them. And her new husband is made out to be some macho savior when in reality he's hitting and beating the kids just like their sociopathic father. The nail in the coffin for me was the fact that the step day blamed Daryl for Shelia's death when she was a CHILD whose mother abandoned her in a YMCA shelter at 12 years old and was easily manipulated by the last person who pretended to care about her, her father. Not to mention she just lost her mother and was abandoned by her abusive father. The fact that Jamie refused to adopt those girls after Sheila's death is absolutely atrocious. I had a harder time feeling sympathy for anyone but the children who were forced to endure the mistakes and abuses of the adults all around them. Thank god for Sheila's sister, who seems to be the only hero in this story. Even one of the detectives had a nice quote about how he couldn't be a state policeman in PA "because of affirmative action quotas". Ugh.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Pedophilia, Incest, Infidelity, Misogyny, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Racism, Transphobia, and Homophobia
barelyconcealed's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
3.75
Personally my largest quibble with Ann Rule - and indeed this era of true crime - is how little she interrogates what the police did wrong. This is a case of a woman who repeatedly told basically everyone that she was afraid for her life, who fled in the dead of night with her six children across multiple state lines, and was still killed. That her ex-husband not only used the criminal justice system to his benefit but also, in many ways, directly used them to find her to have her killed is a travesty and one that Rule doesn't seem particularly interested in investigating herself.
Rule does a phenomenal job getting into the nitty gritty with each of her subjects - from finding out the backstories of Alan Blackthorne's mother to giving humanity to the last moments of Sheila's life. It's an unfortunate story all around and worth checking out if you're at all interested in the case.
Rule does a phenomenal job getting into the nitty gritty with each of her subjects - from finding out the backstories of Alan Blackthorne's mother to giving humanity to the last moments of Sheila's life. It's an unfortunate story all around and worth checking out if you're at all interested in the case.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Stalking, Domestic abuse, and Murder
Moderate: Sexual assault and Child abuse
junefish's review against another edition
dark
tense
slow-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Murder, Violence, Death, and Death of parent
Moderate: Child abuse, Sexual assault, Child death, and Miscarriage
Minor: Drug use
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