The Stranger Beside Me: Book Review

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The Stranger Beside Me: The Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy
[Purchase it on Amazon | Check it out on Goodreads]

My rating:

What it’s about:

Ann Rule was a writer working on the biggest story of her life, tracking down a brutal mass murderer. Little did she know that the young man who was her close friend was the savage slayer she was hunting…

Ted Bundy was everyone’s picture of a natural “winner” – handsome, charming, brilliant in law school, successful with women, on the verge of a dazzling career.

Fast-forward to 24 January 1989, Ted Bundy is executed. He had confessed to taking the lives of at least thirty-five young women, coast to coast.

This is his story: the story of his magnetic power, his unholy compulsion, his demonic double life and his string of helpless victims. It was written by a woman who thought she knew Ted Bundy, until she began to put all the evidence together and the whole terrifying picture emerged…

My thoughts:

I’ve been wanting to read this book for such a long time and I’m happy that I finally did! Because it was super interesting to read about Ted Bundy from Anne Rule’s perspective.

First of all, this book is over 600 pages long! Which is fine with me because I love deep-dives, but it might be a deal breaker for some, haha.

I’m someone who listens to true crime podcasts every day, and I’m also constantly watching true crime YouTube videos or documentaries. So of course, I know who Ted Bundy is, but this book still had tons of information that I didn’t know about him and his victims. I definitely recommend The Stranger Beside Me to any of my fellow true crime junkies who haven’t read it yet!

So, I pretty much only gave it 4 stars for one reason. Although Anne is a great writer, some of it felt kind of irritatingly repetitive at times. Specifically, the parts where she was talking about whether she thought Ted was truly the monster he was accused of being, or if he was actually just the innocent and charming man whom she met years before. I understand that it was probably hard for her to accept that Ted was capable of the horrific things that he did since she liked him so much, but I felt like some of these parts could’ve been left out of this book.

Still a well-written and informative book though!

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