Haley’s July Favorite: This Book Will Bury Me

I can’t say enough good things about this book. I inhaled it! Ashley Winstead did an amazing job exploring grief and the true crime community in this novel. My copy is fully annotated as I underlined and marked insights and critiques, allowing me to think deeply about true crime. I also enjoyed the breadcrumbs leading to the big twist at the end! It added a layer to the reading making me feel like a sleuth myself.

The book is about a character named Janeway reflecting on the year after her father’s death when she spiraled into the true crime community leading to a chaotic chase to catch a killer miles away from home. During this reflection, Winstead explores the ups and downs of the true crime community. People are building relationships, at times helping the police, and sometimes helping themselves through grief by finding justice like our main character. However, there’s also the side of the community making wrongful accusations and destroying lives of innocent people. There’s a chase of the bloggers and amateur sleuths racing to find the killer before anyone else to gain fame. In doing so, any boundary is destroyed including the respect of the love ones and community grieving and making since of a horrific act that rattled their community. The amateurs crowding the town and treating the crime scene like an exhibit at the zoo just hoping to collect a crumb of information from investigators that they can be the first to report. This delicate balance of desire to help and obsession of gore and fame is intricately explored and well written by Winstead. As a consumer of true crime, I appreciated the way this was written as I often think of this balance myself.

Aside from the heaviness of grief and crime, the characters are easy to attach to and care for in the book. Janeway’s true crime family becomes close quickly and deeply care for one another adding to the speed in which you will want to devour this novel.