Title: Bright and Tender Dark
Author: Joanna Pearson
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Books US
Source: Publisher
Format: Hardcover
Release Date: June 4, 2024
Rating: ★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
For readers of Notes on an Execution and I Have Some Questions for You, a wire-taut literary debut about a murder on a college campus and its aftermath twenty years later.
Days after the dawn of Y2K, beautiful, charismatic nineteen-year-old Karlie Richards is found brutally murdered in her campus apartment. Two decades later, those who knew Karlie-and those who just knew of her-remain consumed by her death. Among them is her freshman year roommate, Joy, now middle-aged and mid-divorce, living in the same college town and desperate for a new beginning. When she stumbles upon a twenty-year-old letter from Karlie, Joy becomes convinced the man in prison for her murder was wrongfully convicted. Soon she is diving deep into the dark world of internet conspiracy theorists and amateur sleuth blogs and bouncing off others touched by the long, sensational aftermath of this crime. They include KC, the trans night manager at the building where Karlie was killed; Sheri, the mother of the man serving time; and Jacob Hendrix, the charming professor with whom, Joy knows all too well, Karlie was romantically entangled before her death.
Jumping between 2019 and 1999, Bright and Tender Dark takes us from the era of Reddit threads and online obsession to the evangelism-infused culture of the late ’90s to reveal what really happened to Karlie. It is a compulsively readable, prismatic literary debut that brilliantly mines the mythology of murder, the power of urban legend, and the psychological urge to both protect and exploit what you love but cannot have.
Review:
A week after Y2K, Karlie Richards was found murdered in her apartment. A developmentally delayed young man was convicted of her death, but that has never sat right with Joy, Karlie’s former college roommate. Twenty years later, Joy decides to investigate Karlie’s death herself after finding a letter written to her from Karlie. There are many people who were involved in Karlie’s life and were interconnected in their small college town. This story is told through alternating timelines and perspectives to show what happened to Karlie.
This was an intense thriller story. It had a literary format, with each chapter following a different character and alternating between the years 2000 and 2019. Karlie was brutally murdered, but the man who was put in prison for it was convicted because his disability made him vulnerable. It was tragic. Most of the characters had dark pasts and lots of secrets. There were a few loose ends that I would have liked to have been tied up at the end of the story, but I liked that the whole story of Karlie’s death was given to the reader.
Bright and Tender Dark is a dark literary thriller.
Thank you Bloomsbury Books US and Bookinfluencers.com for providing a copy of this book for a sponsored campaign.
Content warnings: murder, rape (off page), suicide (off page), dog attack,
Have you read Bright and Tender Dark? What did you think of it?
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