College Girl, Missing by Shawn Cohen

Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review I get into a first for the site, an advanced reader copy I received through NetGalley. College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight by Shawn Cohen is out now for all readers to check out, and I was lucky enough to get a look a few days before its release. College Girl, Missing is a true crime book that focuses on the disappearance of Lauren Spierer, a young university student who went out for a night of fun in June 2011 and was never seen again, her body was never found.

*Please note that this is a true crime novel, so everyone I talk about in this review is real. Lauren Spierer’s case to this day remains unsolved. Due to her body never being found police were never able to make arrests in regards to her disappearance. No one was ever charged for her disappearance so please keep in mind that every name brought up is currently innocent in the eyes of the law. That doesn’t mean that everyone is but no one has been charged.

Descriptions of people mentioned in the book:

• Lauren Spierer: A bright, kind, and loving young woman who had a lot ahead of her before she was never seen again in June 2011 after leaving a friend’s apartment alone late at night, despite having a large friend group the people who were with her that night those people remained silent throughout the investigation leaving Laurens loved ones to go without answers to this day
• Robert and Charlese Spierer: Lauren’s parents who have missed their daughter every day since she went missing, have never given up on trying to find answers when many others have
• Jesse Wolff: Lauren’s current boyfriend at the time she went missing, although it seems like he wasn’t with her the night she went missing this also couldn’t be 100% proven, and eventually he turned into a shithead like a lot of other people in this book and stopped being willing to work with police
• Corey Rossman: Lauren and Jesse had a rocky relationship and on the night she went missing she was with Corey partying heavily to the point that she couldn’t walk or talk, Corey (in his words) allowed her to walk home alone to her apartment from his despite not having shoes, her phone, or her keys, and having hit her head hard on the ground from the fall, like Jesse did not work with police
• Mike Beth, Jay Rosenbaum and David Bleznak: Were all at Corey’s apartment with Corey and Lauren the night she went missing, Rosenbaum claimed to have watched Lauren walk away from the apartment that night to make sure she was safe despite her living several blocks away and having no way to get into her home, all three refused to work with police to help find their ‘friend’
• Sarah Gornish, Hadar Tamir, Alex Steinberg, Blair Wallach, Amanda Roude: Close girlfriends of Laurens who unlike the awful men in this book desperately looked for their friend when they found out she was missing, none were with her the night she went missing and are often eaten by the thoughts of what if one of them was there to protect her that night
• Shawn Cohen: The author/journalist for this book, struggled (but was able) to pull information old and new from some of the people who were with Lauren that night, and had been connected to Lauren’s story for a long time, struggled to be taken seriously due to a relationship in his personal life that really isn’t relevant to his work

My Review

As I mentioned, I received an early copy of College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight by Shawn Cohen. I was excited when I got the approval because I wanted to check this out. I of course am a true crime lover, but I am picky about the true crime I like. It has to be written tastefully, respectfully, and with at least some main focus on the victims. College Girl, Missing is a book that needed to be even more respectful because the people who love Lauren Spierer are still here and searching for big answers regarding what happened to her. In my opinion, it was respectfully written and displayed. While it could be argued that maybe author Shawn Cohen is biased in his views due to how close he has gotten to the family, I don’t think that’s true for a few reasons. This isn’t a book with a distinctive answer. Shawn just gives the facts of what happened that night, and what the people involved have told him. No one has been convicted in Lauren’s disappearance and I felt like this book doesn’t exactly answer the question of what happened to her, but I don’t feel like that was the point. The point was to bring new life to Lauren’s case in the hopes that maybe something could shake loose, and for that I definitely respect. It also challenged the reader to look at the evidence present and make their own conclusion on what they think happened.

Overall I gave College Girl Missing by Shawn Cohen an 8/10 rating. It got a higher rating from me because I appreciated that the book isn’t packed with what I call filler, which is just essentially irrelevant things to the main topic to make the book longer. The focus of this book is Lauren and what happened to her that night. Anything that is talked about is about her, the people who loved her, or the people who were around her that night. It doesn’t make for a super long read, but it made for a read that stuck to the facts and only that, which in a true crime novel I like. College Girl Missing while being incredibly sad and heartbreaking was also incredibly interesting and hard to put down. I won’t lie though it’s also a huge piss-off. Not the book itself but the people outside of Lauren, her parents, and her girlfriends are all insufferable and hard to read about.

In June 2011 Lauren, a young university student who enjoyed going out on the weekend and having fun with friends, was never seen again after doing such activity. I don’t want to talk about too many details regarding Lauren’s case because I would really recommend checking it out yourself, but here are the basic facts. Lauren went to one party with a friend hoping to meet up with Corey Rossman at some point in the night as she and her boyfriend were having issues and Corey was a fun guy to hang around. Eventually, Corey meets up with them and Lauren’s friend leaves back home for the evening Lauren and Corey plan to continue partying. It should be noted that all of the men that Lauren considered friends and met up with that night she knew for some time, these were not random people to her. Throughout the night Lauren got progressively more intoxicated (I personally think she was drugged at some point) leaving her barely able to walk, talk, or hold onto her personal items which she progressively lost throughout the night. At some point, Corey carried her back to his apartment where Mike Beth, Jay Rosenbaum and David Bleznak were all present. The four claim that Lauren sobered up and insisted on going home despite having no shoes, phone, or keys to her apartment. None of the men offered to walk her home, and she was never seen again, her body was never found.

Shawn Cohen breaks down everyone’s involvement in Laurens night the night she went missing, and how the men quickly shut down once it became a police investigation. While Lauren’s intoxication levels are a major focus of this book I really appreciate that it was never spun in a way to blame her. I got more of the feeling that it was there to explain how she could not have walked home that night based on everything that happened hours before she apparently left the apartment. I think sadly a woman being intoxicated often invites a lot of unneeded judgment on the victim when their physical state is only relevant when explaining if they could defend themselves or not. Is it right though that because a woman is in a state that she can’t defend herself she is murdered and never found again by her family? It’s just not right and I appreciated that Shawn often scrutinized any negative narrative that was put towards this, mostly because he learned his own lesson with that. When originally reporting on Lauren he focused too much on her intoxication levels and the fact that she was out with a man that wasn’t her boyfriend. He saw that all it did was taint the real person she was, which couldn’t be dumbed down in one evening’s actions.

Want my opinion? I don’t think she ever left Corey Rossman’s apartment and everyone there that evening played a role in what happened to her. I really feel though that other people will have differing feelings and I think that’s why it’s important to check out informative true crime novels that leave the interpretation up to the reader because we all can pull something different from it.

College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight by Shawn Cohen was a hard read, but also a really good one, and I think it’s important to be informed. If you enjoy well-written, victim-focused true crime novels I would really recommend checking this one out. I will say that before reading this book I had never heard about Lauren’s case before because I was 11 when it happened, so having now read it I can say that these types of things really do regenerate new life into old cases such as Laurens. In saying that though Lauren’s case really isn’t that old, it happened 13 years ago. The people who love her are still alive and deserve to have answers as to what happened to her that night. Lauren deserves to come home to those who love her, and those who hurt her deserve to be punished. I hope that Corey Rossman, Mike Beth, Jay Rosenbaum, and David Bleznak, all get the days they deserve.

Have you checked out College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight by Shawn Cohen before? What did you think? If you haven’t checked it out would you want to?

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