The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

Hello Beautiful People! Welcome back to a new review! For this review I get into a long-standing true crime classic and the book that helped her get her name in true crime writing The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy by Ann Rule. I’ll be honest I’ve been a long-time lover of Ann Rule, and I’ve avoided this book for a bit. I enjoy true crime quite a bit so it wasn’t so much that I thought the story itself would be too much for me, but Ted Bundy has always been one of those serial killers who I just absolutely hate to the core of my being. Don’t get me wrong I hate all of them but people like Ted Bundy have specifically always just stricken something extra in me. Richard Ramirez coined the night stalker I feel the same way about it. I think it’s the public response that these cases created that I just can’t wrap my head around and struggle with. I knew going into this book that the pull that Ted had on the people around him would be talked about which was why I dug my heels in for so long getting into it. I will say though that I am glad I checked it out. It honestly helped me understand a little bit more why this case had the response it did, and although I don’t respect it, I can definitely get it more now. So, let’s get into it!

My Review

I recently saw another reviewer check out this book and do a bit of an acknowledgment towards the victims, and I would like to do one of those here. Ted Bundy took an immense amount of lives and destroyed the lives of everyone who loved them in the process. The damage this man did is unfathomable and it’s only appropriate to acknowledge that first.

Katherine Merry Devine, Anne Marie Burr, Lonnie Trumbell, Lisa Wick, Joni Lenz, Lynda Ann Healy, Donna Gail Manson, Susan Elaine Rancourt, Brenda Baker, Roberta Kathleen Parks, Brenda Carol Ball, Georgeann Hawkins, Janice Ott, Denise Naslund, Caryn Campbell, Julie Cunningham, Denise Lynn Oliverson, Melanie Cooley, Shelly Robertson, Nancy Wilcox, Melissa Smith, Laura Aime, Debby Kent, Carol DaRonch, Nancy Baird, Sue Curtis, Debby Smith, Roberta Kathleen Parks, Rita Lorraine Jolly, Vicki Lynn Hollar, Karen Chandler, Kathy Kleiner, Lisa Levy, Margaret Bowman, Cheryl Thomas, Kimberly Leach, Lynette Culver, and Rita Curran, and most likely more women who were never found or connected to him.

I feel like you can’t help but just look at that list in pure pain. So many lost lives, so many people who had hopes and dreams for the future, and these are just the women they could directly link him to or he admitted to killing. There is assumed to be many more names than this. All were taken because they resembled the woman who broke his heart and made him feel inadequate.

I don’t want to re-tell too much of The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule in this review because openly, it’s kind of her story to tell. Ann knew Ted personally. The two were never romantic as she was some years older than him, and not his type, but she still sat shoulder to shoulder for some time with one of the most brutal and frankly disgustingly horrifying serial killers. The book has been updated a few times since its first release and I would genuinely recommend reading this if you want to understand why so many people took so long to believe that he was a horrible person, Ann included. I appreciated her updates in the book because you could see how even since the book has been released she has had to come out of this fog of being in Ted Bundy’s world and can now see so much more clearly what she couldn’t before. Now this isn’t to say that she defends Ted at any point or makes it seem like he is a good person, but she’s soft on him, and it’s noticeable. With her updates, we can see how things have changed for her since she first release of the book, and I appreciate that instead of removing anything from the book she owns it and then acknowledges how things are different now for her.

I landed on giving The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule an 8/10 rating overall. I’ll be honest it’s hard to rate a book like this. A book filled page to page with sadness, hurt, pain, and horrifying images, all to describe the crimes of Ted Bundy. Openly, one of the reasons I avoided this book for a while is because I don’t care about Ted Bundy. At all. I don’t care about his life, his sorrows, his bad times, his parents, his friends, his girlfriends. I don’t care what went wrong in his childhood, I don’t care about anything that has to do with him personally because to me it’s not relevant. Yes, it’s relevant to explain him, but why must we explain him? He was a manipulative bastard who enjoyed killing and raping women. End of story. So going into this book I had to remind myself that this is a book about him, it’s going to be all about him. Yes, the victims of course will play a big role but we won’t get the background on them like we do with him. Once I kind of got myself into the right head space to get into this book I think I approached it much more openly than I would have. So, be prepared for that.

I will say though that I really did enjoy the discussion about the police work that revolved around getting Ted into custody, and eventually sending him to good ol’ Sparky. Seeing how police would eventually work to bring him down, desperately pulling together what they could to tie him to places and people was really interesting. Furthermore, I never realized how much they really knew about his MO and how that worked towards bringing him down. Ted was actually quite particular with his ways of doing things, it’s just he did it so much, and in so many different places it’s hard to tell.

I can see why The Stranger Beside Me The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy by Ann Rule has managed to be such a popular true crime read since its release. Ann’s personal ties to Ted, but at the same time her desire for truth and to know who he really is makes it a compelling read. I can appreciate the truly human aspect of the book in which Ann goes back and reflects on the things she wished she could have done differently, or said differently. This book definitely makes me a bit more empathetic to some of the people in Ted’s life who struggled to understand that the man before them, the man they thought they knew, was a sadistic monster all along. I mean there are definitely a few people though who I would give a head shake to if I could one of them being the woman who married him while he was in court and managed to illegally find a way to have his baby while he was locked up. I don’t really even want to try to understand why someone would go out of their way to have a child with this man because it’ll just make me mad.

Have you checked out The Stranger Beside Me The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy by Ann Rule before? What did you think?

I hope you enjoyed this review, and thank you for checking it out! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review.