A review by meggles801
A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy by Kathy Kleiner Rubin, Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

"This is the true terror. When women and girls are hurt in the US, no one believes it comes from somebody well-dressed and lawyerly looking, like Ted Bundy. They assume those men are in the right, and the girls are in the wrong."

This book is in a category all it's own. I read this a part of my book club, The Morbidly Curious Book Club, for our July read. The absolutely horrific events that Kathy and every other victim of this monster experienced are truthfully and plainly laid out in a way that is meant to provide the facts of what this monster did to each of them, and is told in a way that shows the true and cowardly man behind these acts. 

For years, the news, media, and Hollywood have portrayed Bundy as charming, smart, cunning, a smooth talker, and somewhat of an "evil genius", when this could literally not be any further from the truth. Bundy was a coward. He was weak, unintelligent, overconfident, a poor student, odd, made men and women uncomfortable, had to create lies and fake injuries just to convince women to speak to him, attacked many of his victims while they slept or from behind, and truly felt he was above the law and any punishment from his crimes.

I cannot believe what Kathy and the other victims went through during these attacks. I am truly amazed at the strength and courage shown in the face of such evil. I do not think I could have been as driven, courageous, and brave as Kathy is. The actions she took to not only help herself heal from her attack, but to also put so much love and energy into helping others in her life as well is beyond admirable. When she was describing her decision to get a job at a hardware store, as she knew it would force her to interact with male strangers on a daily basis, nearly broke me. I cannot imagine the amount of trauma this would generate, or imagine the pure willpower to go through with it. Kathy has proven to herself she is the definition of a survivor, time and time again, by surviving not only Bundy, but countless other tragedies, any one of which can and has broken so many others.

I'm so grateful our club picked this book to read, and I truly hope everyone takes the opportunity to read this as well. 

"You're indicating to the court your potential is violence? Seek and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Remember that."