No One Crosses the Wolf by Lisa Nikolidakis

This is a memoir about a troubled childhood full of abuse and neglect. It’s not an easy read and I wasn’t looking for one. It follows her growing up years with her brother and parents and all the trauma you can imagine.

Her father is a piece of crap, to put it lightly. He is an alcoholic that spends most of his at-home hours terrorizing his family. When he isn’t home, they dread his coming home so they are never truly free of him. After reading her recollections of him, I can understand that fear.

And her mother isn’t much better in comparison. She doesn’t abuse the kids but she doesn’t stop the abuse either. She puts her head in the clouds and pretends that everything is just fine. Domestic violence doesn’t go away because you want it to, you have to stop it! Her mother failed them all.

When her father finally snaps, I expected more somehow. More untangling the emotional threads of her life. More in-depth onion peeling. I wanted to see her do the hard work to undo all the lessons that her upbringing taught at such high prices. But she did none of it. She drank, slept around, and went to Greece. I’m healed!!! The end. What?? Yeah, I’m confused too.

My first inclination was to give this a 2-star review. I mulled it over though, for several days I might add. Three is as high as I can go. She writes well. She knows how to create an atmosphere and add texture and shade to a story but in the end, there’s no story. There’s no healing final chapter. There’s no Oprah “Aha!” moment. And that is a true letdown.

⭐⭐⭐ /⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Bundy Secrets: Hidden Files on America’s Worst Serial Killer by Kevin Sullivan

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog then you know that I unashamedly love true crime, especially those based on serial killers. We’ve all got our quirks and this is one of mine. I’ve read many books by many diverse authors and have liked/loved most of them. Ted Bundy is a constant source of wonder, disgust, and utter fascination for me. I can’t help myself. I found this book on Kindle Unlimited and snatched it up even though I knew it was the last in a trilogy written by the same author. I was sure that I knew enough about the subject already that I could just pick up and go with this book. That didn’t turn out to be true.

First, this book isn’t told linearly. It’s scattered and frustrating. He will start to talk about one crime, ie. the Chi Omega crimes and then go back to the first one that Bundy admitted to committing. Excuse me, but there is a huge gap in time there! He does this throughout the book and it made me want to tear my hair out, but after a recent cut there isn’t much left.

Secondly, I found really no new evidence or anecdotes that made this a worthwhile read. Seriously, nothing of value was presented. With a few hours to waste I could have googled and found more interesting stuff.

The impression I was left with after finally making it all the way through this crazy book was that he simply had leftover material lying about and he gathered it all up and stuffed it a book and published it. He says that he wants those that follow him into looking at Ted Bundy to have all the evidence that he could find. Historical evidence and all that. I don’t know if that’s true or if it was a cheap way to make a buck, but this wasn’t a great book.

After all of this you’re expecting me to say that he made it to the Never Again list. He didn’t though. Did I just hear you gasp? What little bits of the book he actually writes instead of simply copying from police records or trial transcripts or whatever, he does well. He didn’t have weird sentence structure or butcher the English language. He didn’t write enough of the book to give me a large enough sample perhaps? I don’t know. So, I’ll give him another try. Who knows? Maybe he’ll dazzle me. Stay tuned and we’ll find out together.

Can I recommend this book? Unless you’re looking for source material for a thesis or something, no. It’s too fragmented and seemingly unplanned.

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