Okay first the positives. It's clear that Leslie did her research and tried her best to give the reader an accurate feeling for time and place regarding the crime. Her writing is good and she puts everything in simple but effective prose that is easy to follow and get invested in. Her descriptions of people's appearances are honestly some of the best I've read; not overly wordy but enough to give you a clear image of the person in your mind, which I appreciate immensely. But good lord she loves her italics and exclamation marks. Through the first chapter there seems to be at least one italicized word or passage on every page. In some places, like when conveying someone's thoughts, italics are appropriate. But not everything needs to be emphasized with them. It's distracting, as is her constant use of exclamation points for further emphasis. That is honestly grade-school material. And on that note, can we talk about that preface? I get her mom was Ann Rule, crime writer extraordinaire, but hasn't Leslie built enough of a career for herself not to lean on that connection anymore? The preface really doesn't feel like it connects to anything, and its only purpose seems to be for her to say "Hey! Remember my mom? Here's more about her and her taking me to courtrooms to photograph dangerous criminals! See, I'm legit!". By now everyone with even a passing interest in true crime knows that Ann worked with Ted Bundy, so it's incredibly unnecessary for Leslie to chime in with "YES MY MOM MADE SANDWICHES FOR TED BUNDY!". Sadly, it just feels salacious and amateur. More to the point once I got to the actual story the book is supposed to cover, two things really stuck out to me, and not in a positive way. One is that Leslie comes across as incredibly judgmental of women who use dating sites. Not people in general, women. She adopts a tone of "Well what did they expect?". Look, if people go online to look for love yes they might get lied to, but it's entirely reasonable to want an honest person and to want the site in question to protect you from fake profiles, scammers, and the like. It is not a character flaw to both have a dating profile AND some boundaries and standards. And having experienced the dating world as an adult I highly doubt that every single woman that Dave met up with tried to change his mind or became hysterical when he pulled away as he warned them he would. There are in fact women who can respect a man's desires and goals when he voices them. If some of the women thought they were in a real relationship with him, there is every chance that he contributed to that belief and was not being as forthcoming as Leslie seems to think, something I'm inclined to believe given her descriptions of his behavior. Frankly if she wants us to like him (which seems to be the case) she does a piss-poor job because he just ends up seeming like a massive F-Boy. Finally, the whole thing just feels rushed. It seems like in a very short period Leslie has already gotten to the real meat of the story. Outside of telling us about the other woman and the trial it's hard to know where this story can even go from here. It would have been nice to get more of a setup for the crime itself at the beginning, as well as more details about the lives of the main players. This isn't the worst true crime book out there, not by a long shot, but it's simply not good enough to stand out amongst the other powerhouses the genre has been giving us in recent years.