I talk about this book in this wrap up

The following is taken directly from the closed captions of the above mentioned video, so is much more conversational than a written review, because I was literally speaking out loud and don't want to edit it down:

This is a book sort of about these murders that happened back in the 1980s in Appalachia, and then also sort of about the author of the book, who ended up living in that area when she was in her late teens and early twenties, and actually met the guy who found those bodies, and from there kind of went into a spiral of trying to figure out what happened to them and just looking into the case and that type of thing. This is the type of true crime that isn't really my favourite type of true crime writing, because I don't really like it when you have, like, a case and then a person looking into it and a lot of the book has to do with the person looking into it and their experiences of that as opposed to like actually talking about the case. Don't get me wrong, she does talk about the case and the person that was ultimately convicted and the person who might also have done it and all that type of thing. But I'm not the biggest fan of books like this because it feels like it's two completely different books just kind of shoved into one book, because you couldn't actually just write them separately. Like, it looks like she just wanted to write her memoirs and she also wanted to write about this case, and for whatever reason, it feels like that needs to be together for her. But for an audience, I don't feel like it does. The title of this one also makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable because there were two “rainbow girls” who were murdered in this case, and I'm not going to get too deep into the crime of what happened and what was talked about in this book. But essentially there were two girls who were on the way to a Rainbow Gathering and they were murdered, and they were called the Rainbow Girls, even though they never ended up making it to any Rainbow Gathering. So that in itself is a little bit problematic. But they had up until about a day previous, been traveling with a third girl who was completely fine. So you would think that she would be the third Rainbow Girl. So maybe you're looking at this through her perspective. But I think the title is more so reflecting the author looking at things. And that again, just feels kind of weird to me. Obviously, with a big case like this, if you are really looking into it, you are going to start feeling some connection to it. So I don't have a problem with writers talking about their self when they are talking about the process of doing true crime and that type of thing. But I do have a problem when it takes up like half the book, if it's just something at the beginning or the end that just kind of explains these fascination with this particular case and what it's meant to your life. I completely understand that. But when a book that I believe is going to be True Crime becomes half memoir about the person writing the true crime, it's just not my favourite format.

Loved the parts about the murder and trial. The story of her personal journey and learning her sexual preferences seemed oddly placed within the story and would have been better as a separate book altogether.