I'll preface this review with the caveat that true crime, specifically homicide true crime, is not my typical genre, and I never watched the Serial podcast or any other media about the Hae Min Lee murder.

I was left after reading this book with a profound feeling of sadness for Lee and her family. She experienced unimaginable horror of a violent malicious death, and her family suffered the confusion of her disappearance for weeks and then discovery of her body in a gruesome state. Lee's private journal and teenage drama made public for the whole world to pick apart, and then the peculiar and disturbing (to me) phenomenon of public fetishization and fascination with her murder as content to be consumed. The decades of podcasts, blogs, reddit communities, documentaries, and books about Lee's murder must be so exhausting for them to bear. Syed's family's loss and similar public scrutiny is also horrific, but I can't help but feel Lee's humanity is lost in the mountains of content on this subject.

This book is very much the product of someone who is much too personally and emotionally involved in the same people involved to convey this story holistically. The writing is fine but overly laden in details that do not materially shift the narrative or understanding. It takes quite a while before the book moves from dry description of every piece of data and evidence, including a very confusing back and forth about cell phone location data, to critical understanding of how Lee's murder and trial gained public attraction and worked through the court system. Additionally, the involvement of our narrator, the author of this book, in this saga ebbed and flowed over time, making for a meandering and sometimes baffling storytelling method.

The highlights were the behind the scenes understanding of the competing narratives from the author's blog and the Serial podcast and understanding into the convolution of post-conviction legal maneuvering. Turf disputes of who was getting the clicks and views following this case illustrated the parts of true crime media I really dislike. Every story at the end of the day must grab the individual's attention to keep them coming back for more, and you can see the narrative choices to engage listeners and readers, perhaps at the expense of objective understanding of the facts of the case. The Islamophobia aspects were also interesting and depressing, and the specific time and context of this murder and trial added prejudicial and irrelevant layers in this already complicated case.

As a standalone book about Lee's murder separate from Serial and other features, this book is okay but lacks the focus of a third party observer. If you had interacted with other media about this case, I imagine the review of evidence in this book will be tedious to get through again. So, I'm not really sure whom this book is for at the end of the day- perhaps completionists looking to cover every angle?