“Bright Young Women” by Jessica Knoll: Charms Can’t Kill, Can They? (BOOK REVIEW)

Charms Can’t Kill, Can They?

Hey, Alex! What have you been reading lately?

Every year after Halloween I slip into a very specific mood: thrillers, crime stories, and anything that lets me sit with fear and unresolved rage. 2025 was no different. After The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives and Holy Boy, it was time I picked up Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll – a book that's been haunting my TBR for nearly two years.

Tell me more. What is the book about?

A man breaks into a university dormitory and murders several of its residents. Pamela Schumacher survives. She sees him. She remembers his face. She loses her best friend.

Pam speaks to the police, but they don't believe her. The guy she saw resembles her friend's ex, although she swears it is not him. Pam must be wrong. She is a woman, hysterical and in shock.

After the attack, Pam meets Tina, another woman who claims she knows the killer and insists the victims from that night aren't his only ones. What follows is an interstate pursuit for truth, accountability, and defiance against a justice system that doubts, dismisses, and undermines women's testimonies.

Scream Queens meets Law & Order in this story about chasing truth when everyone around you would rather romanticise the monster.

What are some strong and weak points of the book?

This novel is meticulously researched, and it shows. The characters feel lived-in, morally complex, and deeply human. I was so intrigued by Pam's profile. She is intelligent, disciplined, a perfectionist; the kind of girl who wants to go to law school because she believes in status, control, and order. After the murder, she doesn't collapse in grief the way people expect her to. She fixates on facts, on faces, and on accountability.

That emotional restraint is often misunderstood by those around her. Her parents aren't present. The police don't trust her memory. Even her relationship begins to fracture. Pam wants justice – not just for her friend, but for herself. Decades later, she is still haunted by that night, still shaped by it, still searching.

The narrative follows two threads: one tracing Pam's life from the hours before the attack to forty years later, when an unexpected letter reopens old wounds; the other follows Ruth, one of the killer's early victims. While I found Ruth's chapters interesting, some of the perspective shifts felt redundant. I think the novel would have been just as powerful, had it remained solely with Pam's point of view. That being said, it never detracts enough to ruin the experience.

One of the most chilling aspects of Bright Young Women is its examination of public sympathy. How easily people excuse violence when the perpetrator is attractive, charming, or "misunderstood." Pam slowly realises that the legal world she wants to enter is flawed, that justice is subjective, emotional and not factual, and disturbingly forgiving when it comes to certain men.

Any final thoughts? Should I read it too?

Absolutely. Bright Young Women is a gripping, deeply feminist thriller that refuses to centre the killer as a spectacle. Instead, it shines a light on the women whose lives are forever altered by violence, and on the systems that fail to protect them.

Knoll writes a book about endurance, about denying to let your voice be erased and continuing to seek truth when the world tells you to move on. Pamela is bright in the truest sense of the word – not loud, not flashy, but relentless, and she refuses to let the darkness swallow her.

There is law, academia, grief, obsession, secret relationships, and a quiet, simmering rage that carries the story forward. If you like thrillers that ask why instead of simply who, this one will appeal to you.

Thank you so much!! Are there any similar books that you can recommend?

🐇 Bunny by Mona Awad — a scholarship student joins a sinister clique that pulls her down a rabbit hole towards madness

⚖️ To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee — a classic exploration of justice, morality, and standing your ground when the world refuses to listen.

📲 limaistyping…

rating: ☀️☀️☀️☀️
tropes: 🏠 sorority house | 🔪 serial murder | 🪞 2 storylines | 💭 big girl, big dreams | 🌎 multi POVs
read if you like: Salvador Dalí, Scream Queens, law school, interstate travel, vengeance story
look out for: 🕴️ The Defendant | 🧴 hair bottle spray | ⛲️ 6-bedroom Spanish mansion | 🎗️ grief group buddy | 🚸 frenemies from the past
This one feels like you’re the smartest person at a debate tournament but they can’t pronounce your name and skip you every round.