Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

Hey all, a bunch of people were interested in doing a group read of The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule. What are your thoughts for when you would like to do it? I was thinking February or March but am open to whatever!

Either of those months seem good to me.

This book has been on my TBR for some time and I'm excited to read it as part of a group read! February or March is fine with me. I hope to read at least one non-fiction book each month, but I don't really care about book order :).

Is February Lang enough for people to secure their copy? I should have mine by then (ordered it last week) but wanted to make sure anyone who wants to read with us has the opportunity!

Sweet! I've got my copy :) Bought one, just for the challenge.

Yay! I've been looking forward to this. February or March either one works for me too.

I’ll be getting my copy from the library, so February sounds good to me!

I have my copy ready to go!

It's a really good read! It was my first Ann Rule book. If you're not already addicted to her writing, I bet you will be after reading this one.

This sounds good!! I will have to get my book sorted, but I am happy either way :).

Yes, February works for me, I’m borrowing a copy from a friend. Looking forward to it!

Alright February it is!!!

Ok next question; do this like other group and buddy reads where we just discuss as we read, or would you all rather have targets, like read to page xxx by each Friday and we discuss that part in an update?

I’d prefer to discuss as we read because I’m hopeless at keeping to a schedule - and I don’t tend to spend more than a week reading most books or they just fall off my radar and I fail to pick them up again.

I’d say I prefer to read through if I’m enjoying a book but I thought a schedule for discussions might be helpful a) to avoid spoilers (only discuss up to x point) and b) people who are doing this as a buddy/group read because it’s not their thing might find the schedule helpful? But I think probably would work better if it was a minimum but you could definitely read ahead. It makes no difference to me, whatever people want :)

I would be interested in doing a group read of this book.

I'd be interested in participating too!

I'm not used to group readings so I don't know how it usually works, if we all read and comment at our own pace, is there a chance to ruin parts of the book for those who read slower?

Like you, Tara, I think a schedule could be useful but it depends on what works best for most. I'm down for it either way!

I'm planning on participating in this group read, and I just hope my library will be able to get it to me in time!

I didn’t realize this was going to be a group read, I started it last week. I’m 2/3 finished and it’s terrific!

It’s not an official group read, I just noticed a lot of people who were planning to read this and/or were dreading this category and thought there might be interest in a buddy/group read :)

Ok well start in February and I’ll make a schedule for whoever thinks they may need one but it’ll be totally informal and we can just chat about it as we go along? Does that seem fair enough?

Sounds great, Tara, I've never done a group read, so informal sounds perfect. Then people can binge-read or take a more leisurely pace, and we'll all just have to do our best not to share spoilers with those who are following a reading schedule.

An informal schedule sounds good! Is anyone going to try the audio copy of this book? I don't listen to a lot of audiobooks because I can rarely stay awake :), but I read that this one is pretty good!

Hey everyone, I would like to participate in this group read. It sounds like fun. Does this book qualify for any prompt on the ‘18 list? Just checking. Thanks.

Yes it’s for the true crime one. It’s about Ted Bundyand Rule’s friendship with him while he was actively killing but she had no clue!

I JUST finished this book yesterday! I'll just add my comments as other people read it next month

Count me in. That's the one that I had scheduled for True Crime anyway.

I had no idea what this book was when I opened this thread and now I'm pretty sure I'm going to use it for the true crime prompt so thank you OP!
I'm waiting on a library copy of the audiobook so hopefully I have it by some point in February and can actually participate in the group read. It sounds really interesting.

Ok here it is! For anyone who needs it this is the official breakdown. I'll do it to check in on Wednesdays and I'll post a question or whatever regarding the week's chapters and you can converse however you want. Feel free to read at your own pace of course but try not to spoil ahead!

Week 1 feb 1-7= chapters 1-10 (incl)
Week 2 feb 8-14 = chapters 11-23
Week 3 feb 15-21= chapters 24- 38
Week 4 feb 22-28= 39- end

Tara wrote: "Ok here it is! For anyone who needs it this is the official breakdown. I'll do it to check in on Wednesdays and I'll post a question or whatever regarding the week's chapters and you can converse h..."

Great! Thank you Tara! I just picked up this book at the library (the hold came up a bit early), and I'm looking forward to this discussion.

Oh I don't think I will get my copy in time!

Actually looks like it is on Kindle Unlimited!

You can join in any time! All are welcome :)

Ready to roll! I've got my copy 😁

Here we go!! Check in as much as you want as you read!

very excited to join you guys :)

I started the book last night and I'm already feeling a little freaked out and uncomfortable! I love reading about fictional monsters, but I think this is my first true crime book. I'm glad to be doing this as part of a group read! :)

I just finished this book. I'm a native Floridian so even though I was a child, I still remember all the media coverage each time he was up for execution. Plus, I live about 30 miles from Lake City where one of his victims was from.

I also just started to book, and it is creepy. And we are early into the description of some of the situations, and bedrooms, and houses....oh my....

Wow, just wow! What a beginning. I've read the first ten chapters over the last couple of days with family and we have been enthralled.

It is difficult to reconcile the fact that Ann's charming, empathic friend is a murderer, committing unbelievable horrors! I look forward to seeing how Ted's story unfolds and how the author deals with the knowledge that her friend is the suspect she's been tracking all along.

Rebekah wrote: "Wow, just wow! What a beginning. I've read the first ten chapters over the last couple of days with family and we have been enthralled.

It is difficult to reconcile the fact that Ann's charming, e..."

It's crazy, isn't it?

I finished the ten first chapters and... brrrrr. I'm French, born in the 90s so it's all very far from me, I know of Ted Bundy only by name. I'm discovering the story of the disappearances / murders while reading and this is the first chilling element for me. I can't imagine what it was like for people living at those places at that time.

And then there's the description of Ted Bundy as Ann's friend, followed by these horrible crime descriptions... As Rebekah and Chiara said, it's hard to reconcile these elements into one person.

I find it interesting that it is challenging for our minds. I feel like we have on some level a tendancy to stay clear of complexity, especially when it comes to people. So, I think (hope?) there's something to learn in this book, beyond the fascination for this kind of story.

I'm just starting to read this today and I seem to have a different POV than most of you posting so far...maybe I'm just a lot more cynical or maybe because I know he's a serial killer I'm subconsciously looking for clues to justify how he became one or clues to the fact that he is one in general as I'm reading.

Most of you are saying it's hard to reconcile or associate both aspects of the book into one person but from the get go (I'm about 50 pages in or so - started it this morning) I have this chilling feeling that his early life success/choices were literally the perfect set up to becoming a smart killer without much chance of being caught or prosecuted harshly if he was. I think he knew before the events of this novel or very early in the events of this novel that he wanted to be or was going to be a killer and very patiently planned his life accordingly...he is after all one of the most calculated and patient people I've read about.

I'm going to go into why I got this impression below/clues that I see that are making me align him with the man the author knew:

Let me know what you guys think (am I out to lunch? reading too much into things?) & if any of you had similar thoughts!
(view spoiler)[ 1. All of the relationships he had with women didn't seem to be very healthy or strong.

He doesn't seem fond of his grandmother or sisters (at least makes no special mention of them), his mother lied about who she was, Stephanie broke his heart & Meg has cheated on him.

2. He studied psychology, law, juries and worked with people he considered influential (politicians) and knowledgeable about current crime (the author) and sat on criminal committees.

This combination just screams to me that he's trying to glean all the knowledge he can about how to get away with what he's about to do and how people have gotten away with it or failed to get away with it in the past (so he doesn't make the same mistakes).

At one point when working for either a politician or some criminal committee (I can't remember which) a new law is passed that makes hitchhiking legal in his state. In the very first murder description, the victim was picked up hitchhiking. Coincidence? I think not! I think he knew that that was a concern of the state when that law passed, he knew it was an effective way that people had gotten away with things in the past without being caught.

3. He worked at a crisis hotline for 12 hours a day several days a week for an extended period of time.

Most people would burnout from this very quickly but he seems to stick it out over a long period of time without it really bothering him. My suspicion is that maybe at this point he knows he's going to be or wants to be a killer but is still feeling a bit guilty about it still and is trying to ease his mind/build up his good karma etc or perhaps he just has a very twisted mind and figured that for every life he saved he was entitled to take one.

More likely though, he has a disorder himself that effects the way he feels empathy and that's what's allowing him to work there so often?

4. What most people (including the author) are chalking up to weird behaviour, I'm seeing as a thirst for spite and revenge even if that takes years to achieve.

He makes an enormous amount of effort to get into Law School in Utah after he's rejected, gets an acceptance then strings them along and turns them down at the last minute

Several years after Stephanie broke up with him and he continued to pursue her, he finally attracts her attention and proposes only to break her heart back basically and he's still seeing Meg during this...so he's also getting his revenge on her for cheating on him!


I'm starting to think that the spite/revenge he has dished out just plain stopped satisfying him and he wanted to take it a step further and physically hurt people! I can definitely see how doing awful things (rape/murder) would satisfy his personality type as it might fit into a disorder. (hide spoiler)]

Stacey wrote: "I'm just starting to read this today and I seem to have a different POV than most of you posting so far...maybe I'm just a lot more cynical or maybe because I know he's a serial killer I'm subconsc..."

ahhh this is an interesting discussion! I'm afraid to get too much into it because there might be answers later on in the book and even if not, I don't want to make some cheap psychology guesses either, lol. I'm going to put my thoughts under spoilers too but I still haven't read beyond chapter 10 so it's safe for everyone up to that point.

(view spoiler)[I don't see him planning to be a killer in his early life and even early in the events in the book. It's possible but he seems to be looking for a normal life at first. The dysfunctional relationships with women are more than likely a (the?) cause of him becoming a rapist & killer but all of this had an impact in a brief amount of time: Stephanie dumped him in 1968, he found out about his mother's lie around 1970 and the killings started in 1973/74. So I don't think he had this big plan sorted out early(-ier than 1968). Now, I know he might have already assaulted girls before that, there is the possibility that it wasn't all rational but impulsive.

But I can see him at one point (After Stephanie's betrayal? His mother's?) chosing murder as some kind of career path and making his life's choices accordingly. It's still chilling to envision someone making this choice in such a cold and rational manner. There is no doubt that he's brillant and capable of thinking it through. I definitely think studying psychology, law and even getting interested in rape cases is no coincidence, but also in the sense that he must have had a liking, even fascination, for these subjects.

There's clearly revenge in his mind, he had a type while chasing girls who were very intelligent and beautiful much like the ones he was attracted to when he was looking for a relationship. My cheap psychology take on this is that he couldn't kill -maybe didn't even want to- Stephanie or the other women who betrayed him because he was too close to them (and could easily get caught), so random girls who embodied them symbolically was the revenge and the relief.

I guess I agree with you on most of your theory, even though I did not think of it while reading! I'm just a bit cautious about the timing of it all and about the fact that it took that long between his decision of becoming a killer and the killings themselves. At this point in my reading, I felt like, starting his adult life, he might have started to envision his life without murders. His experiences with women told at the beginning of the book might have a been the turning point. Maybe we'll see later if I got it all wrong, lol. (hide spoiler)]

About having trouble to reconcile everything, I think it comes from a place where we project ourselves in this story, in Ann's place, where we imagine Ted as one of our colleague, friend etc. He seems like someone we could know and could befriend. I mean, we can even imagine someone we know, someone that actually exists, and imagine they could have this other "life" and never have a clue. Like, what are the clues if you're in this story, not reading about it years after? I think that's the most troubling for me. I swear I'm not getting paranoid on everyone I know! It's just where my mind goes while reading this, haha.

Juliet wrote: "About having trouble to reconcile everything, I think it comes from a place where we project ourselves in this story, in Ann's place, where we imagine Ted as one of our colleague, friend etc. "

That makes sense! I guess I personally rarely read books this way, almost everything I read is in the third person and fiction of one genre or another so I just tend to approach things I read from the that way-from the outside. :p I was excited for this prompt for that reason since I knew it would take me out of my usual stuff for sure!

I hope we find out more of what's going on from his point of view later in the book as well...maybe he will write her letters from prison and explain some things!?

In the meantime I'm already making some Psychology guesses of my own but I've also studied a bit of Psych. I'll put it under a spoiler just incase people want to make their own guess until they've finished reading.
(view spoiler)[I've totally seen some warning signs & symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder (it doesn't mean being a loner in clinical terms, it's much more serious and basically means against society usually without empathy or remorse-google DSM 5/DSM V antisocial personality disorder if you're curious what it takes to be diagnosed with it after 2013) but I really don't know enough about him yet to know if that's accurate or not. This is totally just a guess at this point based on my initial impression. One of the diagnostic criteria is that there is a history of issues while under 18 which we really don't know - I'm very curious to see what else we get to know from his perspective though! (hide spoiler)]

Week 1 Stranger Beside Me check in:
Chapters 1-10

How are you doing? What are your thoughts so far?

My thoughts:

First of all I didn’t realize she started writing this before he was ever known! That’s crazy to me!

How do you feel about the fact that he saved lives working at the crisis centre?

I found it interesting that he actually had legal training. I always heard he represented himself and put it off as the same narcissistic foolishness as HH Holmes and Manson but apparently he was well versed.

I don’t think these are spoilers.

It's funny that you asked these questions Tara! I've already been discussing these in my last few posts here so I won't bother to repeat (check out posts 42 & 44 if you want my take on what you asked!)

I will comment though I'm now on Chapter 16 and my thoughts haven't really changed from what I originally posted!

I also went on the Goodreads page for this book to update my progress and while I was there read some reviews for the book and someone else had commented that an 8yr. old had disappeared from his paper route when he was 14 & that we don't really know if he could be responsible for that. I'm not sure where/how they found this out but if true then I think this adds another dimension to the whole crisis center thing. If he was responsible then he could have been working there out of guilt?

Perhaps though, the answer is a lot more simple. He was studying psychology at the time; maybe he just wanted some related experience in the field and that's what he could find in his area. It is a great opportunity for a student as they can study when there are no calls.

The whole fact that Ann Rule is a famous true crime writer and was actually working on this case while she knew him by some pure luck (as she says, they could have worked at the crisis hotline and never met) is a complete mindf*ck.

It's weird that I did not think that much of him saving lives at the crisis centre. I guess I was too focused on his relationship with Ann (and Stephanie, and Meg). Both of Stacey guesses up here (post 42) could be valid imo. The only thing I'll add is that obviously he doesn't see everyone as a potential victim. Saving lives could be unrelated to the killings for him; there are the girls who fit the pattern for him to kill and then there's everyone else, there's the rest of his life, where he's apparently someone normal and even nice. Like there are two distincts worlds for him and they don't really connect, he doesn't have to make up for one in the other. So yeah, working at the crisis center could have just been a good opportunity? Does that make any sense?

I don't think the fact he was educated in law doesn't mean he wasn't narcissistic. But probably not foolish... The train of thought I see is "If I ever get caught, I want to be able to represent myself" in the sense of "no else could defend me better than myself". Maybe it wasn't all about defending but explaining himself too? I dunno. And gaining some useful knowledge in the mix... I don't think we should totally evacuate the plain interest in law, for it is one of the most prestigious career path in the US (and in general) and it's clearly something he was trying to achieve at one point.

On to the following chapters now...

I feel like the psych, law, and crisis centre were all things that interested him maybe because of his murderous proclivities but not sure I think he studied them as a just in case. He doesn’t seem to have killed before he started/did those things.

I think the saving lives/killing other lives doesn’t surprise me because of all the Holocaust reading I’ve done. A lot of SS members seemed to help an individual here and there, while simultaneously participating actively in genocide. I think those sorts of incidents suggests that human beings may be wired to be able to do both those things at once.

Hi all, I don't have my copy of the book yet -- should get it mid-month, at which time I'll join in -- but I'm following along and enjoying everyone's comments.
Just curious, have any of you seen the television show The Fall? It's a fictional british crime drama that follows a serial killer in Ireland, and part of what makes the show so intense and chilling is that the killer is a seemingly loving husband and father who works as a grief counselor and volunteers for a phone crisis line (not a spoiler since we know who the killer is from the get-go in the show).
It definitely makes me think of Ted -- maybe partially inspired by him? It really does up the fear ante when the "monster" is someone so trusted and involved in helping vulnerable people. Anyway, The Fall is a great show (I love Gillian Anderson!) and I highly recommend it . If you want to read more about it, here's a good link: https://www.wired.com/2015/01/the-fal...
Here's a great quote from the article that totally applies to Ted: "Consider the stunned reaction we so often see from the friends and acquaintances of people accused of terrible crimes: "But he seemed so normal." As though the appearance of normalcy were a protective talisman, like garlic or a cross. On a fundamental level, we want to believe that people are knowable, that our friends and neighbors and even lovers are who we think they are, that they could never secretly be capable of terrible things. We tell ourselves this because we have to, because how else can you live?"