Thank you Harper Perenial and Netgalley for the eARC. While Idaho Slept: The Hunt for Answers in the Murders of Four College Students by J. Reuben Appelman was published October 3rd, all opinions expressed are my own.

“In essence, due to the intense media interest in the King Road homicides, Judge Marshall was shutting out the media going forward in order to maintain the integrity of the case and to ensure an unbiased jury, should the case go to trial.” And yet this book was written?

I do appreciate the focus on the victims (Maddie, Kaylee, Ethan and Xana) rather than sensationalizing the case/killer. However with that being said, I’d skip this book. It’s published way too soon after the murders, before a trial has even been set! There are many facts that are unverified because of the sealed files, which just makes the book content something to be taken with a grain (or handful) of salt.

I think that’s also a huge issue in the true crime community, is it’s grown so large especially with social media and podcasts. That maybe the author wanted to be the first to write about the case, resulting in a rushed and too-soon book that is largely inaccurate (or rather unverified) and unfinished. The evidence against the suspect is largely circumstantial or rumored. The book paints him to be the killer based on this “evidence” but he has not been convicted. And some of the claims regarding social media are unverified and the author even says in acknowledgments that he used a lot of the social data based on social media profiles (how is that a reliable source)?!

Also because the case was so recent and hasn’t gone to trial, the author has a lot of pages to fill in. So it felt like there was a lot of unnecessary detail, written in choppy sentences. Again, I appreciated that unlike a lot of true crime these days, While Idaho Slept isn’t sensationalized and focuses on the victims. But with that being said, I didn’t need to have multiple chapters about what each victim’s third grade teacher had to say about them. It was repetitive and read like someone trying to reach the word count of their college essay.

The books was informative about the timeline and bare facts about the case, but it’s nothing you couldn’t get from the news stories and sub Reddits. The content read like the author summarizing the newspaper stories and interviews from families rather than offering new information. Personally I learned a lot because I hadn’t heard much about this case when it had happened. But if you followed this case at all in the past year, skip the book and wait for some time to go by and someone else to publish a more fully fleshed out book.