A Knife in the Heart by Michael Benson

A Knife in the Heart Reviews

• 
  BAM the enigma

  I’m about 60 pages in and I’m fairly certain a new teenager is thrown into the plot about every two pages. Soooo I just figure out who one is just in time for someone else to be thrown into the picture. And there really isn’t any intro info it’s just BAM new chick making bad decisions BAM who’s this guy hanging around? Even the attorneys are getting the names mixed up during testimony. I’m just pretending I know what’s going on until the actual crime occurs otherwise it’s a story about a ridiculous teenager constantly running away. The police are very active in the scenario though so there’s that
  
  I swear to baby Jesus if one more attorney says”use your common sense” in closing argument I’m going to throw the book. I CANNOT STAND that. It’s disrespectful as far as I’m concerned. If I’m ever picked for jury duty there will be no way either side would want me in one of those seats if for no other reason than my resting bitch face.
• 
  Marianne Stehr

  This was decent. that is all. For me, I enjoy true crime, however, I need some suspense and less courtroom. The crime is played out in the first 20 pages and then what else is there to say but back story. I prefer to begin with backstory and work my way forward, however not every read likes the story that way.
• 
  Jessica~loves to hate a cliffy~

  The "baby momma" is one of my besties!
• 
  Mrs. Read

  I read Michael Benson's A Knife in the Heart in the compilation of three of his true crime books (apparently available in electronic form only). The least interesting of the three, it describes the murder - committed in front of several equally-mature witnesses - of one child by another. It was one of those cases which invariably prompt in me the thought that the world would be neither worse off nor very surprised if any character chosen randomly from the book - perpetrator, victim, witnesses, BFFs, and all of the foregoing’s relatives - was the one who ended up in prison. Or dead. The case went to trial and eventually led to an insanity plea. The killer was about as rational as any teenager, which is not saying a whole lot. I’m not sure what prompted Benson to find this crime worthy of a book, except perhaps to illustrate the fact that since kids are not yet sufficiently developed biologically to use sound judgment, parents/authorities had better be wise enough to do so.
  
  Benson’s conversational style is very readable, but the pointless* nature of the killing makes it hardly worth reading about, except by true crime fans. Perhaps readers of the teen-aged love stories that one comes across everywhere now would find A Knife in the Heart a dramatic alternative take on the subject.
  
  *surely someone would’ve noted and applauded this locution without my calling attention to it.
  
  A shout out to ❤️Marlene❤️; her My Book list is like a treasure map!
• 
  Koren

  This was sooo boring I basically skimmed half of the book. There are so many players it is hard to keep them all straight. A young girl gets stabbed over a boy. They know right away who did it so half the book is the investigation and the other half is word for word court room drama that is basically a repetition of the investigation. Very little background information on any of the kids. If you read the first few chapters you pretty much will know everything that happens in this book.
• 
  Lynda Kelly

  My least favourite by this author so far. It got VERY laborious and hard-going and I struggled with picking my Kindle up and dipping back into it. A lot of it got very repetitive as well.
  His other books didn't have the amount of errors this one has, either. Not sure what's going on with him but it's pretty messy.
  Twice he used enflamed(d) instead of inflamed, there were fullstops missing, spaces in words not needing them-like Charlottes ville or Hane wicz or smart phones. Then the author mentions the lawyer asking Sarah a question at trial-he'd have had a job !! (Yet the author pointed out the lawyers kept mixing up the kids' names)!! He mentions someone being slightly coiled-usually tightly in my experience...
  I thought Rachel's family were an odd bunch. No wonder she was a headcase with them calling the police every 5 minutes each time she was late or out for a night with friends. I imagine the police were sick to death of hearing from them !! I hated that all the kids (who were white in the main) were teens that persist in talking like little black gangstas'. I hate that sort of speech they use, thinking they're "hard" when they just look like idiots. It's the same with the youngsters over here as well as in America.
  This little gang all seemed to be having sex and babies within their group as well.....sharing each other around. All a bit unsavoury if you ask me. It could easily have been any one of them stabbed that fateful night since they all fought with each other !! Sarah was as much of a flake, really, as Rachel was. It was pretty jawdropping that the object of the girls' affections, Josh, had to ask which month was the third one, believing it to be August !! Sarah was wasted on this fool for sure.
• 
  ♥ Marlene♥

  This book was part of a trilogy of 3 of Michael benson's true crime books.
  
  Book 1: Watch Mommy Die
  Book 2: A Killer's Touch
  Book 3: A Knife in The Heart
  
  This book was confusing and jumping in time which I hate.
  
  As most that know me on Goodreads know I prefer my true crime is written in chronological order. If you need to begin with the crime please call that chapter a prologue and let chapter 2 begin with where it all happened. birth whatever.
  Most of the true crime books I read I do not know anything about the case which is the way I like it but being a member of a true crime group and sometimes I also enjoy to watch a documentary, I sometimes begin to read and slowly it dawns on me I have watched a doc or read stuff about it.
  
  This was so with this case.
  I had watched a documentary (Snapped?) and heard Rachel talk about this.
  Weirdly enough when i began reading I thought the other girl was the murderer but alas the author immediately spoiled everything so I knew it was not her but she was the killer.
  
  
  He tells of fights between the girls but I had a hard time remembering all the names and who was friends with who.
  To me it felt like all those people involved were scumbags and their parents let them run loose.
  I never got into this book.
• 
  Margaret

  IF you can keep track of all of the people in this book, it's okay. However - I found myself constantly going, "Who was this again?!" The parents of these kids... wow. I do not know whether to feel bad, or wonder why they didn't do more. I was almost enraged, really, at how careless and stupid they were fighting over a kid who, by all accounts, sounds like a loser and had really nothing going for him.
• 
  Suzanne

  I loved this book... I felt I like the author was talking to me about the crime and that is what I call a good book.
• 
  Jenny Pineda

  Excellent
• 
  Dee brown

  Well researched, well written.