Phew, this story is a tough one to read. It tells of the 1980 murders of two young women in West Virginia. Eisenberg also weaves in her own story into the narrative, which I didn’t find to be cohesive. I almost wish she’d have just written two separate books—one memoir, one true crime story. It would have resonated better for me to have them separate.

I have mixed feelings towards this book. On the one hand, this murder still hasn’t been solved with 100% assurance. There are still lingering questions as to who really committed the murders of Vicki and Nancy, and lack of evidence to prove either way. The main subject of the book was fascinating and interesting to read through, and leaves you to your own opinion as to who truly committed the crimes.
However, the author does not strictly stick to this narrative; in fact, there are other narratives woven through the book about her own life. I’m not quite sure what her intentions were to connect the two story lines. In order to give this book a 5, there would need to be a more understandable, obvious connection between the two.
I was hoping for more background information as to how Jacob Beard may have/not have received a fair trial, based on citing evidence about “Hillbilly” culture, or how local customs/ways of life shaped the course of the case and court decisions. The author alluded to an attempt to do so, but ultimately left the reader scratching his/her head.
#NetGalley

This isn’t just a narrative about an unsolved murder, but how that murder fits into the history of West Virginia and it’s place in Appalachia. A large part of the story is also how the author’s story has been connected to this place. This wasn’t the story I expected when I jumped in, but I did find it interesting. It’s another sliver of the world and it’s people I understand a bit better because of the stories contained within.

I was initially attracted to this book after seeing it categorized as true crime, a genre I am very passionate about. Now, after reading this book, I am not quite sure whether categorizing this as true crime is the right way to go. Perhaps the true crime has become one of those trendy genres that categorizing something that should perhaps be categorized under memoirs is more beneficial financially...Well, in any case, this book was not what I expected it to be.

I really like the true crime parts of the novel, which probably about one fourth of the book focuses on. The historical research on the area was fairly interesting too, but unfortunately the more memoir-y parts did not really catch my attention. Perhaps if I would have been looking for a memoir, not a book about the murder of two girls, I would have appreciated this book more. But as of now, I went in for true crime and got something quite different in the end.

This book is a really mix of true crime and memoir. It explores how memory works, the roles of good and evil we play in our own lives, and mental health in rural America.

I wish I was more interested in the murder case in this book (that sounds awful), but I really appreciated the writing.

I am a true crime junkie and I found the "The Third Rainbow Girl" interesting because it's a blend of crime story and memoir.

The murder of two hikers in Pocahontas, WV happened more than 40 years ago and the author revisits them from the perspective of moving from NYC to Pocahontas, and how her experiences there made her color the way she looks at the crime and investigation. I appreciated how Eisenberg approached the storytelling and the parallels she drew between what she's going through in this difficult rural area of West Virginia and the crime and their aftermath decades earlier.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Books for the digital ARC copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

I honestly could not finish this. I am an avid true crime reader and this was not it. It was less about the victim and more about the land and her experience.

Emma Copley Eisenberg is a journalist who researched the murders of young women headed for the Rainbow Gathering, a music festival in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. Thanks go to Net Galley and Hachette Books for the review copy, which I received early in exchange for an honest review.

What I was expecting from this book is not at all what I got. The cover suggests something spooky, and the topic also tells me this is a true crime story. The promotional blurb says it’s

Part “Serial”-like investigation, part Joan Didion-like meditation, the book follows the threads of this crime through the history of West Virginia, the Back-to-the-Land movement, and the complex reality contemporary Appalachia, forming a searing portrait of America and its divisions of gender and class, and its violence.

Instead, it’s a strange mishmash of genres that don’t blend well, and the result is a wandering narrative entirely devoid of suspense or even focus of any kind, and though I tried reading it multiple times, then checked out the audio book from Seattle Bibliocommons, I could not push myself all the way through this thing. I resolved to finish it and get it reviewed, and I wouldn’t let myself read anything else till it was done; the result was that I found excuses not to read or listen to anything at all. I finally let myself off the hook, but not until I had skipped to several parts of the second half, just to make sure there was no shining epiphany at the end.

It’s a tough spot to be in, journalistically speaking, because Eisenberg spent five years researching “these brutal crimes,” but she came up dry. How do you squeeze a story out of that? Instead of writing about the murders, she mostly writes about herself investigating the murders, making this story more of a journalistic memoir with a side serving of Pocahontas County history and culture.

If this is what the book is, then it should be sold as such. The title is deceptive, and the murky woodland illustration on the cover is deceptive as well. A journalistic retrospective should be billed as exactly that, so why wasn’t it? Possibly because nobody wants to buy a journalistic retrospective. Why not? Because it’s boring, boring, boring.

Ordinarily I would be gentler with a writer that’s published a debut, but I came away feeling resentful of the time I wasted reading and listening to a book that wasn’t what the reader was led to believe. I felt this way when I read it free; how might you feel if you ponied up the jacket price only to find that it’s not scary at all, and says little about the murders it’s supposed to be about?

No. No, no and no.

I might very well use this when teaching in the future, but I didn’t really love it for my own personal reading. It was beautifully well written with a haunting, lyric quality, but it’s just not what I was expected to be. It was marketed as true crime and, despite being about a murder, it’s not that. It’s definitely more ethnography than anything else, which I actually would’ve probably been open to if I was expecting it.

I really wanted to like this book. It started out so great, it seemed, giving a history of West Virginia and the people there. I learned a lot I didn't know, and as I was reading it, it seemed that this was a foundation for the story of the murders of two young girls that took place there years ago, and the third "Rainbow Girl" who made it out alive.

What a disappointment. First of all, the book is definitely inaptly named. There was next to nothing in the book about the third girl traveling to the annual Rainbow peace and love gathering, the girl who didn't get killed. And rightly so. She had nothing to do with the murders, she barely knew the girls who were killed, and she left them before any tragedy occurred. Why name the book for her?

The book bounced from a convoluted story about the murder investigation/trials that went on for years, to more about West Virginia (a lot about the snow), and primarily to a huge portion of the book about the author herself and her time spent in West Virginia.

All in all, the book seemed like it was crying out to just be a memoir, using the "true crime" tag to draw readers in. There were pages and pages and pages ad nauseam about every bit of minutiae in the author's life, from who she slept with to what she drank, how often she drank, where she drank, and how often she watched fingers strumming bluegrass tunes. None of it had any bearing on the Rainbow murders. The topper, to me, was when, out of the blue, she describes how she was so frustrated one day that she threw her cat against the wall and then locked him up for hours with no food. What??!!

I don't know why I finished this book. I actually didn't, really, because for approximately the last 15-20% of the story I skimmed the pages, looking for words to jump out at me that might have some bearing on what I thought was the point of the story. All I found were interviews with the same people that had with investigated or been investigated or knew someone who had been investigated about the murders.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hatchette Books for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. I'm sorry it was a brutal one.

2 stars

This was a very interesting look at murder in a small town. The telling of the victim's story and to the inconclusive end to the case is very interesting. It tells of the murder of two free spirits and the investigation that took place. It also shows how sometimes things are not what they seem and how those involved in the cases can get tunnel vision. This is a case that there will never really have final closure. There are still questions that are not completely answered. There was a couple of chapters that just felt out of place. The chapters that are about the author just at times seem have you asking the question, so what does this have to do with the case? There also seem to be a lack of information about the third rainbow girl. The information on her was vague and centered more around the author. Over all a good book for anyone interested in criminal justice.

Emma Copley Eisenberg’s true crime THE THIRD RAINBOW GIRL was a stunning exploration of a double murder and its impact on a West Virginian community, and Eisenberg herself. I find it fascinating to follow the narrative arc from the investigation of a crime and it’s processing through the justice system (this latter part usually fraught with a myriad of complexities), and this delivered on both fronts. It also gave so much regional context and study of this part of Appalachia, and a memoir aspect that encapsulated Eisenberg’s own experience with the region. A really engaging read that I’d absolutely recommend. Thanks to Kendra @kdwinchester for putting me onto this one, another stellar recommendation!

I really enjoyed reading this one! I am putting this author at the top of my list to watch for from now on. This is a must-read book!

The Third Rainbow Girl explores the long-unsolved Rainbow Murders in West Virginia, an interesting case about two girls who disappeared on their way to a music festival in 1980.
Unfortunately, I didn't find the facts laid out in a way that worked, and the memoir aspects took away from the crime aspect instead of enhancing it. I wish there had been more of a focus on the crime and investigations, but overall this provides some good basic information into the case.

Many Thanks to Hachette Books and NetGalley for the advance copy.

This book fell a little short for me. I had high hopes, but this one just didn't hit it. I don't think the author focused enough of the victims of all of this for a true crime novel. It could have been so good. The premise was interesting. It was something I would have loved to read about usually, but this one just didn't grab me at all.

Filled with great facts and thoroughly researched this book weaves together the facts to turn an interesting tale of a wonderful topic into a must read.

If you love true-crime novels, this is a must-read! I'm not a true-crime fanatic, I mostly read fictional thrillers. Everyone once in a while a true-crime novel comes along that really peaks my interest and this was one of those. It reads like a fiction thriller but with the added layer of a constant reminder that these were real people and this actually happened. Emma does a great job telling the story and her process of investigating, which I found fascinating. I highly recommend this book!

As a serious true crime fan, I can recommend this one to anyone who truly appreciates writing and the genre of true crime. This is well written and keeps you turning the pages,

Sadly there was a good case and a good story here. The author chose to stick too much to his personal life and experiences in the area. He muddled up the true crime by making it a memoir about himself.

This would have been a good book if it focused on the crime and left out the memoir chapters. The victims, Vicki and Nancy, get lost in the unnecessary details of the author’s own life. A better true crime/memoir book is The Kill Jar by J. Reuben Appelman.