Interesting read to say the least and at times pretty disturbing. I would've liked some of the material to have been updated as this was a re-release.

Honestly, great idea, great content, terrible execution. The chapters are so messy and the lay out makes no sense plus there is way too many references to studies and outside media. I think the author must be Canadian there was a lot of Canadian content which I was so excited for however I couldn't full enjoy because I didn't understand the layout of this book.

5 stars. I think everyone who is a true crime fan needs this book. Especially if you are interested in female murderers and their motivations

After reading John E Douglas' Mindhunter, binge-watching the Netflix series, and always consuming dark and twisty shows, I thought this was on-brand for me.

I appreciated the facts being given without the author's assessment of "why." Statistically, women are less likely to kill, but the women in this book could sway some minds to rethink that assertion. Clearly, there are bad eggs everywhere.

This book read to me like a text book for a class. That isn't to say it wasn't interesting. It was interesting. But I found myself only able to read it a little at a time and it took me a long time to finish it. I would read a chapter or two of this, sit it aside and read another book, then go back to this book for another chapter. I'm glad I read it, but I'm don't think it would be high on my "you should read this" list.

As a True Crime consumer, this book certainly appealed to me as it took a deeper look into women in crime. In particular, the author explores the cultural impacts of misogyny on how we view female killers. Many great points are made including, but not limited to: how the FBI defined serial killers and studied only white men to develop these traits and characteristics, society's desire to rationalize and shift the blame of female serial killers to their male partners, failing to classify people who kill with poison as serial killers, giving tender and/or funny names to female serial killers, and the list goes on and on. This book certainly gave me a lot to reflect on and allowed me to compare how many things have changed in 2021, but many things have still remained the same. However, this book was riddled with contradictions and the author's personal views come in strongly in a way that I think deflects from a nuanced look at her points being made.

Interesting and accessible, this is an excellent addition to most general nonfiction collections, particularly where true crime and Tori Telfer's Lady Killers are popular.

Thoroughly researched and unflinchingly strong-willed, Patricia Pearson’s When She Was Bad: How and Why Women Get Away with Murder (2021) is a stunning addition to the true crime genre and, in 1997 as much as today, gives readers a lot to think about.

Pearson’s text is a reprint of her 1997 book of the same name. Here, almost twenty-five years later, When She Was Bad still provokes thoughtful and incredibly salient questions around women, victimhood, and the gendered language we use to talk about female criminality. Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-Fiction Crime Book, When She Was Bad centers around several case studies of female killers, including famous names such as Karla Homolka or Myra Hindley as well as a myriad of women who act violently or murderously toward other women, children, spouses, or vulnerable people in their care. Divided into provocative sections, Pearson interrogates the way we perceive violent women and the language we perpetuate around them, exploring our deep discomfort with a woman who is—as the human condition indicates—capable of violence.

Largely written in response to an all-or-nothing dialogue in second-wave feminism around women as victims of men’s physical and sexual violence, as well as victims of a patriarchal world-order that oppresses and confines their social and economic mobility, Pearson’s text questions the validity of this adamant approach. She wonders whether or not seeing women as exclusively victims does more harm than good. Does slotting women into boxes of victimhood, no matter their crimes, not rob women as a whole of their agency? Is it not only a requirement of feminism that we acknowledge that there are evil women in the world, but an absolute necessity in order to move forward? Pearson argues quite convincingly that yes, on both counts, and therefore our language needs to change.

This text is a book about women, gender, crime, and language. Pearson argues that violence is a human impulse, and although gender binaries may change the form through which that violence manifests, women are no less capable of it than men. The explosive, destructive violence of a male serial murderer might have a very different—and potentially more insidious—character as a female predator in a special care home. Nevertheless, both are driven by out-of-control impulses that lead to mass death, and yet they have significantly different mythologies and vocabularies around them.

The way we talk about women and violence is just as critical and problematic for Pearson. She points out that not only do we not want to talk about mothers who kill their children, but in many ways we can’t because our culture is reluctant to divest mothers of their holy authority. We simply lack the language, in many respects. Pearson boldly interrogates mental illnesses like postpartum depression and battered women’s syndrome, wondering just how many of the infamous women who have used that defence have actually occupied that space, and whether or not we are simply desperate to have this be true rather than acknowledging and understanding some women as predators. Although she acknowledges in her chapters on domestic violence and male/female killing pairs that relations between violent men and women are complicated, she argues that we must see victimhood with the same complexity. Perhaps one of Pearson’s most interesting discussions around language is her characterization of the “Vocabulary of Motive.” The vocabulary of motive is simply the language that violent perpetrators and society use to describe the reasoning behind their violence. This vocabulary is, Pearson argues, a critical point around which our perception of female violence operates. Because the vocabulary of motive can be learned and performed—whether through learned gender roles or through legal coaching—Pearson questions how much we can trust this vocabulary, given how gendered assumptions have permeated violent crime.

Although none of these issues are clear-cut for Pearson, and she acknowledges the complexity of gender as a whole and women’s undeniable disenfranchisement in a patriarchal culture, she points out that if these problems in language and the reluctance to see women as dangerous continue, then violence will continue. Because, as Pearson notes, her arguments are more than philosophical. Women have less access to anger management, counselling, and other programs that are designed around curbing male violence. By adjusting the way we think about women’s relationship to violence, Pearson argues that the implementation of these systems could be beneficial.

Pearson’s remarkable research skills shine through in both her ability to feature other scholars and statistics that showcase her points, and her own case studies and interviews that are truly chilling. The 2021 edition of When She Was Bad contains a new chapter, “When Healers Do Harm,” which contemplates COVID-19’s emergence and the way it has forced us to reckon with the vulnerability of our elderly and, in some cases, the fallibility of our healthcare systems. This new chapter provides a fascinating insight into just how consistent the language around female idealization and victimhood is, even a quarter of a century after Pearson’s original publication.

In addition to the new chapter, there are so many brilliant and comprehensive aspects of the text. I was fascinated to see Pearson address the idea of violence in lesbian relationships. She criticizes the social reluctance to acknowledge that women can be violent in their own relationships because it violates feminist notions of a lesbian utopia. Therefore, she argues, this leaves lesbian women struggling to find support. Additionally, Pearson discusses women’s power dynamics in prisons, arguing that female inmates have a complex and sometimes violent system of authority that again divests them of divine or passive traits. These are just some of many topics in Pearson’s text that are worth reading.

When She Was Bad is a thoughtful and galvanizing text that has an important place in the true crime canon both in the late 90s and now. It encourages us to consider our feminism, our language, and our social landscape as we read about male and female offenders. I highly recommend any true crime reader have this on their shelf.

An uncorrected proof of this text was graciously provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Please add When She Was Bad to your Goodreads shelf, and visit Patricia Pearson’s About page on Penguin Random House’s website.

Don’t forget to follow True Crime Index on Twitter and please visit our Goodreads for updates on what we’re reading! You can find Rachel on her personal Twitter @MsBookishBeauty or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

About the Writer:

Rachel M. Friars (she/her) is a PhD student in the Department of English Language and Literature at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She holds a BA in English from the University of New Brunswick and an MA in English Literature from Queen’s University. Her research focuses on nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history. Her academic writing has been published with Palgrave Macmillan and The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies. She is a reviewer for The Lesbraryand the co-creator of True Crime Index. Rachel is also co-Editor-in-Chief of the international literary journal, The Lamp and regularly publishes her own short fiction and poetry.

True crime "hype" isn't a new cultural phenomenon, but within the last 5-10 years the appeal and interest has seriously skyrocketed. So much so that the some TV networks have re-branded from their typical programming to true-crime-all-the-time. Women especially seem to be obsessed with true crime, myself included. Hence why the Oxygen network transitioned from women's programming to true-crime-all-the-time (and that's not a complaint -- keep it coming, Oxygen!).

Author Patricia Pearson feeds into this obsession by providing profiles, data, and quantitative research into why women commit crimes and how society tends to "explain away" this violence. Nurses, wives, mothers, girlfriends, daughters -- any female archetype is capable of violence. Yet our culture (and cultures across the globe, really) treat each case as an anomaly. Pearson shares her research in a clinical yet impassioned voice, dutifully explaining data while also pointing out hypocrisies and hypotheses. Some of said data will leave readers staggering but fascinated at the same time. This is a re-release of a 1997 title, therefore a significant portion of the research is 20 years old with the exception of the added chapter for the 2021 release. I would have liked to see a few more updates to the earlier research; it would have been fascinating to see how the "trend" has evolved over time. Overall, though, this was an intriguing book that will leave readers with a lot to think about after the last page.

Who are the serial killers you can think of off the top of your head? Ted Bundy, the Zodiac Killer, Jack the Ripper… Most likely, most of the killers you can think of are male, but that doesn’t mean that women don’t murder, it just means that we don’t talk about them. When She Was Bad presents research covering the different kinds of female killers, from serial killers to domestic abusers to mothers who commit filicide. Along the way, Pearson not only explores what motivates these women to commit murder, but also why society is so quick to forgive them for it.

Although this book is being re-released in 2021 (today, actually), be forewarned that the majority of the book is quite outdated. It appears that little of the content has changed since the book was originally published in 1997, and you come across sentences like “as recently as the 1970’s,” even though 1970 was a full fifty years ago. In the chapter about women’s prisons, there was also some rhetoric about queer women and gender-nonconforming people that felt, to me, outdated, although I’m sure that some people may still use that language. Pearson did write a new chapter for this re-release, about serial murderesses in positions of power—such as nurses who kill their patients—but it is shoehorned in to the front of the book and doesn’t quite fit the flow of the chapters. There is also no discussion about whether the societal situation toward female killers has changed in the twenty years since this was originally published.

If you can accept that the information in this book is not quite up to date, though, it is a super fascinating look into how our society treats female killers, and why the pervading thought is still that serial killers aren’t women. If you are a fan of true crime this is a great read, and although it tends toward the essay side of nonfiction rather than the narrative, it is still very readable and keeps you engaged throughout. The case studies of various women like Karla Homolka, Bethe Wettlaufer, Dorothea Puente, and Myra Hindley are super fascinating and really keep you hooked. I would highly recommend if this is a subject that interests you.

**Review will go live at 7am on Jan 5

When She Was Bad was a deep dive into female based aggression and how our society views these crimes and women. It also explores multiple mental health disorders that can trigger this aggression and probably the most interesting part in my opinion as to why can’t some one just be evil? Why must there always be a reason? Pearson also references quite a few real life cases that match with the type of aggression that is being discussed in the chapter. Where this book fell short for me was not enough information on the cases that were discussed. I wish the book had gone into more detail in the specificity cases. All and all an enjoyable read that I will be recommending to all of my true crime friends.

This book was really good and I appreciated the updated material. I really liked this look at female killers.

Why women kill. Why women act out violently. All of this and more in When She Was Bad. I LOVED this one. It gives a lot of credit to the idea that woman being bad isn't unheard of, but it's just not expected. Why might this be the case? What exactly happens, it's all pretty awesome.

5/5 Stars

**I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley**

When She Was Bad is a thought-provoking book on women's violence and Western society's dismissal (and sometimes approval) of it, and how feminism can enable it.

As a feminist, I sometimes found the book hard to swallow (Me: "But, but, this killer was abused all her life! Shouldn't we be sympathic to her plight?"), but I ultimately agree with most of the author's points. Why don't we offer the same understanding to male killers who were also victims of abuse? How is placing women in a box of "nurturing caregivers who are the real victims" helping with the path to true equality?

There is a gutwrenching chapter on male domestic abuse victims that is one of the standout parts of the book. When She Was Bad was originally published in 1998, so I can hope that our society's understanding and acceptance of male victims has progressed since then, but I know we still have a long way to go.

The 2021 reissue of this book includes a new chapter. I would have liked to see the rest of the book updated to for our current era (and I would love to hear the author's opinion on some notorious, post-2000 female killers), but it's a worthwhile read nonetheless. Whether you're a feminist or believe in traditional female values, I definitely recommend checking it out.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: January 5, 2021
In “When She Was Bad”, Canadian journalist Patricia Pearson examines the role of female aggression. Using examples of female serial killers (such as Karla Homolka), Mary Beth Tinning (who killed eight of her own children) and Dorothea Puente (who killed residents of her boarding house), Pearson discusses how society’s understanding of the female as a nurturing caregiver is in contrast with the murdering, angry, retaliatory behaviours of a killer, and how, as a result, society often goes easier on females who are charged with heinous crimes.
“When She Was Bad” is provocative and eye-opening, and will definitely leave a mark on readers. Turning feminism on its head, Pearson explains how female serial killers try and equate powerlessness with innocence. Society wants to believe females were “victims” who have been “coerced” by an outside force, and they cannot be innately “evil” or “aggressive”, and female murderers take full advantage, often getting lighter sentences, or successful “insanity” pleas, in comparison to their male counterparts.
This novel is more about aggression as a concept, as opposed to serial killing. Sure, Homolka and some other deeply twisted female serial killers are covered, but so are such things as Munchausen syndrome and “battered woman” syndrome, reasons that are more believable and justified, and are almost exclusive to women when it comes to criminal defense.
“When She Was Bad” is thought-provoking and insightful. The novel flows well, and information was provided in a non-biased, non-judgmental way. Pearson examines how feminism in its current form contributes to the criminal defense of females who commit murders, but she is merely providing logical information, and not preaching from a pedestal.
I thoroughly enjoyed Pearson’s in-depth and well-researched novel. It is obvious that Pearson comes from a writing background (in journalism) as she knows how to tell a story readers will enjoy. For those looking for an interesting take on the concept of aggression and how it is expressed in females and males, “When She Was Bad” is definitely a novel worth reading.

This is one fascinating book that delves into the mind and the psychology behind women who kill. What drove them? Is it always self-defense or are there more to it? This is what this book attempts to discuss.

I really enjoyed learning the information this author shares. They are insightful and informative. However, after reading three chapters, I had to stop. While the information is interesting, the writing is not. It was monotonous, and dry. It really felt like reading a textbook especially with all the research data and findings. I've tried, but this book just wasn't for me.

Pub. Date: Jan 5, 2021

***Thank you Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for this gifted review copy in exchange for an honest review.***