Description
Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff are famous for their hugely popular true crime podcast. They met at a party and quickly discovered they both had a deep interest in real-life crime stories. This shared passion led to a strong friendship and their successful show. But their book isn’t just about crime. It’s a very personal look at their own lives. Both women share stories about the major challenges they faced, including mental health issues and personal struggles, and how those experiences shaped who they are. They offer honest lessons they learned along the way, hoping to help others navigate their own lives.
One of the book’s most famous ideas is to “fuck politeness.” Georgia Hardstark, for example, struggled with low self-esteem as a kid. Discovering the feminist punk movement “Riot Grrrl” helped her find her voice. It taught her that being kind is not the same as being polite, especially when someone is making you feel unsafe. She learned to be outspoken. She tells a story about a man at a bar who kept trying to buy her a shot she didn’t want. Instead of politely accepting it, she poured it on the floor and left.
But Georgia also learned that it’s not always possible to be brave in every single moment. She shares a frightening story from when she first moved to Los Angeles. A regular customer at her restaurant, a photographer named Lawrence, asked to take her picture. She agreed, but he drove her to a remote, high-up lookout. Her intuition screamed that something was wrong. She was terrified and feared she was about to be murdered. Yet, she found herself playing along, even when he asked her to take her shirt off for a photo. He didn’t harm her and drove her back, but she was deeply ashamed for years that she hadn’t stood up for herself.
It took years of therapy for Georgia to understand that experience. She realized that failing to be strong in a scary situation doesn’t make you responsible for the other person’s bad actions. Learning to advocate for yourself is a process, and it takes practice. This is a key idea she often explores: you can believe in being strong and still forgive yourself for moments of fear.
Karen Kilgariff shares her own journey with self-care. She explains that true self-care isn’t just about bubble baths or yoga. It’s about taking real responsibility for your own problems, often with the help of therapy and a few very close friends. Karen had a habit of blaming others for her problems and gossiping constantly. A therapist helped her see this pattern. She learned that she was treating too many people as “friends” and that she should save her deepest problems for a small, trusted circle.
She learned the value of a true friend in a powerful moment. For months, she had been complaining to her friend Laura about a man who clearly wasn’t interested in her. One day, while Karen was going on about it again, Laura slammed on the car brakes and snapped. She told Karen the man was not interested and she needed to forget him. While the truth hurt, it was a wake-up call. Karen realized that only a real friend, someone who truly cares, would risk the discomfort to tell her the hard truth. It taught her that friendships should be mostly positive, and if you’re stuck, a therapist is the best person to help you break the cycle.
Family support is another major theme. Georgia shares a story from when she was 13. As the child of a single mother with little money, she felt poor compared to her classmates. She started shoplifting. One day, she was caught stealing cheap earrings at a mall. Her friend got away, but Georgia was taken to the back room by security. She knew she had to call one of her parents. Calling her mom was not an option, so she called her father, who was less strict. When he arrived, they both cried. He didn’t yell; he just handled it. That experience taught Georgia that no matter what trouble she got into, she could always rely on her father to help her.
The authors also stress the importance of being self-sufficient, which means learning to pay your own bills. Karen talks about the string of odd jobs she had before becoming a comedian. She worked at a frozen yogurt shop while she had an eating disorder—a bad combination. She was eventually fired for eating too much product and carving her initials into the fudge. Later, she worked at Gap, a job she hated. She was paid minimum wage and had to be fake-cheerful all day. The fear of being stuck at Gap for her whole life is what finally motivated her to put all her energy into her comedy career.
Both women are huge advocates for therapy. Georgia has been in therapy since she was six years old. She has learned not to be afraid of a diagnosis. Over the years, she’s been diagnosed with anxiety, ADHD, depression, and OCD. She sees these labels not as a disaster, but as a good thing. A diagnosis is just a name for your symptoms, which helps you get treatment and gives you a starting point to get better. She also learned a valuable lesson from a life coach about motivation. She complained she was too lazy to write or go to the gym. The coach told her she doesn’t need to feel motivated; she just needs to show up.
The most important message in the book is about victim blaming. When they first started their podcast, Karen and Georgia would often give safety advice, like “never get into a car with a stranger.” But their listeners pointed out that this kind of advice can sound like it’s blaming the victim. If a woman does get in the car and something bad happens, the advice implies it was her fault. They took this criticism to heart and changed their perspective.
A story from Karen’s friend’s mother helped make this clear. In the 1980s, a man known as the Scarborough Rapist was attacking women. The police actually blamed women for being out at night. Around that time, Karen’s friend’s mom was swimming alone on her apartment roof when she noticed a man watching her. He paced around and made her nervous, but he left when other people showed up. Later, the rapist was caught—and she recognized him as the man from the pool. He turned out to be a serial killer. That woman wasn’t doing anything wrong. The women getting off the bus at night weren’t doing anything wrong. They were just living. The book’s final, powerful point is that the victim is never, ever to blame. The only person to blame is the killer. The conversation shouldn’t be about what victims can do differently, but about how to identify and stop dangerous perpetrators.
