My Friend Anna

What it must be like to live a life of luxury.

Imagine have a friend offer to take you on an all expenses paid trip to Morocco.

Imagine her card not working.

Imagine booking the plane tickets on your personal card.

Imagine having to foot the bill of a $30k+ vacation for 4 people.

My Friend Anna is told through the eyes of her former friend, Rachel DeLoache Williams. Looking back, it seems impossible to fathom how your friend could have conned you out of thousands and thousands of dollars. Based on what we now know about Anna Sorokin Delvey, it's easy to question how on earth Rachel didn't realize her friend was a con-artist. The thing is, we've all made excuses for friends. We've all loaned money under the guise that it will eventually be paid back. It's just that price tag for the average person is far lower.

 

It's not uncommon for trust fund babies to be in NYC. That's how Anna went undetected for so long. She slipped into the NYC art scene and created a persona she wanted for herself. People like this have one way of thinking....if they believe it's true, then it's true. It's manifestation in the truest sense.

I've seen a lot of negative reviews for My Friend Anna but I've really enjoyed reading it. It explores Rachel and Anna's friendship and how the long con escalated to that tipping point in Morocco.

Through the Window

"Dead men tell no tales."

 

That's the motto Tommy Lynn Sells chose to live by. For him that meant running all over the United States killing everyone. Literally everyone, man, woman, child....didn't matter.

I became infatuated with finding a copy of Through the Window after I discovered this book actually helped release a woman who was wrongfully convicted of killing her son, a killing that was actually the work of Tommy Lynn Sells. Then a few years later, I grabbed a copy of Hell in the Heartland by Jax Miller. The murder, trailer fire, and disappearance of Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible sounded oddly similar to another killing he eventually confessed to. After his arrest, he confessed to the Freeman/Bible crime but quickly recanted this statement.

This book was published in 2003 and updated in 2006. So it's safe to say a lot about Tommy Lynn Sells' life of crime was left out of this book. It only goes in depth into a few of his crimes. Specifically, the attack that left Kaylene Harris dead and Krystal Surles with a gaping hole in her throat. It talks about the brutal beatings of entire families. The senseless over the road murders of girls he picked up. The unsuspecting victims who were actually willing to help the down on his luck "homeless" man.

Tommy Lynn Sells was executed in April 2014.

Ultimately, he was only convicted of one murder which resulted in a death sentence. Law enforcement officials confirmed and closed the cases of 22 others but believe there were far more than that.

 

Looking for other books by Diane Fanning?

Into the Water

Where I Come From

I have a weakness for Southern books.

I grew up on the beaches of Alabama.

When I tell people this I get two reactions; a stereotypical redneck question or someone asking if Alabama actually has a beach. Which is quickly followed up with the remark, "Oh, so you're basically from Florida." But like.....I'm not.

Obviously the beach is not nearly as Southern as the rest of the state, but my hometown was filled with people from all over. The people who showed up for a vacation, and never went home. That's how we wound up there.

Where I Come From is an ode to the south, written by a fellow Alabama Native. Rick Bragg talks about experiences that are so uniquely southern. Fishing, hunting, drinking, the usual depictions of southern life. But it's not at all like what you non-southerners see in the movies. It's riding out a hurricane, driving til the wheels fall off, asking about your mom'n'em with a single flick of a finger.

I once had a woman ask me what the food of the south was.

I said, "Fried, we fry everything." To which she responded with, "You guys could probably fry a pickle and it'd be good!" And that's when I realized not everyone knew we did that. Just like I thought everyone knew what a Tupperware Party was. I thought we all had a family member who sold Mary Kay out of their car. I thought it was normal to be 6 hours away at college, meet my dad's friend in a mall parking lot, and have him replace my car's radiator right there. But apparently, those are all southern things.

Not to mention the family traditions.

When I was a kid, my family created crawfish ball. My sister and would stand at the boat launch behind the house while the adults sucked crawfish heads before tossing them at two very eager children with tennis rackets ready to swing. It was messy and disgusting, but tradition. Every Southern family has stories like this. These are the stories I love to hear.

Looking for other books by Rick Bragg?

The Speckled Beauty

You'd Be Home Now

This book was missing something for me.

I was browsing the book section at Target when the pills on the cover caught my eye. I've read many teen books about addiction, so I figured I'd give this one a shot.

I feel like this book kind of glossed over the raw aspect of addiction. It's a good starter book into this darker side of literature. But it's not quite there yet.

You'd Be Home Now is written through Emmy's perspective, but I wish it was written alternating Emmy and Joey's POV. Just hearing Emmy's side made her seem like such an unlikable character. She enabled her brother for so long, and I'm glad she realizes that eventually. It's easy to recognize an enabler from the outside, but those people don't usually notice it themselves.

 

Author Kathleen Glasgow, mentioned while writing this, she referred back to her own journal entries in the midst of her addiction. And I think she really missed an awesome opportunity to share similar journal entries for Joey. I wanted to read more of Joey's story through Joey's POV. Addiction is messy and whole families struggle to get through it. But we didn't really see that in this book. Everything was tied up in a nice little bow by the end of the story. Though, Emmy's assignment does try to tell us differently. She says "It doesn't give you a happy ending, because, well, life doesn't. Not always. Sometimes it might make you wait a long, long time for it, and even then, it might not look like what you'd imagined."

 

Like I said earlier, it's a good starter book for this topic. But it barely brushed the surface of what addiction can do to a family. It just doesn't dig into the deepest, darkest parts like I was expecting it to.

 

If you need something more try these books:

Crank Trilogy

Flirtin' with the Monster

Closer to Nowhere

What about Will

Dreamseller

 

Resources from You'd Be Home Now:

Al-Anon & Alateen 

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)

The Fix

Narcotics Anonymous (NA)

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) 

Smart Recovery: Self-Management & Recovery Training

Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration 

The Trevor Project 

Unmasked

I devoured this book.

I consider myself something of a true crime aficionado.

I read a lot of true crime. I watch a lot of true crime documentaries. I keep up with cold cases. Hell, I even got a degree in Criminal Justice. But none of that prepared me for the book Paul Holes wrote.

His very last mission brought in a serial rapist/killer who evaded police for over 40 years. Using a new method of DNA tracking, Paul and his dedicated EAR/ONS task force finally found him. Joseph James DeAngelo. If you've read anything about the Golden State Killer, you know who Paul Holes is. Michelle McNamara began sleuthing around the internet about the Golden State Killer, which ultimately landed her a book deal where she wove together the story of her life, the hunt for the killer, and her descent into the underworld of crime. She didn't live to see DeAngelo brought to justice. But Paul Holes did. 

 

Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases is written quite similarly to McNamara's I'll Be Gone in the Dark. While the book focuses on the cold cases Paul was infatuated with, it's also interspersed with details about his life. We learn about his family, his friends, and the struggles he's dealt with since starting his lifelong hunt to solve cold cases.

I didn't realize how many crimes he was truly a part of. I mean the man got to see where Jaycee Dugard was kept hidden away for 18 years. He was working in the lab when Laci Peterson and her child were brought in. He truly changed how investigators look at crimes. While his approach was analytical, he wasn't lacking in the emotional department. A career like this hardens you. But we need people like Paul.

Huge thanks to Celadon Books for sending me an advanced reader's copy of Unmasked.

 

Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases hits shelves April 2022!

 

Looking for more books on cases Paul Holes was a part of?

A Stolen Life (Jaycee Dugard)

Freedom (Jaycee Dugard)

I'll Be Gone in the Dark (Golden State Killer)

Devil House

I was angry when I finished this last night.

Devil House was one of my most anticipated reads this year, but I don't feel like it lived up to the hype.

Gage Chandler is a true crime writer who finds himself fully immersed in recreating the crimes he writes about. So when his agent sends him an article about an obscure double murder in an abandoned porn shop/residential house, he buys the place. The details of the murders are few and far between, but it's his job to decipher what's fact and what's fiction.

The tricky part about this book is we, the reader, also have to decipher what's fact or fiction. Devil House alternates between Gage's POV, chapters from his first book- The White Witch of Morro Bay, his current work in progress- Devil House, and I think we also get a chance to read from our own POV. I know that sounds crazy, but the last chapter has an unknown POV and the person is asking the same questions that I was asking myself.

There's just so many layers to this book that I'm not 100% sure how to even write a review for it. It seems like the author's point was regardless of who hears or tells the story, there will always be another version of it in someone else's mind. With true crime books, it's easy to get caught up in the why of the crime. Rarely have a read a true crime book where the victims are at the forefront.

After sleeping on it and expressing my thoughts through this review, I think I enjoyed this book more than I originally thought. It has substance and potential, it just kind of felt like a mess. But, I think that was the point.