I was given this book for review.

After finishing this book, it took a few days to reconcile everything I loved about it with the issues I had. At the beginning, I thought this was on track to be a solid four stars and my favorite true crime of the past six months. Then the issues began piling up and at the end of the day, I couldn't justify giving this book more than two stars. It's one that I don't think I could, in good conscience, recommend.

To start with the positives, I absolutely adored the courtroom focus. Most true crime books have some kind of angle, and this was almost the story of this family from the point of view of the court. There were long sections of courtroom transcripts and I think almost every page had some kind of excerpt, whether from court transcript, news articles, emails, etc. I can see how some people might find that boring, but I loved it so much. It was fascinating to read and by far my favorite part of the book. The court transcripts in particular were wonderful to read, while I found the news articles redundant.

My main issue was the biases of the authors. After finishing this book, it didn't feel like I had an overall understanding of the case. It felt like I'd just had one party's lawyers explain the case to me. (Which it almost kind of was- Allison Mann, one of the writers, was a paralegal at the law firm representing the father in this case.) In cases like this where the book's authors are close to one side, I expect there to be biases, but this went above and beyond what I generally would consider normal. I'd have even been more forgiving if they'd addressed their biases as part of the book, but instead it was written as though everything included was impartial.

This honestly isn't me disagreeing with the general conclusions of the book and the authors. I found myself agreeing with them for the most part (and I did some outside research as well, although it seems like most of the available information comes either from Brodkorb or various people on the mother's side who were even more biased). It was the writing style, word choice, and presentation of facts that rubbed me the wrong way. And I have no idea if that was intentional or a failure in the writing. At one point, Brodkorb talks about his lack of experience in this kind of writing (although he was referring to his news articles and not this book). He was a political writer, not a crime writer, so it's quite possible that came from his inexperience with this kind of writing.

I wrote down a few examples to illustrate that point. Although individually, all small details, they're indicative of how I felt about the overall narration.

On page 88, the mother and her lawyer travel to California in order to speak with a woman who was planning to sue the state over her custody case. The authors wrote the youtube videos they filmed, showed them acting "quite foolish." (This being while the two daughters were missing.) I'm not arguing that she wasn't acting foolish, I have no idea. But that's kind of my point. Foolish is an incredibly subjective word and there was no evidence or description of the behavior. Just that broad subjective statement.

On page 161, a man associated with the mother broke into the father's garage. The narration says this man "violently vandalized his vehicles with a knife." He slashed the tires and damaged some of the interior (this was clarified at a later point in the book). I'm not saying that's not a terrifying situation for the father to be in, but why use such imprecise, inflammatory language? As a reader, I would prefer to know the facts of what happened, rather than have it sensationalized for me. And especially for this book, it didn't need to be sensationalized. The facts themselves were sensational enough.

On page 109, "Lisa had proven to Dr. Gilbertson and the court that Samantha's statements had been false." It was a court transcript of the father's attorney questioning the children's therapist in regards to abuse claims the older daughter had made. In it, she illustrates how unlikely it would be that the older son would not have noticed any abuse and that at the time of one specific instance, the father had not had much contact with her. I'm not disputing that at all. My issue is more with the word "proven." In a legal context, that is an incredibly strong word, and it didn't feel justified in this instance. Elliott showed how unlikely the abuse claim was to be true, but in my mind (after reading the transcript of the conversation provided in the book) she didn't actively prove it false.

At no point did the book ever discuss if perhaps the mother was telling the truth. Which is not to say I believe she was, but rather in true crime, there's often a point (or many points) where the narration shifts slightly to explore the guilty party's side of the story and ask 'what if they're not guilty?' It's useful for readers who come in not knowing anything about the case. It allows for the evidence to be lined up and behavior to be examined in a different way. It usually exists to illustrate the flaws in the guilty party's version of events. In this book, I never felt like we got that, which led to it feeling incredibly one sided. There were small moments of pointing out things that she said and how they were wrong, but it wasn't enough for me.

Some more minor issues- there were a fair number of typos throughout the book. Normally this wouldn't bother me and I'd be even more forgiving of an indie book, but a lot of those typos occurred in quoted sections (court transcripts, emails, etc). Obviously [sic] was used to mark intentional quoted typos, but I'm talking about seemingly accidental ones. A small thing, but one that did bother me as the book went on.

I didn't understand Mann's POV sections. It didn't feel like they contributed anything that couldn't have been included in the general narration.

I was torn between 2 and 3 stars, because of how much I really did love the way the book was told through court transcripts, but overall, I didn't feel like I trusted the authors in the telling of this story. If I don't trust the authors, I can't justify a positive rating.