The Elissas is an in depth look at the Troubled Teen Industry thru the lives of 3 girls who all died incredibly young. Elissa, Alissa, and Alyssa all come from upper middle class suburbia, and succumb to the dark side of adolescence. Getting sent away to Ponco Pines, among other programs, where they all meet.
We then meet Samantha Leach, an editor and writer, who was childhood best friends with one of the Elissas. Haunted by her friend's death at 18, and the survivor's guilt that came with it, the author sets out to explore the past things that led to these tragic deaths. She traces the trajectory of each girl's life, interviewing friends and family to take us closer into their worlds and their untimely demise.
The book was full of data and excerpts from different related publications. It read more like a research paper at times and I found it to be confusing to follow the timelines as they jumped from when they were young to older.
Although the chapters are all named by each particular Elissa, all three tend to be mentioned through out each chapter.
While the author’s writing style wasn’t my personal favorite, I do think she achieved her goals of exposing what’s likely the least talked-about problem of troubled teens.
Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing, Legacy Lit for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication: June 6, 2023.

Browsing through NetGalley, I came across a title that intrigued me: The Elissas: Three Girls, One Fate, and the Deadly Secrets of Suburbia by Samantha Leach (Legacy Lit, 2023). A brief glance at the blurb had me hitting the REQUEST button: this was a tale about the nightmarish Troubled Teen Industry, something that’s interested me ever since reading Maia Szalavitz’s damning exposé on the topic, Help at Any Cost, years ago. I was so thrilled when I saw that I’d been approved, and I took a deep breath, settled in with my kindle, and began to read.

Author Samantha Leach grew up with one of the titular Elissas, a born-to-be-wild child who absorbed far too many of the cultural messages that surrounded her, growing up in the early-to-mid 2000’s in a cultural landscape laced with Paris Hilton and Girls Gone Wild, about what a woman’s role and place in this world should be. Proudly proclaiming at the beginning of her teenage years that she wanted to be a slut, Elissa’s path into adolescence is fraught with risky sexual behavior, drinking, and drug use. At fifteen, her parents ship her off to a school in Nebraska that promises to reform her behavior, part of the unregulated Troubled Teen Industry that’s allowed to function with little-to-no oversight in the US and has been responsible for a truly horrifying number of child deaths.

Using Elissa’s story, along with the stories of two friends she became close to at this school, Alyssa and Alissa, Ms. Leach illustrates one of the least-discussed problems of the Troubled Teen Industry: these schools serve as holding pens at best, mirrors of the US prison system at worst, for struggling teenagers, teaching them how to do little more than survive in a strict, closed system, and giving them none of the tools to navigate the outside world and the behaviors and issues that so concerned their parents in the first place. One by one, in the brief years after graduation, each Elissa dies, likely due to behavior related to the problems that got them sent to this Nebraska school, leaving behind a trail of pain, anguish, grief, devastation, and so, so many questions.

While the author’s writing style wasn’t always my personal cup of tea, I do think she achieved her goals of memorializing her friend and exposing what’s likely the least talked-about problem of the Troubled Teen Industry. Much has been made, and rightfully so, of its lack of oversight and the harsh punishments doled out to the students in their care, but Ms. Leach points out that there’s so little follow-up and no real statistics to tell what their programs actually do in the long-term, and thus it seems that they’re not preparing students for the outside world and to return to their former addiction, the temptations waiting for them, the challenges and struggles they’ll face when they return to the same environment they were living in before entering these “schools.”

There are those, Ms. Leach notes, who are helped by the Troubled Teen Industry, teens who take what they need from the incredibly expensive schools their parents ship them off to and end up the better for it. The Three Elissas is not a story that documents anything close to that. It’s not Maia Szalavitz, but it’s a cautionary tale all the same. These schools, Ms. Leach shows, are not places to send your children if you’re hoping for a long-term solution, and the tragedy of the three young women - Elissa, Alyssa, and Alissa - are proof enough.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Legacy Lit, and Samantha Leach for allowing me to read an early copy of The Three Elissas.

I wish she had stuck with pure memoir and talk about all the “Elissas”. The case studies seemed shoehorned in and sometimes slightly misinterpreted. Or she presented her feelings as the time as facts and not the feelings of a child. Many people, even other teens weren’t feeling or thinking this way or doing these things. It was odd tonally:

The Elissas is an in depth look at the Troubled Teen Industry thru the lives of 3 girls who all died incredibly young. Elissa, Alissa, and Alyssa all come from upper middle class white suburbia, and succumb to the dark side of adolescence. Getting sent away to Ponco Pines, among other programs, where they all meet.
While they all graduated, all three didn't escape the troubled teen label they had earned. Which ultimately resulted in their early demise.
The book was full of data and excerpts from different related publications. It read more like a research paper at times.
Although the chapters are all named by each particular Elissa, all three tend to be mentioned through out. This made it confusing at times.
Thank you, Netgalley, publisher, and author for the ARC.

This book deals with a number of intense topics and provides readers with a deeper dive into the troubled teen industry. While telling the stories of Elissa, Alissa, and Alyssa, Leach wove in a good deal of interviews and statistics which help contextualize Elissa, Alissa and Alyssa’s experiences.

THE ELISSAS tells the stories of three friends who met while in the troubled teen industry; Elissa, Alissa, and Alyssa. Within years of their graduation, Elissa, Alissa, and Alyssa all died.

This book deals with a number of intense topics and provides readers with a deeper dive into the troubled teen industry. While telling the stories of Elissa, Alissa, and Alyssa, Leach wove in a good deal of interviews and statistics which help contextualize Elissa, Alissa and Alyssa’s experiences.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing, Legacy Lit for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication: June 6, 2023.

this was a fascinating read, it was a kinda scary concept that three women with the same name would die in a short period of time. I enjoyed the way Samantha Leach wrote this and was invested in this story. I hope it gave the author a chance to heal. It was a great story.

This book is a very superficial look at the lives of three women, one named Elissa, one named Alyssa, one named Alissa.
Very odd to have three Elissas but they all collided in a troubled teen camp.

The author would love you to believe that the troubled teen camp that the girls' parents paid for was the basis of their untimely demise.
The author provides some facts/studies that demonized the troubled teen camp/schools.

Further, she brings up the media sensations of Nicole Ritchie, Paris Hilton, etc.

Yet, this is all superficial. She was friends with Elissa, but they parted ways right around the age of 14. When Elissa was kicked out of private school for sex(?)...this wasn't clear. they barely knew each other when Elissa died from encephalitis.

The author didn't know the other two girls, Alissa and Alyssa. They were friends of Elissa NOT the author. so the author stalked Elissa's facebook page to gather information.

The story, while entertaining, was jarring at how the author would insert herself into the story, for instance the while Elissa was experimenting with Oxy, I started Lorazepam. It was almost like the author needed to validate her own self because Elissa was doing heavier drugs.

I kept wondering who was this book for? This is not a true crime book. This is not an expose of suburbia, there was no deep dive into that. This was not a condemnation of what makes a celebrity.
It felt like this was an apology letter to Elyssa for not being a good friend.

Who would read this? I thought it would be more academic, more true crime. but it wasn't. It was just three lives that were cut too short.

From the first page of The Elissas, I knew that I would speed read this book. Samantha Leach shares the stories of three teenagers who all met while at a Troubled Teen Industry school in Nebraska and introduces you to additional individuals who knew them at different points in their lives. Elissa, Alyssa, and Alissa were bonded during their time together, with similar partying habits and lifestyles. Within 8 years of leaving Ponca Pines, all three would be dead. Leach grew up with Elissa and felt haunted by her passing. Their lives and deaths left a lasting impact on Leach, which she explores in The Elissas.

I highlighted many excerpts from The Elissas, beginning with chapter 1. Leach writes, "Beauty as far as I could tell, didn't exempt you from any of life's hardships. But in Elissa's mind, beauty equaled absolution. That's what society had instructed her, anyway...Like many young women who grew up ingesting the detritus of our culture's obsession with attractive women, Elissa bought into the false promise that good looks would grant her immunity from her inner, unspoken pain." This criticism of pop culture's beauty standards and fixation stood out to me, as this had a negative impact on Elissa's life.

Leach pairs stories about Elissa, Alyssa, and Alissa with research and statistics to show readers how their stories connect to others across the US. I recommend this book to anyone interested in a deeper dive about the Troubled Teen Industry and how these environments affect individuals' paths differently.

Thank you to NetGalley, Samantha Leach and Legacy Lit Hachette Book Grouper an eARC to read and review with my own opinion!

I raced breathlessly through The Elissas, which is highly readable and has quite a hook: 3 spirited girls; 3 girls, spiraling out of control, who attended the same boarding school for troubled teens; three girls named Elissa, Alyssa and Alissa; three close friends with tattoos that said, SAVE OUR SOULS; 3 friends dead within a few years of each other. The other catch: the author, Samantha Leach, an editor and writer, was childhood best friends with one of the Elissas. Haunted by her friend's death at 18, and the survivor's guilt that came with it, Leach sets out to explore the interplay of things that led to these tragic deaths. She traces the trajectory of each girl's life, interviewing friends and family to take us closer into their worlds and into their last days, giving the book an intimate feel. What separates these three girls from the legions of other girls who have similar issues--depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and a preoccupation with pop culture and beauty? She lays quite a lot of weight on the therapeutic boarding school industry, where kids are often shamed into compliance and into molding themselves into a cisgender white cultural norm, since most of these kids come from affluent suburban families. After all, who else can afford the high cost of these programs? She also touches on the effect of the culture of the early 2000s, when Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, Lindsay Lohan, the Kardashians and other beautiful young adults ran wild and fast, often flaunting their out-of-control partying and other risky behaviors. The book is most interesting as a story of three girls' lives. Sometimes the editorializing can feel like armchair psychology, mostly because there are so many complex factors at play here (addiction, eating disorders, sex addiction, mental illness, cultural studies, divorce, the troubled teen industry). As someone who had a sister and a daughter go through the troubled teen industry, I have complex feelings about all of these issues. This book completely drew me in, though, because in telling the stories of these three girls, it left me with more questions than answers, and a feeling of "There but for the grace of God go we all."