Disclaimer: I have a lot to say about this, but I want to start with thanking netgalley for the opportunity to read this book. I received it for free in exchange for my honest review.

I read Go Ask Alice in 2019, and I pretty much knew from the get go it was BS. Starting with lsd and then going to weed? Literally who does that? No one. Second it didn't read like something a teenager wrote either, even if it was all over the place and didn't make sense. And it wasn't hard for me to find the author information online. However I always wondered how tf she got away with it, and I've always wanted to know more information, so Rick Emerson writing this is a hero for doing the research for me lol.
When James Frey was exposed for being a fraud with A Million Little Pieces he was torn to shreds online and on TV. Yet Beatrice Sparks faced no repercussions for sending the entire country into a FRENZY with her books? None at all? God the poor families that were hurt by her actions..
Anyways, this book goes into detail with extensive research and the author ties together everything with real events that happened in the 70s and 80s. I didn't even know Jay's Journals played a big part in the satanic panic, for instance, or that Go Ask Alice influenced the war on drugs. The author did a really good job with his research and clearly took his time with it. I also appreciate all the different angles he took, and the fact that he spoke to people who knew "Jay" and "Alice" and the other people that Beatrice Fraud wrote about. She's been dead since 2012, but she didn't seem to show remorse about her actions. She was a miserable fraud in the body of a human being that "just wanted to be somebody."

Thanks again to netgalley and Rick Emerson for giving me an e-ARC copy of this book.

thanks to the publisher & NetGalley for my advanced copy, I will also highlight it closer to the publish date on my blog:


I requested this book because the title and the blurb caught my attention; I was one of those teens who read the paperback of Go Ask Alice by Anonymous. It was a battered copy that was passed from girl to girl in my early high school years because some of the mothers did not want their child to read it. There was much hype given to the plot of the story and because it centered around illegal drugs and teen-aged sex, it raised some red flags for the parents and the PTA.

This copy I just read by Rick Emerson is based upon all the evidence he collected to prove that author Beatrice Sparks was a fake; she wrote stories that she pretended to be given by distressed teens and then "edited" them. Go Ask Alice sold many, many copies for years afterwards and praise from reviewers in the time before the internet, so fact-checking book information was sparse. Beatrice Sparks was greatly annoyed that she couldn't take ownership of the best-seller, so in future printings it said written by Anonymous and edited by Dr. Beatrice Sparks, child psychologist.

**Spoiler warning in next paragraph only, for the original Go Ask Alice, in case you actually want to read the one from 1971**


The plot of Go Ask Alice was purported to be the true story of a teen-- from around the late '60s-- who started out as a middle-class, average teen until she starts hanging out with kids who threw drug parties. Alice decides the drugs release all her bad thoughts & fears about her body image and her life in general. Her life takes a downward spiral when she craves stronger drugs, indiscriminate sex, running away, and has a mental breakdown. In the end of the diary, the parents of Alice say she died of a drug overdose, unknown whether it was suicide or accidental, and they wanted to share the diary to help other families but wanted it kept anonymous.

***

**Spoiler-ish details from Unmask Alice in next 2 paragraphs, 2022**

Mr. Emerson does several years of research and rewriting, entering the time of the pandemic which makes his work even harder to fulfill. His story covers other side plots that are intertwined to the book, either by personal connection or events in history: the Vietnam War, the rise of LSD, the repressed memory Satanic hysteria in grown ups and children alike-- and sadly-- another deceased teen's diary "edited" by Beatrice Sparks, called Jay's Journal. (I never read this, thank goodness). This diary was written by a male teen who committed suicide and was from a small Utah town of devout Mormons. It gets a great deal of coverage in the book; it's an actual notebook handed over to the author from the boy's mother and Sparks adds an overwhelming amount of fake content, to spin his sad thoughts into a Satan worship conspiracy, making his diary into a book dealing with sacrifices, blood ceremonies, and candlelit gatherings in cemeteries. The "true diary" rendering would at least have spared the family of the boy's strict Mormon family, but Sparks adds enough true content that allows the town residents to realize who it's about and spread the rumors.

These are not the only "diary" books written by Beatrice Sparks, but none of the others make a splash like those first two did. And to add to the lies included in her books, she starts embellishing her credentials and suddenly she's a PhD, a school psychologist, a therapist for troubled teens, and on and on. It's amazing that only a small amount of people doubt the verity of her writing and her work credentials, but for the most part people are swayed into believing all her hype and Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal still sell at a decent clip.

***

my thoughts:

I read Go Ask Alice as a curious teen. When something is forbidden, it makes it even more exciting, as the book was for me at the time. Now, at my mature age, I decided to read Unmask Alice as a curious grandmother. I still remember some of the book (I also saw the TV movie) and I thought this would be an interesting reading experience. Unfortunately it fell short, as the story jumped between many POVs, and forward and backward chapters, making this sometimes be confusing to read. The classification for this book on Goodreads is nonfiction, so it bothered me that Emerson expressed his personal feelings about certain topics and people (as example: when discussing religions he used a sarcastic or snarky tone showing what his real opinion was for Mormons, but also Beatrice Sparks). I was surprised at his tone of voice in some paragraphs. He says every quote is true as written and all the contents are as true as he could portray it. I don't doubt all the hard work he put into getting this book out. The writing, while extensive in details, also reads in part as an opinion piece, such as a true crime podcaster might interject their thoughts on their subjects.

All in all, it satisfied an itch I had as a teen to find out whether Go Ask Alice was truly a teen's diary. This book about Beatrice Sparks, who fooled many critics, publishers, agents, and readers with her fake "diaries" and her own elevated qualifications, is a good read for that niche of readers who came of age in the '70s and knew about poor "Alice". Others may not find it impelling enough to finish though.

3/5 for reading enjoyment

“It was overwhelming. You couldn’t begin to process a thousand bombings or a thousand angry prisoners, or--God help you--seven thousand pages showing that the war was a pointless death trip.
But the story of one sad girl? That could break the hardest heart.”

“Unmask Alice” grabbed me from the very beginning, sent me down several rabbit holes, and led me to ask many people what they remembered about “Go Ask Alice.” For someone who was born nearly thirty years after the book was published, I remembered it still being recommended in my early teens and probably read it around its fortieth anniversary. (Hopefully, I took it with a grain of salt but the issues presented were far from where my life would take me so who knows.)

Emerson tells a chronological story of how the actual author, not just editor, Beatrice Sparks, of “Go Ask Alice” and “Jay’s Journal”, took advantage of the panicked parents of the 1970s and 1980s to sell outrageous tales of youth gone wrong. Emerson is able to connect each event to the next in a way that doesn’t give too much credit to Sparks’ books while still using her books to explain how society saw them as a nice way to justify their fears of rampant youth drug use, satanism, and other bombastic behaviors of the era. Other authors may have ventured into the correlation-as-causation territory but by presenting it chronologically and with a variety of news stories, you can see how Sparks’ books were very much a catalyst for some of the feelings of the era.

Since a lot of my history knowledge ends before the 1970s and 80s, “Unmask Alice” also provided a detailed recap of what was going on and why sentiments were the way they were during those decades. I appreciated that Emerson didn’t try to over-explain things but gave just enough detail for someone like me who didn’t know or forgot what particular historical events were going on. This is one of the things that led to a lot of searching and adding things to my reading list.

Readers who are familiar with true crime podcasts that have explored these decades might want to gloss over some of the more historical details but they’re brief and still might be of interest.

Emerson tells a chronological story of how the actual author, not just editor, Beatrice Sparks, of “Go Ask Alice” and “Jay’s Journal”, took advantage of the panicked parents of the 1970s and 1980s to sell outrageous tales of youth gone wrong. Emerson is able to connect each event to the next in a way that doesn’t give too much credit to Sparks’ books while still using her books to explain how society saw them as a nice way to justify their fears of rampant youth drug use, satanism, and other bombastic behaviors of the era. Other authors may have ventured into the correlation-as-causation territory but by presenting it chronologically and with a variety of news stories, you can see how Sparks’ books were very much a catalyst for some of the feelings of the era.

Thank you to NetGalley and BenBella Books for this advanced copy of a five-star book! I can’t wait to recommend it!

Thomas Midgley Jr is widely known as “the most dangerous inventor in history” — being the one who proposed adding lead to gasoline to prevent “knocking” (which led to workplace poisoning and widespread air pollution) and inventing CFCs for refrigeration (which caused the hole in the ozone layer) — but a name less generally known is Beatrice Sparks; perhaps the most dangerous author in history. As Rick Emerson explains in the fascinating Unmask Alice, Sparks’ two most famous works — Go Ask Alice and Jay’s Journal — would go on to have long-lasting, damaging effects on American society and bring wealth and professional esteem to a woman who was a fraud and exploiter of others’ pain (and not even a very good writer). Emerson tells a compelling story here, underpinned by thorough research and legwork, and while it may come as cold comfort to the people that Sparks hurt during her lifetime, there is some level of satisfaction in unmasking an impostor and properly defining her legacy. Recommended for all, but especially for those of us who grew up on the lies.

📖: Unmask Alice
✍🏼: Rick Emerson
💁🏻‍♀️: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️// 5
🗓: June 7, 2022

🤔💭: First off, thank you to NetGalley and BenBella Books for providing me an eARC of this book and I am voluntarily leaving my review! Emerson definitely knows his material in this great piece of investigative work that centers around the obsessive and determined Beatrice Sparks, the con artist who is the “Anonymous” writer of the two books in the 1970’s “Go Ask Alice” and “Jay’s Journal.” Both were centered around two teens, two diaries, and two scandals. The one was based on a teen girl who was hooked on drugs and the hardships she endured until she died and the other about a boy that was lured into devil worshipping. Jay’s Journal spurred the Satanic Panic which lasted for decades and shattered many lives and communities. Unmask Alice is about this serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a boys identity, and exploited two suicidal teenagers to swindle her way to the National Book Awards. This was a very interesting story to read and I would be curious now to read those two works after this material revealed in this book.

✅: I would definitely recommend checking this one out if you are interested in investigative type pieces.

One of the breakout books of the YA genre was Go Ask Alice, the purported diary of a nameless teenage drug addict and runaway. However, the story behind that book and its follow-up, Jay's Journal, is far more convoluted and amorally exploitative than anyone would expect.

I have actually read Go Ask Alice. I was interested in it because of the controversy surrounding its reality, and reading the protagonist's wild dash through various illicit drugs made it pretty clear that it was indeed not real. The overblown writing and frantic plot rather made it a pain to read. But, as Emerson reveals in this book, Go Ask Alice was indeed an enormous hit, winning awards and selling millions of copies.

The story behind the book is far more fascinating though, I found. Emerson deftly weaves the tale of conservative America in the seventies and eighties into the story, creating a vivid backdrop to the hoax. The story has jaw-dropping twists and turns, and I spent a great deal of time astonished by Beatrice Sparks's audacity and how she kept managing to get away with things. I also appreciated the emphasis on veracity that Emerson had in this book, which really is necessary after the murkiness of Go Ask Alice and the books that followed it.

However, I did think the section that centered on Jay's Journal was a little overly long. We learn a lot about the real and tragic life of Alden Barrett, whose actual diary Sparks perverted for publication, and Emerson does not pull any punches in exploring Alden's story. Unfortunately I thought the book would have worked a bit better if he had! It's a slightly odd change of pace to be pulled out of the main story for so long, waiting to be braided back in.

Ultimately, a really interesting subject, and a well-written book.

A generation or two will have read Go Ask Alice and perhaps others of the “diaries” mentioned in this book. This is a must-read companion to those as well as a useful reminder to be conscious of perspectives, sources and agendas. Really thorough and well researched, this book asks pointed questions about motivations and puts books like Go Ask Alice in the context of the author and the time in which they were written.