A wild, researched romp, Unmask Alice is a dynamic read, placing the infamous Go Ask Alice and its diary companions in their proper cultural time and context, adding dimension to current conversations in our zeitgeist.

Over three hundred pages filled with interviews & conversations, necessary background information, and peripheral consequences, Rick Emerson lays out the messy, complicated ripple effects borne of Beatrice Sparks' pen. Sparks, a devout Mormon and writer, is a scammer in the truest sense of the world and has profoundly shaped American history in the way that only ultra-religious Christians seem to be able to—both in the 20th and the 21st centuries.

Emerson begins with an exploration of the origins of LSD, which led to the creation of Go Ask Alice. A runaway bestseller, Go Ask Alice gripped the nation with its teenage voice and it functioned as a warning that even a good Christian white girl could get caught up in seedy situations. The book remained a cultural cornerstone even in my adolescence in the 2000s, replaced only by the more relevant and engaging Crank series by Ellen Hopkins—that my peers regularly recommended Hopkins over 'Anonymous' (Sparks) is perhaps telling of the slightly-flimsy relatability of Go Ask Alice amongst POC.

From there, Emerson shifts to talk about the clash between more liberal teenagers and their religious confines, namely the specific strife of teenager Alden Barrett of Pleasant Grove, Utah. Barrett's mother found his diaries after he committed suicide and in an attempt to shed light on the struggles of her son, passed the diaries onto Sparks for her to edit into something like Go Ask Alice. Instead, Sparks put on her scammer hat yet again and turned Barrett's diaries into a lie, penning entries herself that resulted in the book Jay's Journal. The false diaries served as a 'warning' about the rise of satanism amongst teenagers, sparking then fanning the flames of the Satanic Panic of the 80s.

Emerson then circles back to Sparks herself and her sources for Go Ask Alice, revealing that though the diary may not be real, the person whose life it takes after was. Sparks' scams went unrevealed for decades.

The ire and controversies dredged up by Sparks' publications, from Go Ask Alice to the similarly-infamous Jay's Journal, are astonishing machinations against the changing tides of culture, from the free love movement to women's rights to the simple acts of teenagers learning they have autonomy—or rather, that they should.

A fascinating read that one must take with a pinch of salt.

I’ll tell you one thing that reading this book has taught me. Just because a book is published as a memoir doesn’t make it non-fiction. I think as a reader I always assumed that the branding of the genre of a book was accurate. This was the 1st time I heard about the book called “Go Ask Alice”. I also had never heard about the author or the controversy that this book held. I will admit it did take a minute to get into this book, I really did find the subject matter discussed to be interesting.

The story takes place during a time when America was experiencing the “satanic panic”. Communities were running rampart with beliefs that teens were joining cults and committing hideous crimes. In comes a woman named Beatrice Sparks. She anonymously wrote a “memoir” of a teenage girl who allegedly took LSD & other drugs and ended up overdosing. Parents at that time who read this book were horrified and feared for their own teens and kids. There was a fear about this new drug LSD and the hallucinations it was causing to its users. With good reason this book caused a serious fear in its readers. What makes the whole situation it very sad is that the author took advantage of families who later would trust her with their son’s journal who had committed suicide. The family had believed the author when she stated that "Go Ask Alice" was from interviews and a dairy of a struggling drug addicted teen. Readers, including the family believed that "Go Ask Alice" was a diary documenting the last days of Alice's short lived life. It ended up actually being a total fraud.

The book was a slow burn for my liking, but as I stated before it was an interesting and good read. You can tell the author did his research and I think it shows in the pages of the book. I did like that the book has photos of the people and I liked knowing what happened to everyone who played a role in "Jays Journal" & "Go Ask Alice" & even the author herself.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'd like to thank the publisher and NetGalley a chance at giving this a read.

As a teen, I knew of the book Go Ask Alice. I remember a couple lockemates in High School absolutely obsessed over this 'journal' and indicated how sad they were over the girl. ... I think it was at that time, due to the internet, I heard rumblings that the story was a lie and that the word was coming out that it was a fake journal. (This was 2000's, so, everything was a bombshell when it debuted on the internet.)

To this day I still haven't read the book. I think I flipped through it once but the writing felt so;... all over the place (and not that the person was supposed to be a teen or a 'high' teen), but it came across try hard / fake. I also was reading other books not written for a teenage audience at that time (Anne Rice).

Now that the story is out and that people know this woman was a crook, I was very interested in this expose.

I think while I enjoyed the content, I enjoyed the linear story, the book had a lot of faults:

1.) The writing is absurd. I was taught in school that any one who writes a paper or even a book should be documenting their reference. At the end of this book, the author says that he didn't because it's all available on the internet. I get that, bud, but if you want to make your book look good and, if you want people to respect what you're writing, please for the love of god follow the rules of book writing and documenting facts / citing your sources.
2.) His weird interjections and strange narrative that he gives the author. He seems to get into her head and writes as if he is her, portraying her thoughts. He too goes over this at the end of the book by saying that he inferred it from her writing and that it made sense and didn't seem to abstract. Bud, again, no. I know the woman was a little shit of the publishing industry but unless I know for a fact that she said what she said and or did what she did, I don't want to read your real life fanfiction.
3.) The way this book jumps around and how the information s presented. At times it is linear, at times it is not. You aren't really quite sure of the timeline of events and you have to pay attention to the dates mentioned throughout to figure what part of the year we're in or what decade.

The author was able to interview and gleam information from things written to him on the side, but again, the writing and the citation of information is poor so you have no idea where that is in the book. (One chapter at the end talks about his travel to a library and to someone who now owns the house of the boy she butchered the journals of to make Jay's Journal.) But I feel there was other times in the text where he interviewed or got information and didn't cite it.

The information is great, and I get it's all available on the internet. For people like me who want something complied and or published with some sort of air of authority, just because you wanted skirt the rules doesn't make your book look official It makes it look lazy.

I first read Go Ask Alice in middle school. It could have been the second Real Book I had ever read. I remember reading it weeks after I finished Diary Of A Young Girl by Anne Frank. You know, an actually true account of a life which ended tragically. My school teacher saw how moved I was by Anne Frank's diary and suggested Go Ask Alice. The big draw was how Go Ask Alice wasn't that long ago, unlike Anne Frank. Go Ask Alice featured The Beatles and TV! Oh, how little I knew.

Unmask Alice reveals the absolute miracle of Go Ask Alice. Between the war on drugs, the sexual revolution, LSD, Charles Manson, and Richard Nixon, author Beatrice Sparks found a hit at a moment America was scared. It's fear mongering, propaganda, phony bologna. Unmask Alice delves into Sparks and her exhaustive attempts at fame. However, I found toward the middle half Unmask Alice loses its steam and focuses on the real story of Alden Barrett, the inspiration of the Go Ask Alice follow-up Jay's Journal. I understand Barrett and his family deserve their truth told, but it doesn't make for entertaining or revealing literature. Unfortunately, Rick Emerson's lack of confidence is on display the moment you crack open the book. I don't know why he fet the need to stake a massive CAUTION: THIS BOOK WILL BORE YOU EVENTUALLY BUT STICK WITH IT sign at the beginning. I've never seen a nonfiction book so unsure of its story, its sources, and its structure. It left a bad taste in my mouth which lingered throughout its nearly 400 pages.

I remember reading the 'anonymous' diary, "Go Ask Alice" when I was in middle school. It seemed pretty scandalizing back in the day, but I had no idea how much controversy was actually attached to the story behind the book.

Rick Emerson has done what good non-fiction writers do: crafted a book that reads like a fast-paced tale that kept me glued to each page, extremely curious what could possibly happen next in this bizarre story. Turns out there was a mastermind behind "Go Ask Alice" - a woman named Beatrice Sparks, who had no qualms about inventing much of her own history, as well as how she 'acquired' this diary. Her story is so crazy and comes with so many twists that it totally brings to mind that saying that truth is stranger than fiction.

Emerson also does a masterful job at incorporating history and culture into each section of this book. There was a lot I didn't know about topics like Nixon's War on Drugs and the Satanic Panic period during the 1980s. The facts given were so colorful and interesting that it didn't feel like I was reading a non-fiction book at all.

This is my favorite kind of book - one where I've learned a ton and felt like I came to truly know a lot of the real people involved. I absolutely cannot wait to see what real-life events Emerson turns his attention to next. I'll be first in line to read it!

Rick Emerson’s Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries (Penguin Random House 2022) is a whiplash of a book. Detailing the rise of the infamous published diary Go Ask Alice (1971), the life of a woman named Beatrice Sparks who alleged to have counselled the diary’s subject and published the diary after the subject’s death via a drug overdose, and the subsequent Satanic Panic and war on drugs in the United States that followed Go Ask Alice’s publication, Unmask Alice is more than an exposé—it’s a cultural study of one of the United States’ most tumultuous periods.
A quote that perfectly explains the long and sordid history of Go Ask Alice comes near the book’s close, when Emerson states that “[i]n December 2020, Simon & Schuster released a fiftieth-anniversary addition of Go Ask Alice. Its inside copyright page says ‘fiction,’ but its Library of Congress entry says ‘not fiction’”. Whether or not Alice is fabrication is one of the main questions of Emerson’s book, questions he attempts to answer as he sifts though the life of Beatrice Sparks, a supposed PhD psychologist who found (or was given, her story continually shifted) a diary by a patient who overdosed on drugs after a long struggle with homelessness, sex work, and familial strife. Emerson follows Alice’s journey though the publication process and outlines the frankly shocking lack of checks and balances done on Sparks and the manuscript itself. Inconsistencies were not difficult to find, but were overlooked nevertheless. This part of the book was well-researched, thorough, and left me scratching my head as a reader. How was this book allowed to be presented as a real diary, when it clearly was a piece of fiction written shamelessly by Beatrice Sparks? Emerson does a careful job of explaining the kind of person Beatrice was and how, through sheer dumb luck and perseverance, she convinced the publishing industry and the public that Alice was a real diary.
Although the journey through Sparks’ early life was a wild ride, things only get crazier from there. The book’s coverage of Alden Barrett’s life and death, which becomes the subject of Spark’s next project Jay’s Journal (1979), is devastating and infuriating. Emerson explains in stark detail how Sparks not only profited off a tragic death by suicide, but details how Sparks took Alden’s real journal and embellished it to such an extent that it connected Alden’s death with the occult, foregoing the complex reality of depression that Alden experienced. This portion of the book goes to great lengths to show us not only the depth of Sparks’ culpability in sullying Alden’s memory, but it also links Jay’s Journal with the Satanic Panic that would eventually grip the United States to disastrous results. This section of the book not only attempts to reclaim a bit of Alden’s lost voice, but it displays for readers how fabrications like Jay’s Journal started an immense moral panic in the United States. You will learn so much from this detailed and well-researched portion of the book.

Perhaps my favorite parts of the book, however, are the sections where Emerson tries to untangle Alice’s legacy. In my own teenage years in the early 2000’s, I read Alice after finding the book at the library and being compelled by its promise of an anonymous diary. I, like many people who have read it, assumed it was a discovered diary of a young, troubled teenager. One section of Emerson’s book described perfectly how I felt about Alice after first reading it:
“Beneath the dated jargon and drug-porn storyline, Alice acted the way you sometimes felt. If you kept a journal, or filled endless pages with dark, haunted poetry, or felt the stab of a singer speaking directly to you, so sweet and sad your heart could barely take it, you had a kindred spirit in Alice. Fiction or not, she was real. And she understood”
I couldn’t relate to Alice’s running away, or her drug use, or her sex work, but I could relate to the way she felt. I could relate to the larger-than-life teenage emotions that lead her down such a path. And although Emerson’s book spends a lot of time doling out responsibility for Alice’s farce, he does not take for granted why and how this book meant something to people, for better or for worse. It is this nuanced perspective that made me really appreciate this book, and it is for this nuanced perspective that I recommend it.

I loved this book. If you grew up in the US in the 1970s, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find this as compelling as I did.

It’s the story behind the story of Go Ask Alice, the early 70s equivalent of “This is your brain on drugs” (cue sizzle of frying eggs). If you read Go Ask Alice at a particularly young and impressionable age, as I did, it may have shaped how you thought about recreational drug use for years. Older, more sophisticated readers saw through the plot holes more easily.

Emerson’s book is the deep back story about the plot holes and the woman who wrote Go Ask Alice and similar materials. Spoiler: it’s not really a diary of a young girl. I don’t want provide real spoilers, so I’ll just say it’s a fascinating and seemingly well researched exploration of this text and it’s role in larger contexts, such as US drug policies of the 1970s and the emergent Satanic Panic of the 1980s. I couldn’t put it down.

ARC copy provide by #NetGalley in exchange for honest review.

This was a truly fascinating story that followed the life and lies of the author (anonymous) of Go Ask Alice. Beatrice Sparks was the momentum behind the book that took America by storm and scared millions of parents as well. Told as a diary sort of story, it depicts a young girl's descent into a world of drugs and an early death. The overwhelming question is, Was it true, or did S[parks embellish it so that it bore little resemblance to what really happened?

Sparks was ambitious, eager to rise above her poor start and so she continued to write these "scare tactic books claiming along the way to be a psychologist and having a PhD, none of which was true. She finagled her way to making her books become in some areas best sellers and even today Go Ask Alice is still in publication often gaining a new group of followers.

The book's veracity makes for an interesting commentary on whether something that is untrue can and di effect generations of teens and their parents, teachers, counselors, etc?

Can people be so convinced of the truthfulness of something that they refuse to see the obvious lies? Interesting in this time we live in how much with the addition of the Internet, we believe the untruths and lies that are perpetrated.

The author leaves it up to us to decide that the good the book did in some cases outweighs the fact that it and its follow up stories were basically lies.

Very enjoyable story and one I recommend with thanks to Rick Emerson, and NetGalley for a copy. The book has already published.

In writing Unmask Alice, Rick Emerson has prepared a remarkable piece of investigative journalism. Meticulously researched and extremely well written, he has exposed an enormous fraud that began at the White House and spread worldwide.

In the late 1960's illegal drugs, including LSD,were daily increasing in popularity. When Art Linkletter, a well-known talk show host lost his daughter to a bad trip, he needed something to blame. Richard Nixon's political ambitions were failing and he needed a new platform. Together, they created "The War on Drugs!"

Beatrice Sparks was a failed author and pseudo-psychologist. She had created a fictional diary of a teenage girl. It was sold, along with its nondescript title to this project. As the editor was working on the book, a co-worker walked down the hall singing "White Rabbit". That's right - Go Ask Alice, which became the parents'guide to teen drug use, and sold as a memoir, is nothing but a work of fiction!

I would highly recommend Unmask Alice to all of those misguided by Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a free digital copy of this title to review from Net Galley.

#UnmaskAlice#NetGalley

It’s common knowledge that <i>Go Ask Alice</i>, one of the most censored books in school libraries, was marketed as the true diary of a 15-yr-old drug user who descended into a world of drug use, prostitution, and eventual death. The truth is, it was complete fiction, written by Beatrice Sparks as a cautionary tale.

Beatrice also penned several “anonymous” diaries, including, <i>Jay’s Journal</i>, a diary of a young man who committed suicide. To spice up the story, she added scenes of the occult and Satanism, which helped fuel the “Satanic Panic”.

While the facts are fascinating and it is a compelling look into how easy it is to get people to believe nearly anything, I didn’t care for how the book was written. The author has a tendency to insert himself into the narrative. Did he really have to say “humans had just walked on the f*cking moon?” Very classy and professional.

It's rather ironic given the subject of his book, that the book lacks citations and he attributes thoughts and motivations to people, when he has no way of knowing what these people were thinking. Is this book fiction or non-fiction?

The author says one of his benchmarks for accuracy and style was Erik Larson. (um, sorry, he failed miserably). He also says his inspiration to write the book happened when he saw a literal blue flash across his field of vision. When it receded, he had his idea to write this book. Hmmm….

In the afterward, the author says his book didn’t need citations because a simple web search or phone call will yield the information? Really? As a reader I’m supposed to search the internet and/or make phone calls to ensure that what I’m reading is correct? I actually did google his reporting of the deaths during the Attica Uprising of 1971, and found out his facts were wrong. Which leads me to wonder what else is wrong.

Do yourself a favor and, instead, google Beatrice Sparks. The article will tell you all you need to know.

I never caught onto the craze surrounding Go Ask Alice, and I'm surprised after reading this...it sounds like a book I would have devoured in my high school days. Somehow it just never crossed my path. Anyway, this book opened up my eyes to a crazy piece of history I knew nothing about. It turns out, the woman who wrote Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal was a total fame-hungry con artist. She manipulated a grieving family who trusted her with their son's story in hopes of saving other young kids and turned it into a whole story that tainted the family and their name. Emerson wrote this story in such a compelling way and I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.

After reading Go Ask Alice as a teenager, believing it was a true diary, this book is an eye opener as to the real author.

This was a really interesting book. As a teenager, I read Go Ask Alice and it was terrifying and memorable.
It was sad that it took this long to refute the book that so many kids read and received bad information about. I think today, kids are more sophisticated and would see through the book, or at least would in most places! Unmask Alice is a sad, infuriating read but good to know the other side of the story about Go Ask Alice!

I was approximately in the 4th or 5th grade when I discovered the classic 90s genre of books aimed at pre-teen and teen girls - the dear diary format. Go Ask Alice stands vividly in my mind, and it always confused me as a young reader because it was impossible to fully tell if it was real or not. This was pre-google being everywhere. As I grew up, I realized all of the issues with the book and its portrayal of addiction. In recent years, several prominent podcasts have tackled this text and placed it in the context of the moral panic of the 90s. Emerson does a good job of capturing the period, even if some of the assertions in the book connecting the Satanic Panic are less stable at some point. As a child of this period, it's fascinating to revisit this time and genre with adult eyes.

I didn't remember much about Go Ask Alice and the hysteria around it as I was quite young when it all happened but I remember reading it in my teen years with a knowledge of the fact that it was fiction. This book was really eye opening on the society at play during these years and how our society is very much unchanged in parts of the world with similar beliefs.

I wanted to like this one since I read several of the books Beatrice Sparks wrote like Go Ask Alice and then was outraged when I found out they weren’t really written by troubled teenagers. I felt like this book jumped around too much.

Unmask Alice is a thrilling ride of a book. I definitely did not expect to be so enthralled in this book but it definitely kept me reading more and more.

This was so fascinating! It almost reads like a screenplay. I could see the movie in my head as we uncovered more and more of this woman's scandalous story. The fact that the world was held in a grip of nearly mass hysteria because of one woman's manipulative desperation for celebrity is equal parts horrific and compelling.

Author Rick Emerson has truly done incredibly thorough research. I love that he chose to present this non-fiction story in a fast-paced timeline format jumping from event to event and from perspective to perspective. It kept me sucked into the book.

I enjoyed hearing the true story behind the fictional and atrocious Jay's Journal. I got lost in Alden Barrett's beautiful story of the pain of living with his misdiagnosed/undiagnosed depression and almost forgot about the rest of the story I was reading.
I will say nothing more because I don't want to spoil you any further than you may have been. Do not google the tale ahead of time. You will be far more satisfied if you let Rick Emerson tell you this well-crafted true story.

Thank you to Rick Emerson, BenBella Books, and NetGalley for a chance to review this book.

I loved this! I then went back and reread Go Ask Alice, Jay’s Journal etc. very eye opening. This is a book that will definitely stay with me.

Go Ask Alice existed as a rite of passage when I was in the sixth grade back in 1984 like Forever or Flowers in the Attic. It presented an unofficial entry into adult reading and situations. It was another book to hide in a drawer from my mom and secretly consume.

Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson reveals the origins of the book and others like Jay's Journal. Kids who came of age in the 1970s/1980s/1990s, maybe even beyond that to more contemporary times, will remember Go Ask Alice. It was a seminal teen diary of drug use and debauchery by a tragic yet anonymous teen figure.

Meet Beatrice Sparks, a noted therapist and psychologist, who "finds" the diary and starts a revolution with this and other diaries written by troubled teens. Is what she discovered real or fabricated? Is Dr. Sparks who she claims she is? Many discrepancies and contradictions surface. Some will infuriate you with this supposed "expert" who convinced herself that she was helping children and society. Meanwhile, she apparently used these diaries as stepping stones to gain wealth, respect, and a fraudulent career.

In this book, the author also covers Jay's Journal, which I never finished because of the dark subject matter. Reading some of the excerpts made me glad I avoided it. However, I was so angry about this particular book's origins and believe it was instrumental in sparking the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. If you recently watched Stranger Things, it is depicted on a small but fairly accurate scale. RIP Eddie Munson.

After reading Unmask Alice, though, it will give you pause. Could this furor over the Satanic Panic, which I just read may be resurfacing, have been avoided or patted down? Who knows? And how could the truth of the journal be so warped and put a decent family in the crosshairs of a scared, impressionable public, ruining their lives in the process?

Either way, Unmask Alice is a riveting book that demonstrates how any teens suffering from mental illness, addiction, and the isolation, confusion, and pressure of adolescence never receive proper help. Nowadays, it's better but nowhere near where it should be.

With humor and tamped down outrage, the author pokes holes in both books and subsequent ones to shine a light on what the possible truth is. If you've ever been curious about these famous diaries and who wrote them, you'll need to read this book. My curiosity has been quenched.