I read "Go Ask Alice" as a young teen, and it scared the crap out of me. I heard several years ago some rumblings about Beatrice Sparks' deceit. My feelings were ambivalent. On one hand. I felt betrayed by her. But on the other hand, I felt the book still had a good message.
After reading this I am, alas, still ambivalent. However, I am also a bit angrier at Sparks now that I know everything and everyone she manipulated. She was a conniving opportunist who didn't care who she hurt, or lied to, in order to get her long-sought fame.
The book is well-researched and greatly informative. However, the author inserts himself into the work far too much
His biting, often snide remarks affect his credibility. Though he is not as discredited as Sparks herself, his unprofessional sniping did often make me wonder if he didn't have a personal ax to grind here.
Ultimate, I'm still kind of where I was when I started this book--can we separate an author from the works she created? Does deception on the part of the author completely negate the message she was trying to convey?
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I read Go Ask Alice in the mid ‘70’s, when I was 11 or 12. It was scary and compelling and scandalous! A few years later, in high school, I participated in a skit presented to our local school board protesting the banning of this book in our school libraries. I loved Rick Emerson’s exploration of the origin of the book and of the legacy of Beatrice Sparks. The book is a quick read, detail rich and well researched and written. I would love to see it adapted as a documentary on Netflix.

Clear, well-written story of the truth behind the book "Go Ask Alice." Recommended for those who love sharp non-fiction writing and/or are interested in the origin story of this book and other strange happenings in the 80s. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

I was obsessed with the anonymous diaries when I was young. Probably too young, but I was a voracious reader and my mom trusted me. “Go Ask Alice” and “It Happened to Nancy” were two of my favorites. I was shocked to discover as I got older that they were written by the same woman. This book takes a look at how Beatrice Sparks conned her way into bestseller lists and into literary fame.

Starting with Alice, the book describes the state of the world that helped make Alice the success that it became, and later other books that seemed ripped from the headlines. While the title references Alice, a huge chunk is devoted to the family that Sparks betrayed and ruined, the Barretts, and the way her bastardized version of their son, Alden’s, journal contributed to the Satanic Panic.

Unbiased and well researched, this book is a must read for fans of the anonymous novels. It can get a bit information heavy at times, but it helps to understand the world in which these books thrived.

I read "Go ask Alice" as a young person in the '90s and I have never forgotten her stories - button, button, who's got the button? But the strange stories didn't really make sense even to my inexperienced 12 year old self. How? Why? They were truly indelible - and truly propaganda. It's about time Alice farce was put to bed for good... The author who faked this story and other stories caused emotional harm to generations of children, sparking community panic and "witch hunts".

One of the hackiest pieces of nonfiction writing I’ve ever read.

For the first quarter of the book I kept thinking he was deliberately writing in the same florid, child like way that Go Ask Alice was (maybe as a joke? The author appears to be a radio personality) but no, he’s just that poor and flowery of a writer.


He did a huge amount of speculation of what nearly every person in the book thought or felt in specific moments in ways he couldn’t possibly have known. Who knows what was in the mind of Sparks’ mother when she gave birth? The author seems to think he does. He does this for nearly every person he writes about. He writes out their innermost thoughts and motivations when there is no possible way he could know them. He’s very critical of Sparks not doing enough research and recycling her own work but a lot of this book is straight fiction. He clearly did do research and archival research (or hired someone to do so) but he bizarrely chose to rather than stick to facts to fantasize about the people and events and write how they were and how they felt when he really could have no idea. It’s a strange path for any nonfiction book but a truly bizarre choice for a book that is literally debunking faked teenage diaries. I am truly flabbergasted.

He also missed the biggest and most obvious subtext in Go Ask Alice—that the girl (whoever wrote her) was clearly attracted to women and didn’t seem to know or accept that. There is one brief mention where he talks about how the book might resonate with children struggling with identity but that’s it. I really wish someone more savvy and aware wrote this book. He failed so badly and now can’t imagine anyone else getting a book deal to write about the same “diary”.

His handling of the LDS Church was odd. He refused to call it that (or the Church of Latter-Day Saints” because it was “too long”, he “didn’t want to type it out” and could be confused with LSD which is frankly nonsensical. He clearly is contemptuous of the religion and is snide every time it comes up. He never really connects Sparks’ faith to Alice which was only sort of nominally Christian in theme—drugs are bad, families are good. It read like he was looking for an excuse to write about how he found the church strange.

He basically blames Sparks for sparking the Satanic Panic but doesn’t really give any details why beyond the fact that Sparks second ”diary” about “Jay’” came out in in 1978/1979. He mentions movies like the Exorcist but doesn’t seem to assign them as much weight as the this YA diary. Why not? Why were movies and books about satan so popular in this era? He never seems to think about it. Isn’t it more likely that she wrote Jay’s Journal (using a real life but non-satanic diary as reference) to capitalize on the satanic craze that had already been going on for years? The Exorcist, Amityville Horror, Wicker Man, Suspiria, The Omen, Demons of the Mind, and Rosemary’s Baby all predate the book by years. Yet he paints he paints her at the forefront. Why? Even Satan's School for Girls ( a TV movie that aired in 1973) explored the suicide connection. This was well trod territory by the late seventies (which was not “nearly 50 years” ago as he states in the epilogue) Surely her biggest crime was using a child’s real life as inspiration for her devil made me do it tale? He also never addressed that the Satanic Panic coincided with the rise of awareness of child abuse and that as improbable as it sounds, thinking your child was abused by Satan (or satanists) was better than believing that your loved ones were abusers.

He repeatedly points out that Sparks warped a real life child’s suicide into a money making Satanic panic book but then in his own epilogue he focuses on the music and movies Alden missed and points out had he lived, he could have seen Nixon removed from office. What? Why not that this child missed out on life, period not just Star Wars.

Yes, Sparks seems like a strange woman with a murky past and inflated (and invented) credentials but he seems to elevate her to a status in the general culture that doesn’t seem quite earned. If she was anything like how he guesses and implies, she might even have been pleased to see that he found her so important!

An aside but his referring to Toni Morrison as “articulate” made me cringe. I truly think he has much, much more in common with Sparks than he may want to believe or realize.

One last thing—

He doesn’t mention Linda Glovach who has been mentioned as a possible Go Ask Alice collaborator. No idea why not. I guess it didn’t fit his narrative.

Great idea for a book, I just wish any one else (maybe a journalist with a research background?) had written it. I don’t know why he did or how he got a book deal. It read like bad fiction straight out of a pulp novel in the best parts and bordered on nonsense in the worst. It really read like he didn’t know anything about drugs, science or teenage girls himself.

Where was his editor? Did he have one? He mentions that publishers don’t hire fact checkers for nonfiction, did he hire one himself? He says listing all his sources would be “impossible”. He also says that we might wonder “how he could possibly know that” but that he shortened a lot of it. I don’t know if to laugh or cry.

As a child of the just-say-no 80s, I definitely read GO ASK ALICE and still have a copy. (Sections that stand out: ironing your hair and rolling it in orange juice cans; the parts of the diary written on scraps of brown paper bags, that ending!) It wasn't until many years into adulthood that I found out it was a complete fake. UNMASK ALICE delves into the backstory of how ALICE was created and the reverberations that followed. This book has everything - sex, drugs, fraud, Mormons, satanic panic and more! I never read or even heard of any of the anonymous author's other books, but it's amazing how she got away with so much for so long and never faced any consequences. The author, Rick Emerson, has a conversational, casual, sometimes sarcastic writing style that some people might not like, but it's a quick, fascinating read.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this e-ARC.

Unfortunately, this was DNF for me. I might go back to it, because despite some of my frustrations, Unmask Alice was a compelling read. As a person who has worked closely with YA books, this slice of history is really intriguing. It's a truly wild story, one I was only vaguely aware of until recently. Emerson unveils the elaborate web of lies spun by author Beatrice Sparks, starting way before her unattributed smash-hit debut, Go Ask Alice. While Google wasn't around during Sparks heyday, it is still stunning to realize how many falsehood that would have been relatively easy to factcheck when unchallenged as she took advantage of grieving families and possibly single-handedly sparked Satanic Panic in the United States. And contributed to the start of the War on Drugs, which has ultimately ruined more lives than it ever aimed to help.

A precursor to moral panic drug fantasies such as CRANK by Ellen Hopkins, Beatrice Sparks lied her way into a prominent position as a writer/editor of books like Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal, books that were supposedly based on patient's experiences. Not only was Sparks not a counselor (or physicist or psychologist, she couldn't keep it straight herself) who never had patients, she was a high school drop out who regularly embellished her resume with faux degrees from UCLA and Berkley. Aspiring for a career as an author, she took advantage of families who experienced the untimely loss of their children and launched their tragedy into her paycheck. The story is a veritable trainwreck, and it's difficult for readers to look away.

But ultimately, Emerson's own mischaracterizations turned me off. Within the first hundred pages, as a way of setting the scene to let readers better recognize the time period, Emerson makes a reference to the Attica Prison Uprising and inaccurately claims that the prisoners murdered their hostages and guards. This is painfully untrue, and while a throwaway line within the text, it makes me wonder what else has been mischaracterize or unresearched.

My only other issue is the narrative's timeline jumping. Emerson might do better to utilize a more linear form of storytelling.

This is a solid true crime read for those that want to avoid the blood and gore. For your fans of The Feather Thief, The Library Book or Empire of Pain, Unmask Alice could be a great fit.

3.5 stars

"That's the dirty secret. Drugs work. When life hurts, they stop the pain. Who could argue with that?"

I'm a little too young (wow, I don't get to say that much anymore...) to have known what Go Ask Alice was before reading this book, but I still found Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the Worlds Most Notorious Diaries fascinating. It was like being sucked into the whirlpool of a hideous woman's horrific actions. There were a lot of sketchy moments, but I cannot fathom her thought process when handling Alden's journal, let alone the dominoes it set off with her neverending terrible decisions. That poor family.

I've listened to enough true crime podcasts to be reasonably knowledgable about the bullshit dubbed the satanic panic in the 80s and 90s. Still, it was crazy to read how little evidence there was for these massive conferences and accusations. So many people were caught up and given trumped-up charges on absolutely zero evidence - just junk science, politics, and religious propaganda. Sounds frighteningly familiar these days...

"Richard Nixon didn't do middle paths. He saw every problem as a personal challenge, if not a personal insult. Liberals, psychiatrists, Jews, hippies, draft dodgers, dope smokers - they were like goddamned cockroaches, creeping around and waggling their fucking antennae. You couldn't back down or 'get along.' You had to smash the bastards, make them pay. That was how you won."

Emerson tackled a lot with Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the Worlds Most Notorious Diaries, but I do think he brought it all together well. There's a narrative thread that makes it easier to read than most non-fiction. I do think it will hit harder if you've read Go Ask Alice - or have at least heard of it - but I went in with zero knowledge and still found it interesting.

Unmask Alice tells the story of the book Go Ask Alice, edited/authored/created/manifested by Beatrice Sparks, a book that nearly all of us can say we read at some point in our life. The first half? of the book talks about Sparks and her upbringing and how she came to publish the book. It also discusses what came after the book was published: utter fear of teens doing drugs, an attack on all drugs (mostly LSD), a crackdown on drugs and penalties, forcing children (and adults) to read this book to show them what drugs would do to them. Essentially, this book created a cultural and social shift in American culture at a time when there was more of a "freeing" movement in behavior.

The second part of the book addresses the story of Alden Barrett. Barrett was a typical teenager navigating emotions, school, friends and first love. But Barrett was not without problems. Considered a rebel, his Mormon parents "tried everything" to fix his behavior. He even went to a psychiatrist who didn't believe he was depressed and therefore, wouldn't give him medication. Barrett took his own life. What happened next was created by Sparks herself. She obtained Barrett's journal and turned it into the next installment of her journal series: Jay's Journal. The problem was that is wasn't Alden's journal but rather parts of it and then she proceeded to make up the rest. By doing this, she destroyed the family, Alden's reputation, the town and subsequently set off the Satanic panic in the United States.

The story essentially, through her two main books, discusses how Sparks fabricated her books, never took ownership for her actions, and continued to market herself as an author meanwhile creating upheaval in our society.

I thought this book was FASCINATING. I loved not only the parts about Sparks (yuck) but also the integration of the history of the time and how these books affected it. I found it interesting to see just how much each decision by Sparks ruined so many lives. Just from her fabrications, people lost their lives, spend decades in prison, created laws, and so much more.

My only downside to this book was that Emerson sometimes made some snide or snarky remarks which seemed to just be thrown in there and seemed unnecessary. Also, while I understand the need to cover the two books, there was not a lot totally about Sparks herself. However, I think anyone who likes history and literature or has read these books would really enjoy this book. I truly enjoyed knowing the story of Alden Barrett and that for the first time in 50 years, the truth of his life came out after being smeared by Sparks.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I LOVED reading Unmask Alice! It was unlike any other work of non-fiction I’ve read. The quick packing and multi-thread structure made it an immersive reading experience. As child I loved reading Go Ask Alice…so reading Rick Emerson’s expose of Beatrice Sparks was truly eye-opening. This book was thoughtfully researched and will prove to be a valuable example to my students. At times laugh-out-loud funny, at other times deeply horrifying, I will be recommending Unmask Alice far and wide.

Back in the early 1990s, as a preteen, I read many of the popular books that were available. Sweet Valley High, Judy Blume, and V. C. Andrews (why?) were some of the more memorable. I also remember reading a book called Go Ask Alice, which was supposed to be the true story of a girl’s descent into the horrible world of drug addiction.

As it turns out, things are not always what they seem. In Unmask Alice, author Rick Emerson reveals the true story behind the famous book. Beatrice Sparks, the “editor” of Go Ask Alice and numerous other “diaries” is shown to be a master of deception.

Tied in with the background of the drug culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the later Satanic Panic of the 1980s, Emerson deftly illustrates how Sparks drew from the culture of the time in her work and then, ultimately, how her work shaped the culture.

This book was a page-turner for me. I would recommend Unmask Alice to those interested in books about books and pop culture phenomena.

"Go Ask Alice" has been a staple of young adult literature since its publication, influencing debates about drugs, suicide, and parental rights. Journalist Rick Emerson delves into the history of Alice and its author, Beverly Sparks. Though often billed as non-fiction, Emerson makes a compelling case that Alice is a work of fiction only loosely inspired by real events, and tracks the impact of Alice on things like the War on Drugs. Emerson also writes about Spark's other works, including Jay's Journal, which helped kick-start the Satanic Panic in the US. Jay's Journal was based on a real journal written by a suicidal teen, though Sparks later added lurid Satanic imagery and violence in order to drum up sales and push her religious agenda. Unmask Alice is an illuminating read that should be read by anyone who read Alice or who prefers the truth to lies. The thorough research alone makes this a classic, and the work linking Spark's novels to real-life changes is illuminating and fascinating.

I, like so many before me, grew up reading "Go Ask Alice" and "Jay's Journal". So, Unmask Alice looked right up my alley. I grew up with a fuzzy understanding that these were fiction books based on real events. So I was blown away by this book. It captivated me from the very first page. Rick Emerson was funny, informative, and witty, and he did not hold back. And thank the gods for that, because I never would have known the atrocities that were committed by Beatrice Sparks. I highly recommend this book.

What is hard to understand is the lack of out cry. The author of this book exposes a blatant literary fraud .The iconic book Go Ask Alice, which is said to be an actual journal of a young drug abuser, is revealed to be a piece of fiction disguised as a dairy. Many copies are sold of this book but no one ever seemed to question its truthfulness. People in prominent positions start an antidrug bandwagon that seems to take on a life of its own.
The expert who claimed to have edited this journal goes on to write similar works. She cites bogus creditials that were not difficult to check.
The readers of these books seem willing to believe whatever this author writes.
This carefully researched book uncovers a literary career based on untruths. Nobody seems at all disturbed by this. I find that very disturbing.

I have always been fascinated with the mystery and con artistry surrounding the most salacious book of my childhood, Go Ask Alice. I remember being young and thinking the title and cover were intriguing and then hearing more about the scandalous nature of the narrative I learned that it was a "true" book written by some mysterious girl whose life was a tragic spiral of drugs and sex. Heady stuff for a middle schooler to hear about.

The truth is that the book was written by a middle-aged conservative woman named Beatrice Sparks with dubious ties to any sort of "psychology" job who used the fears of the time to push her agenda. While her first book was arguably more harmless as the lies were just figments of her imagination, Sparks continued to try to ride off the back of her initial fame with another book. This one is much more insidious though, as Sparks was given access to the diaries of a young, troubled teenager who committed suicide by his actual family in hopes she could do something useful with it to help other depressed young people. What Sparks did was horrifying. The boy in question was artistic, emotional, trying to figure out life and himself and while he did slip into some drug usage, was more plagued by mental health issues than anything else. Sparks turned his story into the salacious Jay's Journal, an exploitative book about Satanism, something the young man was never involved in. Even more horrifically Sparks' book pushed the witch hunt of the "Satanic panic" that happened around this time, a situation that ruined the lives of many innocent people. Sparks never seemed to feel any remorse about what she did to the grieving family of the deceased teenager nor did she slow down her career, continuing to tap into whatever panic was happening at the time to write more "true" books that fed into parent fears.

The whole story is the height of what irresponsible authorship causes. The author of this book has done a great deal of research into the story of a shady writer and the impact her lies had on culture. The tale is almost too strange to be believed and has the feel of true crime since Beatrice Sparks could easily be termed a con woman. It brings into question the idea of transparency when it comes to writing and ranks as one of the biggest scandals of the literary world. It also questions the publishing industry itself,as similar scandals continue to happen when book houses rush to publish what they think will be a best seller without looking into the author or their credentials. A cautionary tale and an infuriating one about a woman with no scruples.

Thank you to Net Galley and BenBella Books for the ARC copy

I was riveted by this book. Like so many others,, I read Alice in middle school. Years later, I heard that it had not been a true diary at all, but some sort of a hoax. So I was eager to read this and finally get the details.

I loved the way Emerson wove his narratives about drugs and the Satanic Panic, keeping Beatrice Sparks at the center. I found his format to be very readable. That said, there was a bit more novelization (putting words and thoughts specifically into the minds and mouths of the characters) than I prefer. This, as well as Emerson’s decision not to include citations, make the book seem much less scholarly than it might have been. Finally, I think the section which included a highly speculative guess at who may have been the “real” Alice should have been left out completely.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC copy for my review.

4.5 rounded to 5

Fascinating story of a middle-aged hustler, Beatrice Sparks, who had an unerring brilliance when it came to faking teen diaries and synching them to whatever the country was beginning to panic about, be it hard drugs, witchcraft, date rape or AIDs.

After decades of getting nowhere with her writing, Sparks, who had a hardscrabble childhood, makes an important connection in Art Linkletter, who at the time was a sort of "America's dad" and extremely famous. When his daughter commits suicide, Linkletter decides LSD is to blame (at the time America was beginning to freak out about LSD in the same way the country is currently up in arms about opioids). Sparks sees an opportunity—she hands over a diary to Linkletter that is supposedly the true life account of a teen girl caught up in drugs who dies. The book became an monster bestseller—only this "true life teen diary" was pure fiction. Sparks had been a volunteer counselor of troubled teens and it's likely she took their stories as inspiration, but she never had any kind of diary of "Alice."

Her ruse was swallowed completely by the publishing world which, as it is wont to do even today, wasn't about to scrutinize something that was making it so much money.

While perhaps making up a teen diary and passing it off as authentic is bad but not cruel, her next act was actually cruel. This time she took a real diary of a troubled Mormon teen boy and used some of it, but then embellished and fictionalized a huge side plot of him being dragged into death through Satanic ritual and witchcraft. This book, Jay's Journal,. also became a smash hit.

Simon and Schuster, which published the books and still does, currently has an entire set of "diaries" of supposed troubled teens. While the company still passes off Go Ask Alice as a real diary (HOW?), the subsequent "diary" blurbs read more like fiction but a cursory glance at the reviews makes clear most readers think they are nonfiction.

Author Rick Emerson has a strong (somewhat snarky) voice. The first third of the book is utterly fascinating as it deals with Sparks and her Alice hoax. Then Emerson takes on Alden Barrett, the real-life troubled teen whose diary was the basis for Jay's Journal. Alden has his own sad, tragic tale, but for a long period of time (not being familiar with the book) I had no clue how this tied into Beatrice Sparks, and as I didn't find Alden's story as compelling. I almost abandoned the book. I wish the author had tied in Sparks much earlier to Alden's story because for many chapters I was quite baffled. Additionally, it was unclear to me whether Brenda's story was supposed to be the basis for Go Ask Alice. It's strongly hinted at but never stated clearly.

I also kept waiting for Emerson to approach Simon & Schuster, which continues to profit off these "diaries," for comment but oddly he never does.

Finally, there is a long portion about the Satanic Panic of the 80s which is jaw-dropping, and I can see how Emerson included it because Sparks' books played perfectly into the hysteria of that era. But there were long segues that seemed as they belonged to a different book entirely. (I would loved for Emerson to approach Oprah Winfrey, who did her part in giving credibility to a horrific social panic that sent innocent people to prison for child abuse.)

Finally, it is my belief that we are currently in the middle of several social panics and I hope anyone reading this book will take a good hard look at the decade's "cancellations" and online mob rule and see them for what they are—not "accountability" and "transparency" but hysteria and social contagion. The words may change but the game stays the same.

Thank you to Rick Emerson, Ben Bella Books, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Teenage me would of been extatic to find this book. Like many teenagers I found Go ask Alice in a library and was so drawn to it, I'm still fascinated 20something years later.

This book continued to keep me engaged and wanting more with every chapter. It then left me feeling completely satisfied with the "where are they now " portion of the book. The question and answer portion was whipped cream on a hot fdge Sunday, a little extra indulgence.

The main take away from this book and something I frequently stress the importance of: question what you see, hear and read.

I think the first time I read “Go Ask Alice” was when I was around 11 or 12. I read it several times when I was younger, because that girl’s diary was horrific and morbidly fascinating. I mean, think of it! This girl was unknowingly dosed with LSD, fell into a life of drugs, and she ended up dying thinking parasites were on her! My friends and I were obsessed … and to this day, I’ve never tried LSD. 😂

I don’t remember when I learned that it was a work of fiction, (more like, a work of fraud) but I was an adult, and I was so annoyed that I was completely fooled by a trickster, a hustler. A woman named Beatrice Sparks. This book is about her, and about her many books, including the bestselling “Go Ask Alice”, a completely fictionalized tale, and “Jay’s Journal” - which somehow eluded me! After reading this book, I want to read that one now, but I definitely wouldn’t buy it and support the utter bullshit this woman spread to the masses.

Both books were fakes, with “Jay’s Journal” being (very) loosely based on the real diary of a young man (not named Jay) who killed himself after getting into the occult. Witchcraft and Satan worship took this bright young Mormon boy from the world … it would have you think. The truth was that “Jay” (actually a teenage boy named Alden) was a kid who had severe depression. His parents tried to get him help, but psychology was much more primitive then, and he committed suicide. The occult had NOTHING to do with it.

This book about Ms. Sparks is written informally, but excellently, with exacting details and footnotes. It was a very easy, quick read and I thought the subject matter was so interesting. This woman, who pretended to be a psychotherapist, who pretended to “find” diaries of teenage drug users/homosexuals/devil worshipers/sinners, who defined generations, who influenced the “war on drugs”, who ruined people’s lives … well, she’s a real piece of work. This book takes you through all of it, and it’s definitely interesting.

Four stars, maybe even 4.5 if you remember reading these when you were younger. Millions of Americans did, and while I eventually found out Alice’s story was fake, I had no idea how much damage this one woman did to generations. I appreciate getting the chance to learn the truth, in a serious but entertaining manner.

(Thank you to BenBella Books, Rick Emerson and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.)