I received an ARC of Unmask Alice, by Rick Emerson. I could not finish this book. I am glad I was not around during this time, it is a horrible time in our country.

My wife reads me a few books each year. She chooses the book, there’s no theme.
My wife is one of those gifted individuals capable of just putting a book down, sometimes for weeks, sometimes forever. I don’t have that skill. From the time I crack a cover, the book dominates my life until I’ve reached the end.
We read at different paces.
Our reading started out as a kind of therapy. She would read for half an hour and that would be it. I’ll admit I finished The Accidental Tourist behind her back, but other than that, I have learned to be patient. Still, I need to know how a story ends, even if it’s poorly told. Recently, I found out that she did as well, but in a different way.
We were reading The Terror, Dan Simmons historical fiction about a doomed polar expedition. Once we were about halfway through, she started annotating it for me as well. So compelled was she by the story that she did outside research to see what was true, what was plausible, and what was pure fiction (besides the monster).
It never had occurred to me that people could fact-check along with the writer as they went. Having written nonfiction, and undergone the legal cross-examination my publisher arranged, that people read with their phones (or computers) nearby, trying to get more out of a story than was being presented somehow had eluded me.
People aren’t looking for spoilers so much as for improved context, a sense of what “really” happened.
My take on it always has been: trust the author. You paid for a story and you’re getting it. If you find it unsatisfying, don’t buy any more. Information is everywhere.
I don’t open books for information, I open them for the stories, the journey taken by someone who spent an ungodly amount of time with all of the information. I want to know what it means, not what it is.
So when Rick Emerson opened his introduction to Unmask Alice with an admonition against Googling while reading, I was on board immediately.
He knew that most of the facts about his work were out there and that having access to them could ruin the effect. This wasn’t a lack of confidence in his interpretation, it was a friendly warning: Don’t diminish your experience with flat facts.
So much of true crime is in the presentation. We don’t read true crime to find out what happened. We read it in hope that the author will make good on their promise to make sense of it, to tell us what it might mean.
In this case, Emerson goes beyond even the story’s broadest implications to question whether there is and should be a difference between fiction and creative nonfiction.
Why Nonfiction
Although he would never argue that Go Ask Alice is in any way a work of merit, over the course of his book Emerson illuminates the effect one mediocre book had and still is having on our culture.
I haven’t read Go Ask Alice, but as Emerson says early on, even if you haven’t read it, you know the highlights: An anonymous girl gets involved in drugs and documents her tailspin in graphic, sometimes salacious, detail. Some people say it is a fake.
It waxes and wanes in popularity, but for the latter part of the last century, it was a reliable seller in the young adult market.
My own daughter read it in this century as part of a school assignment. Whether or not you’re familiar with any part of the story, its editor, and the occasional scandals associated with Go Ask Alice, I can’t recommend following the author’s suggestion enough.
Unmask Alice is less an account than it is a story of investigation and discovery. To approach it as anything else will devalue the experience, and that would be too bad because it is a hell of a story.
This is the kind of book that would be undermined by a synopsis and even a peak around the corner could take some of the fun out of it. Emerson clips along, short paragraphs in short sections that make up longer chapters and even longer parts.
About a third of the way through I worried that the last half of the book would be padded.
It’s the downfall of many nonfiction books that the second third can feel long as the author works to justify the larger implications of the premise, and there is a moment in Unmask Alice where I’ll admit to worrying I’d hit that kind of plateau.
Then the bottom fell out, and once the descent began I was along for the ride, even as I was flabbergasted at its implications.
There was a point where I was certain that this was closer to an anthology, a demonstration of how disparate events told us something about Nixon’s war on drugs and the rise and fall of several other cultural manias that plagued us then. That plague us now.
When tied together, the combination of outrage and mild admiration at the audacity of unchallenged authority does the heavy lifting. It is a gut punch that you can feel coming but can’t prevent.
Unmask Alice reveals the truth behind the fraudulent diary and challenges our notions of what nonfiction is supposed to do.
Writing True Crime
In every true story we tell, there’s this temptation to elaborate beyond our bounds, especially when we’re the ones who have all or most of the facts. Whether a story is true or not, in the end, only matters to the writer.
No amount of shade thrown at Truman Capote is going to undo the effect In Cold Blood had on American life and literature.
This urge to tell the big-T Truth even if it isn’t supported by the facts hovers over the left shoulder of even the most diligent investigator. Overcoming it is difficult but critical.
Still, we want to believe in the investigatory process. We want to know that the author is not inventing the story from whole cloth because that is what we go to nonfiction for.
We want someone to give order to chaos, to provide an answer that is little-t true even if it is unsatisfactory.
Regular readers of true crime are used to the difference between the story that is initially reported and the story that eventually shakes out.
Emerson points out how time and again, our fascination with If It Bleeds It Leads lets everyone off the hook except the victims. To watch honest objectors steamrolled because their true explanations aren’t sexy enough only enhances the frustration.
Unmasking Alice challenges us to take the question of research and authority seriously, to ask ourselves what we want from our nonfiction and whether it really matters.
We want to say that in real life, it doesn’t matter if the story is true as long as the lesson is real. Emerson goes a long way toward undermining that common-sense thought.
What we read affects our actions. What we expect affects our decisions about what to read. The larger point is that our public conversation has to be about more than desired outcomes. That approach has not only eroded trust but called the need for truth-telling into question.
The Go Ask Alice phenomenon, as revealed by Emerson, is that we want simple explanations for complex problems. Our culture doesn’t want problems solved so much as it wants someone to blame for them.
This is a fact well known to the world’s most effective bad actors.
Nuts and Bolts
Emerson’s voice is clear, honest, and personal. He takes us along at a good pace. The few qualms some readers might have is that he asks for a lot of trust he hasn’t earned yet in the first half of the book.
Knocking on 350 pages, the work leaves the reader to take themselves over the precipice. I have to reiterate that when the book slows and the story seems to flag, keep reading. There are more and better twists ahead.
My only other quibble is more a formatting peeve than a serious problem. There are a lot of newspaper passages where summaries would have done just as well.
In the endnotes, Emerson explains that (for excellent reasons) he shied away from over-citing in the text, but a few sections of excerpts may make the book longer than it needs to be without adding proportionate context.
For my part, I read it in a sitting, compelled by the promises made and kept. I uttered “Oh, no” aloud at the final twist which was satisfying enough to justify trust Emerson asked for at the start.

Growing up, I always told everyone I knew that Go Ask Alice was my favorite book. Like most pre-pubescent girls in the 90s, I flew through it about four or five times in a year. Really believing in the depths of my 12 year old soul that Alice was at one time a real, breathing human being who had gone through all of these horrible things, only to tragically fall victim to her addiction and lose her life.

I held onto this story growing up, one of the main reasons I never touched hard drugs and passed it on to my baby sister, telling her it was a true story in order to help prevent her from making the same decisions that I had made, all because of ‘Alice’.

What I didn’t know at the time was how deceitful “Doctor” Beatrice Sparks was. I wasn’t around in the 70s, I have never heard of Jay’s Journal until reading this book and all of the other “journals” or “case studies” that were published as non-fictions. This book opened my eyes to a lot more than just the lies, it covers the satanic panic of the 80s and early 90s, the creation of LSD and a slew of other things.

I loved this book. It was extremely insightful and I feel more educated on things I thought I knew about than I could have ever imagined. This was a wild ride of uncovering the truth behind a national best seller, and the other untruths this woman released into the world. I’m very happy and thankful for the ARC from NetGalley and the publishers, I highly recommend this one.

As someone who read Go Ask Alice in m middle school years: I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was very well researched & well written. I enjoyed the writing and format of this book.

I really enjoyed Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson. I had read Go Ask Alice years ago, but never knew anything about the true origin story. This was entertaining, informative, and unexpected in the best way. I was excited to return to reading any moment I could. Going forward I will take an extra peek at how my current reading choices are classified. It might surprise you what you discover.

Much more interesting than I thought it was going to be. Wasn't aware of all the things that happened around Go Ask Alice but I read it as a teen and felt like something felt a little fishy. Guess I was right.

Unmask Alice shows the aftermath on the world following the publications of Go Ask Alice’, Jay’s Journal’s, Beatrice Sparks’ other works. I really liked this book. I thought it was was a very well researched and well written book. I enjoyed the writing and format of this book.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange of my honest opinion.

Everyone of a certain generation is more than likely familiar with the book "Go Ask Alice". My thought process began and ended with it being required reading for school. Unmask Alice absolutely blew me out of the water with it's in depth look at the stories behind the author of Alice. Astonishing doesn't even begin to cover it. Beatrice Sparks, frankly, was a horrendous human for her willingness to take such severe advantage of grieving families, and to continue to portray herself in such a manner as an expert in anything is ludicrous. In the final authors note, Emerson stated this book took him six years to write. I say that's six years well spent, because this book is utterly enlightening, and will be recommended to all of my collogues.

This book was an absolute eye opener! I’ve read Go Ask Alice but have never read Jay’s Journal and now never will. Rick’s immense and thoughtful research, interviews and conversations bring to light the truth behind these two books. For years there’s been debates on the authenticity of Go Ask Alice and this book finally gives us answers to our questions. Extremely well written while being sensitive to those affected by these stories.

Unmask Alice was an interesting read but perhaps I'd have actually enjoyed reading it if it was written by someone else. There is a great deal of information here so I'm assuming that a great deal of research was done over the 6 years it took to write the book. My 3.5 stars is mostly because I struggled with the presentation of the facts that are borne from the research; the writer was so prevalent throughout that it was difficult to hear myself think. Beatrice Sparks was an extremely flawed being who, unfortunately, seems to have cared only about herself and not a bit about anyone else. It's frustrating that her actions and lies influenced perception and the American culture so heavily. I would've have preferred reaching conclusions by myself, as part of the joy in reading nonfiction is to read the facts, ponder them, and then see if assessments naturally emerge. Instead, Emerson's own opinion of Sparks, of religion, of morality is so heavy-handed (and often outright snarky in presentation) that reading this became a chore. I was mad at the things that Sparks had done and irritated at Emerson for constantly telling me that I should be mad at the things that Sparks had done. I would've preferred being left alone to study the research by myself but Emerson apparently didn't feel like he could trust his readers enough to leave them alone to study the material free from his influence.

Pub Date: June 7, 2022

An exploration into the true stories behind the well known ‘Go Ask Alice’, ‘Jay’s Journal’, and the author behind both.

‘Go Ask Alice’ is a diary written by a teenage girl, who unknowingly took LSD, became addicted, and started a downward spiral into the world of drugs.

‘Jay’s Journal’ is a diary written by a teenage boy, who is lured into using drugs, the occult, and satanic rituals.

Beatrice Sparks is the author behind both books (journals/diaries). A Serial con-artist who betrayed a grieving boy’s family that just wanted to help other families. Sparks lied her way to the National Book awards.
‘Unmask Alice’ Exposes Sparks for fraud she is, she never showed any remorse for her actions, in fact at some points she stated that she had “risked her own safety” to prove it. It being the lies she told.
‘Unmask Alice’ shows the aftermath on the world following the publications of ‘Go Ask Alice’, ‘Jay’s Journal’, and her other works.

This book was captivating, and well researched. I enjoyed the writing and format of this book.
Having read ‘Go Ask Alice' and 'Jay's Journal' I felt something was off and just had to read 'Unmask Alice'.

I received an advance review copy for free in exchange for my honest review.

I vaguely remember reading Go Ask Alice back in the 70’s, so that drew my interest to this book. I’m just gobsmacked at the real story behind Alice and how it really came into being. I think the person behind it was angry at being left off the book as editor, as they claimed to be. I believe that the way they used the next diary was a form of revenge, but on the wrong people. It was just so twisted it broke my heart. Such a revelation this read was. Good reading of a bizarre story, well researched book. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Lies, blatant dishonesty, withholding of information are hateful practices to encounter. Rick Emerson must feel such vibes too as he discloses the fabrication and hurtful twists of truth in Beatrice Sparks books, especially her books Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal (others are mentioned too). The gall that woman had is almost beyond belief.

As I read Unmask Alice, I could see how Emerson exposed Sparks' mingling and mashing of fact and fiction in her books. The most weird thing is that many people, mostly in the teenage age bracket, were positively helped to go right or get right and to say "NO" to drugs and the life that often leads too, including Satanism, as mapped out in Sparks' books. So ironic, to say the least.

Emerson correlated his research with credibility into the basis of how Sparks' so called, facts, had been, so called, substantiated, and with convincing proof I believe. It's astounding that Sparks purposefully and willfully presented her books as 'gospel truth' in that Morman saturated region and beyond. Millions lapped it all up, resulting in some key people being harmed and harassed for years. The fact of the matter is that there is more fiction than fact and the distorted truth surrounding Alden Barrett and his struggles in Sparks' novel entitled Jay's Journal were lathered on. I'm glad that Emerson is such a whistle blower. Unfortunately, Sparks got off scott free and full justice was not had for the family most affected by her lies and deceit, at least not this side of the grave.

At times I found the thread of the book difficult to follow, seeming to be more of a hodgepodge of details making it a bit confusing in portions but otherwise quite readable. Overall, I believe Emerson has done his research well. The question that stickes out in my mind though is, will people really care about this head's up since Sparks' books have been around for donkey years and even selling well to this day? I think so because it is good to have this counter balance for astute and questioning people to read with intellect and judge for themselves what's what especially with the book Go Ask Alice that got it all stirred and started up in the first place.

~Eunice C., Reviewer/Blogger~

March 2022

Disclaimer: This is my honest opinion based on the review copy sent by NetGalley and the publisher.

UnMask Alice is a fascinating, infuriating examination of how Beatrice Sparks managed to con publishers and media who should have known better into believing she was a licensed child psychologist—or was it psychiatrist?—and the editor of teenage diaries ‘Go Ask Alice’ and ‘Jay’s Journal’. Her exploitation of the real ‘Jay’ is especially deplorable.

But the book is more than just another story of a con artist. It delves into the social, cultural, and political events at the time of the diaries’ original publication that fueled their popularity. Shockingly, these books by a woman who was far more talented at being a con artist than a writer fueled the flames of the War on Drugs and the Satanic Panic.

Hemingway said that a good writer has to have a good B.S. detector. Rick Emerson certainly has a fully functioning B.S. detector, and he’s not afraid to say when the alarm is sounding. Hemingway would approve.

Thank you NetGalley and BenBella books for the ARC.

Unmask Alice
LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries
by Rick Emerson
Pub Date 07 Jun 2022 |
BenBella Books
Biographies & Memoirs | History | True Crime


I am reviewing a copy of Unmask. Alice through BenBella Books and Netgalley:




If you were a teen in the 1970’s, 1980’s or 1990’s you likely read either Go Ask Alice, (First Published in 1971) or Jay’s Journal (First published in 1979). Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous.


But Alice was only the beginning.



In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist, Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis adolescent suicide to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and poisoning whole communities.


But what’s the truth behind the journals. It boils down to this both journals came from the same dark place a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy's memory, and lied her way to the National Book Awards.


Basically the story behind the story is just as bad if not worse than the plot of the story, betrayal and deception in the face of great loss.




I give Unmask Alice five out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

Well, this is a very well researched, unusual and highly original book.
I found it completely fascinating!
I’m not sure if I would find it easy to explain it’s content to someone if I was asked, because I’m not entirely certain what it’s about… but I loved it nonetheless!
A gripping and interesting read.

The true story of the author of Go Ask Alice and the other books she wrote. A famous “anonymous” diary of a teenage girl whose life is ruined by drugs, Go Ask Alice was a sensation when published in the 70s (and largely still is today). However, for a long time, most people didn’t actually know there was an author - Beatrice Sparks. And moreover, that she (probably) made up the vast majority of the book, if not all. This story tells the truth of this as well as behind Sparks’ other most famous book - definitely based on a true story but very loosely so with Sparks taking cruel artistic license.

I found this book so interesting! I had no idea Go Ask Alice wasn’t actually anonymous until this book, and it was interesting to see how her other big book helped contribute to the satanic panic. This was like true crime reading without the blood and gore. Very interesting read!

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Unmask Alice was an absolutely fascinating deep dive into the life and career of Beatrice Sparks, the author behind a number of supposedly "true" diaries of teenagers. Although I was aware of the fakery behind "Go Ask Alice," I had no idea of the level of con artistry behind both that and Sparks's other works. Emerson does a great job explaining the context surrounding Sparks's books. Highly recommended for anyone interested in history or the publishing agency--or anyone who remembers reading Go Ask Alice!

When I say "This is the book I've been waiting for," I truly mean it.
I've read "Go Ask Alice" multiple times over the years and have always found it enjoyable, though even after my first reading I always felt something was off. It's a great read and really gets the reader feeling for the unnamed narrator, but just a quick search online can will bring up a few vague answers about it's authenticity and the authenticity of other books "edited" by Beatrice Sparks. "Jay's Journal," was a first time read just to get myself prepared for "Unmask Alice" and the fact that the reader is to believe "Jay's" story to be truth blew my mind.
"Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries" went above and beyond my expectations, gave me things to think about regarding America's history with drugs and publishing ethics, and had me experiencing a range of emotions throughout. I found myself in shock over the way Beatrice Sparks could so easily con just about anyone she came in contact with, betrays people who put their trust in her to do good, and at the same time impressed me with what she accomplished in publishing history.
Emerson's thorough research is evident from the start and the wealth of information about everything presented in each short chapter made it an easy read, while leading me down rabbit holes wanting to read more on subjects and people discussed. If you've ever read "Go Ask Alice," "Jay's Journal," or any other "anonymous diaries" in connection with Beatrice Sparks you MUST read this book!
Thank you to NetGalley and BenBella Books for the DRC.

3.75
Thank you NetGalley and publishers

This is a fascinating and well written book. It seems well researched and honest, but I have not done any of my own research to confirm…yet.