2.5 "who says a five foot woman can't be a sadistic psychopath" stars !!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Kensington Books. This was released April 2020. I am providing an honest review.

I was not familiar with this true crime case of murder, romantic obsession, arson and years of cyberstalking. At the center of it all is a five foot woman with a severe case of psychopathy, sadism and Machiavellianism. Thankfully she is in a Nebraska prison with an over 20 year sentence. A fascinating and dark tale about a community that could not fathom such evil coming from a pint sized female.

Leslie Rule is the daughter of Ann Rule and is an artist and photographer who also wrote some books on the supernatural. This is her first true crime book. I enjoyed her preface as to the admiration she has for her mum and how she came to write this book as well as a bit on her own family history. My own mum was a huge fan of Ann Rule's true crime books and gobbled them up and talked to me about the cases over her delicious Roast Beef roasts. I would often ask her to save the details for later on as I wanted to enjoy my supper.

This is a good first attempt at this genre but I have read hundreds of these books since my teens and I would say this is an average good read.(despite mediocre prose this was fascinating)

Ms. Rule is able to get across huge amounts of convoluted information in an understandable and somewhat interesting fashion. She has only a fair understanding of human nature and a quite poor understanding of personality psychopathology and I would encourage her to really delve into these areas if she wants to become a very good true crime author like her mother. If the case were not so interesting this would likely be two stars but with my interest piqued I am awarding a bonus half star. So this will sit on my average good 2.5 star shelf.

Absolutely liked this book. There was a lot of information but to really get into true crime you need to have that information to get an understanding of everything that is happening. I feel so bad for everyone that was involved in this horrible crime and I am sure they are still working through the grieving process to include even the cops involved as there was so much. I appreciate Leslie Rule really getting into everything and explaining how everything worked and why things couldn't be solved as quickly as one would like. Great book

This book grabbed me from the first sentence & had me reading late into the night until I finished it. A story about a woman who came from a dysfunctional family & who manipulated the internet in such a way that she literally tortured a number of people who were unfortunate enough to cross her path.

Dave was a single father of two who was looking to have casual relationships with women without any commitment, on either part. He met Liz online & they enjoyed each other's company but Liz could not accept his refusal to commit to an exclusive relationship with her. Soon after, when Dave met Cari & began spending time with her, Liz was furious. She ultimately conducted a horrific campaign of electronic harassment & stalking against Dave, Cari's family & a number of other individuals who were part of Dave & Cari's circle.

I found this to be very well written & utterly gripping. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys true crime books.

I flew through this book, with a well-thought-out plot and really believable characters. would definitely recommend it!

A wonderfully thorough investigation into the murder of Cali Farver and the bizarre lengths her killer went to conceal her death. I had seen television programs about the case before, but none went to the lengths that Leslie Rule did with her research and coverage of the events and those involved.

Cari Farver disappeared in 2012, leaving her friends and family, as well as her life in Nebraska behind. Cari’s boyfriend, Dave Kroupa, accepted the breakup by text, but her mother was suspicious and subsequently called the police. Many years and thousands of emails and texts later, the police believed that Cari was cyberstalking Dave and his new girlfriend, Shanna “Liz” Golyar. Will a break in the case expose the truth behind the disappearance?

I usually like true crime novels, as the reality of these unique situations often read like fiction. Unfortunately, in her zeal to give readers the complete picture as to what transpired, the author gives too much detail and information. I do not like the writing style of the book either, as the choppy sentences make the book hard to read.

Overall, the story of what happened to Cari Farver gets lost in a sea of details. The book was not as compelling as it should have been, so I am hesitant to recommend A Tangled Web to other readers.

Disclaimer: I was given an Advanced Reader's Copy of A Tangled Web by NetGalley and the publisher, Citadel Press. The decision to read and review this true crime novel was entirely my own.

A really great read and exciting thought. I've struggled to get into reading books recently, but this kept me gripped.

I was excited to read this book by Leslie Rule. It was her first true crime book. I know she has had several other books that I have heard are very good. This book was excellent! Her writing is very good I really liked the way she told the story and the facts of the case. She was so empathetic to the victim and all of her family and loved ones. I hope she writes more true crime books. I recommend this book highly!!!

It must be a difficult task to follow in a famous mother's footsteps but Ann Rule's daughter does a credible job as an author of a true-crime book. This kept my interest.

I have always loved her mother’s books, Leslie Rule didn’t disappoint me either! This was the first book I read of hers. I will be reading more.

I loved this book and all the details that went with it. I would definitely recommend this book.

This is a true story written by Leslie Rule ... daughter of Ann Rule. My mom was a big fan of true crime and Ann Rule was her favorite author. And because my mom read it, so did I .. under her very close attention.

An everyday man who wants just a casual relationship falls prey to a woman who wants way more than he is prepared to give. When he finally tires of her efforts to rope him in, he decides to date someone else.

And this is where her obsession was born. She's eaten up with jealousy ... and a stalker was born. He and his new girlfriend receive death threats, vandalism, but no one was charged. How does she get his phone number even moments after he has it changed?

The threats were vicious, vile and often obscene, sent mostly via text and always in the old girlfriend's name. There was some truth in the messages, but all of them contained one big lie. This stalker had already killed once and was prepared to do so again. He has received 12,000 emails and texts during a 3-year period.

It's a breath-taking journey through a sociopath's twisted mind to the deadly deception and the high-tech forensics that condemned the killer to prison.

Very well written showing this author's meticulous research into this case. Hard to put down for any reason, it was riveting from start to finish.

In this day and age of internet and social media and even cell phones, this could possibly happen to anyone. Some things will never change. The better our technology becomes, the more some people will go to any length to cause havoc and chaos.

Many thanks to the author / Kensington Books / Netgalley for the digital copy of this true crime. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

FASCINATING true crime story! Crazy women are always interesting and this girl takes the cake. Some parts of the book seemed irrelevant to the story but overall this was so interesting. The author clearly cares very much about this case and does a great job showing how twisted and evil this villain is. True crime is not a genre I typically read but I can't turn down a scorned woman story!

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of A Tangled Web by Leslie Rule.

Usually when I read my ARC, I don't look the book up or read a synapses like I usually do. It is fun to go into it a bit unawares, and I am often surprised by the outcome.

This looked to me like a typical thriller, the kind of book I read a lot, which is great! I love a fast paced suspense novel. But instead I got a true crime tale that, if written as a fictional thriller would be too outrageous to even be believed.

When Liz meets Dave on a widely used dating app, Dave makes it very clear that he's not looking for anything serious. He doesn't want commitment, he doesn't want monogamy, a fact that is very difficult for Liz to accept. But Dave is good with his word when he starts dating Cari, a busy single mother who is also in the market to casually date. But one day Cari disappears completely, leaving a strange text to Dave, demanding that he stay out of her life forever.

Dave is sad, but not necessarily broken about it. He still has Liz, he still has his dating apps. But Cari isn't done with the texting, she is just getting started. For years Cari sends thousands of threatening and upsetting texts to Dave, Liz, and so many people that come into either of their lives. How could Dave have ever known how unhinged Cari was? And how far will she go?

I was instantly pulled into this story, it was absolutely bananas. While I'm pretty sure I've seen a documentary about it already, the author does a great job really breaking down the characters, certain phenomenons that allowed for the stalking and bullying to happen for so long, as well as backgrounds to each person. Usually I turn to podcasts and 20/20 to quench my true crime thirst, but Leslie Rule knocked this one out of the park. I hope she writes more in kind.

Truth is stranger than fiction. Though it is very detailed on the cyber / digital / phone stalking, as well as the various romantic / obsessive entanglements, and the conjectures and assumptions as to how the murder took place, the book makes zero mention of any education Shanna 'Liz' Golyar may have had and I was left mystified as to her knowledge of apps and IPSs and VPNs and cat-phishing! - which is central to the entire craziness - where did she find out how to do all of it, did she google search this stuff or did her IT technician 'boyfriend' of 5 years answered some of her 'innocent' questions! The book also does not mention what if any education her kids were getting and what kind of parent she was. It is also obvious that Golyar and her kin did not grant any interview to the author and the book suffers because of it.

I also thought Ms. Rule's emphasis on nature versus nurture theory in trying to understand her crimes / actions was a bit OTP ridiculous (pgs. 182-191) and her 'biological family' who did not even see her for 40 years had more to say on their past than the foster family who raised / fed her. Golyar's mother had 2 sons from her first relationship and another son with Golyar's father and yet no mention is made of any of these brothers and whether Golyar remained in touch with any of them.

The given facts were all extremely crazy to digest and hard to believe. Two weeks of casual dating with a man got a woman killed and nobody knows how but the trail of stalking is horrifying and clinically deduced!

The book has no pictures or maps.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

A Tangled Web
A Cyberstalker, a Deadly Obsession, and the Twisting Path to Justice.
by Leslie Rule


Kensington Books
Citadel
Nonfiction (Adult) | True Crime
Pub Date 28 Apr 2020


Leslie Rule is the daughter of “America’s Best Crime Writer.” Ann Rule, and now we are going to get to meet her daughter, and the heiress of her legacy.




Cari Lea Farver vanished from Omaha, Nebraska, on a bleak day in November of 2012. She was a thirty seven year old woman, who was a Mother devoted to her children, a reliable employee and a loyal friend. She was not one to shirk her responsibilities, abandon her son, and run off on an adventure while her dying father took his last breaths.Yet, the many texts from her phone indicated she had done just that.






From appearances, it seemed that Cari, had decided to dump her boyfriend and quit her new job as well as to give custody of her son to her Mom, and all by text, but from the start something felt off. Cari’s boyfriend, Dave Kroupa as well as her boss took the texts as legit, despite the fact they felt a little odd about them. And they were bewildered about her sudden disappearance. Nancy Raney (Cari’s Mother) however was alarmed and was the one who reported her missing. Police were however skeptical of Nancy’s claims that a cyber impostor had commandeered her daughter’s phone and online identity.





Nancy was afraid for Cari, but Dave Kroupa was becoming afraid of Cari, because he believed she was stalking him. The stalker was never seen or heard but had become aware of every move, and seemed obsessed over Shanna “Liz” Golyar, often calling her “a fat whore” in the twelve thousand emails and texts he received in a disturbing three-year deluge.






It was hard to figure out how the Stalker could know Dave’s phone numbers, right after they were changed, or how he knew the names of his female friends, even the shows he watched on television. Dave and Liz reported death threats, vandalism, and burglaries, but the stalker remained at large. The threats they received were vicious, vile and far to often obscene sent mostly via text and always in Cari’s name. There was some truth in the messages, but all of them contained one big lie. The culprit was not Cari, but had killed and planned to kill again.






Leslie Rule has written a powerful True Crime book, one that I am sure her Mother Ann Rule would have been proud of.




I am reviewing a copy of A Tangled Web five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

Thank you, Netgalley and Kensington Books for allowing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. I love true crime books,, Leslie Rule's A Tangled Web is one of the most fascinating true-crime I have read A true story of the 2012 missing person case of Cari Farver, This book is fast-paced read that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. A Cyberstalker, a Deadly Obsession, and the Twisting Path to Justice.
Dave recently divorced decides to join an online dating service. He makes it well known that he is not looking for a serious or committed relationship. He mets several women some he is attracted to other just doesn't have the spark. Dave wants to live the single life after being married for many years. He soon meets Cari and he is attracted to her and they have some fun dates, When Cari Farver is reported missing after spending time with Dave, he and another lady Liz he is dating start to receive thousands of harassing emails and texts. This case happened in a small town with the stalker playing ghost until getting caught by the same trap the murder set up to bring in victims. It's a crazy story and the entire case feels like it's not something real, something that only happens in fiction. I would highly recommend this book to those that love true crime stories.

As a huge true crime lover I am surprised that I actually hadn’t heard of this case before. It was well written but with some grammatical errors, but that doesn’t really bother me at all. It was a fascinating story told well for a first time true crime author, even if it is in her blood. I will definitely recommend this to true crime fans!

I was very excited to hear of this book written by one of my favourite true crime authors. She kept me engaged and turning the pages. This book was compelling and I cant wait till she writes some more books.

Leslies style is similar to her mothers. However she has her own distinctive fare in her writing. Great book. People forget how quickly social sites could turn deadly.

I've never read Leslie Rule before but I was a big fan of her mother Ann's so I thought I would check her out. She clearly learned a lot from her mom and it shows in this book. Well-written, taut, and suspenseful, I was unable to put it down. Newer technology like cell phones and the internet have added a new element to stalking and crime in general. To know that people will go to such lengths to destroy other people's lives, well, it's frightening. This book lays out the whole case in intricate and chilling detail. I'm looking forward to reading whatever cases Leslie Rule covers in the future.