⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Book Review: Confident Women by Tori Telfer

Ummm, who doesn’t want to read a book about female scammers??

This book looks at several different female criminal masterminds or as the cover says, “swindlers, grifters, and shapeshifters.” (Living for that rhyme.) They range from the notorious to the obscure, and each chapter focuses on a different one. You’ve got the infamous September 11th survivor scammer, the girls that pretended to be Russia’s Princess Anastasia, and the woman who took Marie Antoinette’s necklace and basically started the French Revolution.

This made for a great book to pick up and set down since the chapters are all about different people. Some of the stories are better than others, for sure, but they’re all good and seem super well-researched.

One of things that fascinated me about this book was that I found myself rooting for many of the scammers! 😂 Even though some did terrible things, there’s still a girl-power/ambition/boss babe vibe to making these things happen, especially when it’s to gullible men. 😜

Confident Women is part narrative nonfiction, part tell-all, part history book and I really enjoyed it. Check this one out if you love a salacious story too.

Tori Telfer explores the lives of female grifters, swindlers, and con artists in this compulsively readable book. Telfer delves into the lives of some truly interesting characters and details the ways they completed their scams. This book was at turns fascinating and horrifying, but it was always fun to read. Telfer's unique narrative voice blends perfectly with the tales of these con women to create a novel that flies by far too quickly.

Unflappable, bold, larger-than-life, and often glamorous, con women capture the imagination, soliciting awe as much as condemnation despite their criminal behavior. In 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘞𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯, Tori Telfer explores the public fascination with these opportunists through several profiles of female grifters throughout the ages—and these are only the ones who were ultimately discovered. I wish I had just a scintilla of the confidence these women had in planning and implementing their schemes!

Telfer divides her book into four sections: The Glitterati, The Seers, The Fabulists, and The Drifters. The book is so interesting across the board, I can’t even pick my favorite swindlers, but I did particularly love the moxie of the Glitterati, one who implicated Queen Marie Antoinette in her machinations and one who claimed to be an illegitimate child of Andrew Carnegie. A series of women in the early 1900s claimed to be Anastasia Romanov, escaped from the communists, and Lauretta Williams posed as a male Civil War soldier and spy. More recent women like Wang Ti and Bonny Lee Bakely also have chapters. Most of the case studies were new to me though two were familiar because they’d been adapted into Law & Order episodes.

I enjoyed learning about these women and thought the format was perfect because despite their colorful lives I’m not sure I’d want to read an entire biography of each one. Tefler brings a humorous tone to the writing, though she doesn’t neglect the victims or the serious consequences they suffered. Depending on the consequences or the context, the women faced varying degrees of justice, and despite their crimes, the public remained enthralled with many of them. (It’s interesting to note the cons that cross the line for public sympathy.) Tefler highlights the problematic nature of our obsession with con women, but leaves readers to contemplate the implications.

True crime readers, especially ones looking for cases not focusing on murder, should pick this up. I also think readers interested in women’s history and feminism will be interested in the crimes over time and how women were portrayed by the contemporary press.

Also, kudos to the designer. I love the eye-catching cover!

People a very complicated beings, the lengths some will go to get what they want is mind blowing. Tori Telfer did an amazing job finding these unknown stories. I specifically was interested in reading more about Elizabeth Holmes, if you haven’t read Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, I HIGHLY recommend it.

If you are a true crime fan like me then you are in for a treat with this book, get ready for some WILD stories.

Thank you, Harper Collins for the gifted book.

I know Tori Telfer from her podcast which I enjoy listening to each week. Now she is coming out with a book called Confident Women. This is a book all about women who are artists in the deal of the con!

What a fun read, especially if you are into true crime as I am.

Take a look:

From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best—or worst.

In the 1700s in Paris, Jeanne de Saint-Rémy scammed the royal jewelers out of a necklace made from six hundred and forty-seven diamonds by pretending she was best friends with Queen Marie Antoinette.

In the mid-1800s, sisters Kate and Maggie Fox began pretending they could speak to spirits and accidentally started a religious movement that was soon crawling with female con artists. A gal calling herself Loreta Janeta Velasquez claimed to be a soldier and convinced people she worked for the Confederacy—or the Union, depending on who she was talking to. Meanwhile, Cassie Chadwick was forging paperwork and getting banks to loan her upwards of $40,000 by telling people she was Andrew Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter.

In the 1900s, a 40something woman named Margaret Lydia Burton embezzled money all over the country and stole upwards of forty prized show dogs, while a few decades later, a teenager named Roxie Ann Rice scammed the entire NFL. And since the death of the Romanovs, women claiming to be Anastasia have been selling their stories to magazines. What about today? Spoiler alert: these “artists” are still conning.

Confident Women asks the provocative question: Where does chutzpah intersect with a uniquely female pathology—and how were these notorious women able to so spectacularly dupe and swindle their victims?

An awesome book, so interesting, and if you enjoy misbehaved women who make bad choices, you will want to get this immediately. Its out on February 23!

A “light” true crime compilation introducing a cadre of female criminals who run cons of various sorts. Written in bite sized vignettes, a fun read.

Confident Women
Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion
by Tori Telfer
Harper Perennial and Paperbacks
You Are Auto-Approved
Harper Perennial
Biographies & Memoirs | Nonfiction (Adult) | True Crime
Pub Date 23 Feb 2021 | Archive Date 20 Apr 2021

Love, love, love this book,. Highly entertaining to read about women who are swindlers, grifters and shapeshifters. As a true crime fan I enjoyed this book more than I should have. I will recommend it to others who like true crime as well. Excellent read! Thanks to HarperPerennial and NetGalley for the ARC.
5 star

Reading about women behaving badly is almost always fun. Even if you wholeheartedly believe in the social contract and take care to consider how your actions will impact others, reading about women who refuse to be subordinate to the demands of society is riveting stuff. The women in this book sparkle with their ill-gotten gains, their ability to think on their feet, and their sheer audacity. Though we would all be justifiably furious to end up on the receiving end of a trick pulled by a con, we can't help but be enthralled by their machinations. Perhaps that demand of attention that society so willingly bestows upon the most famous of confidence women is their greatest trick of all..

This is easily my favorite book of the year so far. Tori Telfer really just gave me a history lessons that I didn't know I needed. As a true crime fan, I am highly suggesting that everyone buy this book. The entertainment value of the first chapter alone is completely worth it. This book could spark a television series. I honestly can't recommend this enough!

A true crime book tackles famous con-women. Love them or hate them, these women's stories are still entertaining. From catfishing during the French Revolution to those who pretend to be part of headline making tragedies to a mom and a son with way too close of a relationship, these stories follow women who don't bother to break the rules and get away with their scams - for a while. They are all eventually caught, but their charm seems to take them pretty far.

The author makes all these stories entertaining in her writing style, whether talking about the 1700s or modern day. This is a great winter read that will keep you wanting to know more.

A salacious and fun true crime read, perfect for fans of My Favorite Murder. "Confident Women" will scratch that itch of dark fascination that all true crime lovers have, but it takes a different beat than most books/podcasts out there. Instead of focusing on serial killers, Confident Women tells the story of, well, con women. These women lied, cheated, and stole their way through history and across the world, amassing millions of dollars and their fair share of infamy. Telfer writes with a fun mixture of gossipy details and well-researched information, which make this book fly by. I went with 4 stars instead of 5 because some of the chapters did drag a bit. However, enough of the stories were jaw-droppingly dramatic that I kept coming back for more.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced look at this book!

Anyone who's fascinated by scammers will appreciate this book! I found it so gripping to read, and there were only a couple of the women's stories that didn't grab me, especially the beginning ones. If you find it a slow start, keep going. I've long wished for a really great pop history deep dive into spiritualism, and this book's section had more stories than I've ever read/heard about before. The tragediennes section was structured beautifully and was incredibly heart wrenching. It's interesting how the modern scammers we see aren't doing stuff that people haven't been doing for centuries. I thought this book was not making too much light of this salacious material, because the scammed people are often very real victims.

The book was also quite thought provoking, in that its division in kinds of confidence women made me think of what kinds of people get preyed on by scammers. It isn't always desperate or hopeful people. In the case of the tragendiennes, those women are taking advantage of kind and generous people.

I think what fascinates me about these stories relates to something I read recently that sociopathy is the absence of empathy while anxiety is an excess of empathy. By that token, I am truly bewildered by people living at the other end of the spectrum from me.

I loved it. I appreciated the diversity of con artists, I loved reading about the cons (though...are you really supposed to love that...?) and I found it a fun, easy, fast read.

Tori Telfer makes crime so entertaining. I loved Lady Killers and Confident Women too. I read both within a couple of days. Thanks for the egalley

A easy-to-read compilation of female con artists, grifters, and scammers. Each section examines the reason these women choose this life and the risks they take. From the 1700’s to present day, you will read about these notorious and outrageous women, their thought processes and their punishments.

I love true crime and I love con artists. This true crime book focusing on female con artist is delectable. The perfect escape in the summer where there is no escape. I highly recommend for any true crime fan.

It seems almost everyone loves a great scam as long as they are not affected by its very painful effects. In 2019 Anna "Delvey" Sorkin was charged with multiple counts of theft of service and grand larceny after a run pretending to be a wealthy German heiress in New York. The world was fascinated and ended up following her fashion choices in court on Instagram! The new book Confident Women by Tori Telfer may sound like the reader is grabbing the latest in self-help books, but it is a fun and detailed look into the world of some of history's most accomplished con women.

Confident Women starts with the story of Jeanne de Saint-Remy who used the little remaining claim of a bloodline she had, rumors, and some excellent forgeries to make jewelers believe she was best friend with Marie Antoinette. This in turn lead her to con multiple people into what eventually turned into the royal jewelers for a necklace made out of six hundred and forty-seven diamonds. If you follow spooky circles, chances are you're well versed in the story of Kate and Maggie Fox who "accidentally" started a religious movement that ended up being crawling with female fraudsters who were finally getting their piece of the spiritualist prize.  The book travels from 17th century France to modern day in the United States, while making stops all over the world.  My only complaint is that the book is so easy to fall into that I wanted a whole lot more of this book.

Most of these women I'd never heard of, and it was good to be reminded that even though we as a society pan movies like Oceans 8, that there are women in the world who could successfully pull of confidence games that men can only dream about. For those who find the name Tori Telfer familiar, that's likely because she also wrote the book Lady Killers, about deadly women in history.

Confident Women by Tori Telfer comes to shelves from Harper Perennial on February 23, 2021.

Well behaved women rarely make history! Another gem from Tori Telfer. Highly recommended purchase for general nonfiction collections.

An interesting look at female cons throughout the past. Telfer presents the information in a straightforward but riveting manner. A couple years ago, I read her book Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History and found that a good read as well. She presents information in an engaging manner and the subjects in the book are all fascinating in different ways. I wasn't familiar with any of the women featured in the book, so I learned quite a lot with each entry. Highly recommended for any true crime fans.