The Babysitter was one of my most anticipated arcs for March and super hard to get through. Not even because of the content but the WRITING. The writing needs heavy editing. It would talk about the most mundane and random topics that added nothing to the book. I don't think we needed to know about Liza's relationship with her mom, her first crush, how she moved to different towns as a child.. that could easily go into a memoir, not a true-crime novel.

I wanted to know what happened to Tony the serial killer which is the only reason I finished this book but I realized right after I could have just googled that. Literally kicking myself right now. Reading about Tony was creepy enough but the way this book was constructed was so poor and I couldn't wait for it to end. Thank you to Atria and Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a trip this one. I’ve always loved reading memoirs. I’m fascinated in human lives, and how different our lives vary. Memoirs give us that bit of insight into others backgrounds, and life stories, that help us understand each other a little more, but more importantly make us feel all those human emotions. Sadness, empathy, understanding, admiration etc. I felt all the feels while reading The Babysitter. I was shocked, baffled, angry, scared, relieved and so much more. I admire Liza Rodman, for taking this incredible step of telling her story. Unimaginably a hard story to tell, shows such incredible courage after all she went through. It’s more than a ‘true crime’ novel, its a real story of a young woman and a tough reality she had to face.

The Babysitter left me with mixed feelings. Many recent true crime books blend memoir with journalism to provide both an emotional and factual account that wholly captivates the reader. This one fell a bit flat for me.

The chapters about Tony Costa were fascinating. They include rich (and sometimes disturbing) details that taught me a lot about a lesser-known criminal. I wish it included more hard facts over speculation, but understand that this isn't always possible.

The Liza chapters were far less gripping. Her childhood was undoubtedly heartbreaking, but too distant from the crimes to add much emotion or substance to the overall picture. It felt like two separate books at times. The connection between Liza and Tony was a bit forced and exaggerated by the title and premise.

Overall it is an interesting story with a unique perspective, but the execution fell short.

Wow! That’s what I have to say about this wonderfully written non-fiction. Part true crime and part memoir, Liza Rodman along with Jennifer Jordan, depict the events that unfurled in Cape Cod in the mid 60’s. Known as the Vampire of Cape Cod, Tony Costa was behind the murders of at least 5 women in and the Cape Cod area. His murders are gruesome in nature and more than one of his victims were found dismembered in swallow graves.

Liza Rodman was a kid during the murders and it wasn’t until she was an adult that she would discover that her and her sister’s occasional babysitter, was a murderer. When she learned that Tony was the infament killer, she became obsessed with the case and how her beloved babysitter could have been a murderer.

Divided into two narratives, we have Liza’s memoir chapter that portray a lonely young girl living during the ‘Summer of Love. We also have the chapters soles focused on Tony Costa. His chapters read more like your traditional true crime novel, and dive deep into Tony’s psyche and eventual murders.

I’m not a huge memoir fan but I really enjoyed Liza’s chapters throughout the book. They dive deep into her strained relationship with her mother but also talk about what it was like to be a kid in the 1960’s. Many of the events she retells would never fly in today’s world and it’s honestly amazing to see how different society is 50 years later. Throughout Liza’s chapters she details her interactions with Tony Costa, highlighting certain events that in hindsight are extremely questionable. Personally, I would have read a complete memoir of Liza’s story without a true crime attachment. Her writing is captivating and gave me all the emotions, including plenty of aghast over the way she was frequently ostracized within her family.

In Tony’s chapters we get a glimpse into his childhood, including a view of loving home, if not an ideal home for Tony. His constant fixation on the loss of his father at a young age, and the eventually ‘abandonment’ of his mother (which is what Tony labeled his mother for remarrying) most likely lead to his sporadic tendency. Once out of childhood, Tony’s sexual desires were perverse early on, and the graphic nature of his marriage were hard to digest. In addition to Tony’s background, the event sequences that lead to each murder are listed out and written with just enough detail to convey actions without being overly gory. I often found myself forgetting this was a non-fiction book, just from the clear picture being offered to readers. I can tell that this book was completely and thoroughly researched.

As a self proclaimed true crime junkie it’s no wonder I picked up this book. However, the appeal of this book will bypass just crime junkies. The amount of cultural history that is included within these pages, makes this book a great option for anyone in need of a solid non-fiction book. Everything about this book just worked and I can’t rate it high enough.


The Babysitter is out now. Huge thank you to Atria for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion. If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof_books.

I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley for review and all thoughts and opinions are my own.
An astounding account of sixties innocence so close to pure evil. Author survived a life that would devastate any young woman. Yet, her memories of the summers spent in Providence remained relatively happy ones. Little did she know how close to a serial killer she was. This is a poignant account of a survivor of life experiences and well written memoir.

This book!! I've never read a true crime novel before but I do get obsessed with true crime documentaries so I wanted to give this a try. I'm so glad that I did. From the first paragraph I was glued to my kindle. It took all of my energy to not do more research on Tony Costa.

Wonderfully executed novel: a mixture of memoir and true crime. You won't be disappointed! I'll be ordering a hardcopy.

This book... it has ALL THE FEELS

Seriously- you might be asking yourself how a True Crime novel could do that but Rodman & Jordan have. Not only that but I think they have set a new extremely high standard- this is what all True Crime should aspire to be!

Yes, if you can't tell - I LOVED THIS BOOK.

It's brilliantly executed and researched. I was never bored and I was glued to the pages.

Nothing I can say about it will do it justice- so just buy it & read it- making sure you have time set aside to read it because you won't want to put it down.

Note: I was also provided a physical copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

I am all about the true crime genre. I love watching documentaries, listening to podcasts, but reading true crime books sometimes loses my interest for some reason.

That was NOT the case with The Babysitter.

Tony Costa is not a name I had heard before, and it took every bit of self control I had to not google him while I was reading.

The book opens with Liza, having another one of her bad dreams, only this time the so called "bad guy" in her dream finally has a face - Tony Costa. This confuses her because she has nothing but good memories about Tony. He was her unconvential babysitter after all! She then asks her mom whatever happened to Tony and mom nonchalantly answers something along the lines of ~ oh yeah, he turned about to be a serial killer.

From there we are told the story of both Liza's upbringing and Tony's spiral, and how the two lives intersected each summer in Provincetown, MA. I really felt for Liza as she described the relationship (if we can call it that) between her and her mom. I also read with increasing anxiety as she described hanging out with Tony and venturing into the woods.

The back and forth perspectives from Liza to Tony made this easy to read and the story itself is gripping! It's crazy to think what life in the 60s was like, especially for young women who could disappear without anyone so much as batting an eye sometimes.

I would most definitely recommend this book to any true crime lovers out there! Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to read this one! All thoughts are my own.

The Babysitter is a mix of memoir and true crime with each chapter alternating between the author's childhood in Cape Cod and the story of Tony Costa a.k.a. The Cape Cod Killer. The author's association to Costa is that he worked as a handyman doing odd end jobs at hotels in the touristy area during the summer months. Costa would occasionally take her and her sister along with him on runs into town, keeping them out of their mother's hair as she ran a small motel. At one point, Costa even brought her to where he potentially buried some of his victims, unbeknownst to her.

I found this book incredibly interesting and was engaged enough to keep reading, but parts of the book were not properly executed/fell flat. The memoir piece is a bit water downed and I felt like those chapters were trying too hard to be memoir, will the chapters on Tony's life were trying too hard to be true crime. It didn't fell like it jived. Almost like having a peanut butter and turkey sandwich. Two of the same thing (nonfiction) but mashed together, just don't really work.

I found the backstory of Tony and the history of the crimes he committed fascinating in the most creepy way. Those chapters kept me reading. I thought the author would have more of a connection with him than she did, given the name, but he didn't exactly "babysit" her, but would give her rides here and there, while her mother basically neglected her as a child. I get it though, as a mother myself, I only trust certain people with the care of my kids and it was evident the author's mother could have cared less who watched her kids. The coincidence is just that, creepy and coincidental.

Overall, I give this book 3-3.5 stars.

I had never heard of Tony Costa, Liz Rodman, or Provincetown prior to starting this memoir. After finishing The Babysitter, I feel like I have a great understanding of all three. Liz Rodman really digs deep into the ugly side of her childhood, showing a mother who handed her and her sister off to anyone, and one of those people happened to be a murderer. Along with Jennifer Jordan, they created a really great sense of the sixties and the summers in Massachusetts that immediately pulled me in as a reader. I appreciated the care given to his victims and the people impacted by Tony Costa. The contrast between Liz’s childhood and Tony’s story was a good balance. This is such a well-researched/ well  told story of one woman’s traumatic childhood intercut with the origin story of a serial killer, and  a must read for true crime fans. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC!

This was an interesting book, part memoir, part true crime. It had some pacing issues, but overall it was an interesting read about a serial killer not commonly known in today's culture.

Liza Rodman’s and Jennifer Jordan’s book The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer (Atria Books, 2021) chronicles Rodman’s 1960s childhood in Provincetown, MA. The book also chronicles Rodman’s interactions with Tony Costa, otherwise known as the “Cape Cod Ripper”. Costa killed at least three women in the 1960s; he buried their bodies in the woods after dismembering them, and he did this all while working for Rodman’s mother as a motel handyman and sometimes babysitter of Rodman. The horrors of Costa’s murders are told alongside the abuse that Rodman faced at the hands of her mother, making this an extremely complex true crime memoir. This book was notable for the way it combined the story of Rodman with Costa. Beyond this, it stands out within the true crime genre because it features an author who had such close contact with a serial killer—notably, as a child—but survived.

In the final chapter of the book, Rodman expresses that somehow during her childhood, she was more afraid of her mother than she ever was of Costa. This rang very true for me—I found myself much more affected and disturbed by Rodman’s story than I was Costa’s. I felt so much for the little girl that Rodman was, a girl who was so neglected that she was happier to be in the company of an actual serial killer instead of her own mother. In passages that so effectively capture childlike curiosity, Rodman explains the way she felt about Costa as a child. She would sometimes feel uncomfortable at what he did or said, while other times she felt totally safe. Later, as an adult, she wonders if Costa was grooming her—she was too young, then, to be of interest to him. But she wonders what would have happened had he not been caught before she reached a certain age.

This book is a painful one to read. It is difficult to have a front row seat to Rodman’s childhood trauma, and it is difficult to watch her being cared for by a man who was killing women simultaneously. Reading Costa’s story was heavy as well, but for a very different reason. In many ways, Tony Costa was a typical serial killer: he could not hold down a job, he had serious problems with intimacy and relationships, he possessed incredible illusions of grandeur, he was intelligent while being void of common sense, he was incredibly self-absorbed and manipulative, and he had no real ability to feel for other people. This is all very predictable and was not particularly interesting to me. I do; however, think the book needed to include the gritty details of Costa’s personality and perversions. The contrast between how Rodman saw him as a child and who he truly was is a contrast the book needs and utilizes well. What was very striking to me was the way Rodman’s story intertwined with Costa’s. It was also very interesting to see that the reality of his crimes was hidden from her when she was a child after he was arrested. The book opens in 2020, with Rodman’s mother telling her that Costa was the one who killed those girls all those years ago. This realization takes Rodman down a rabbit hole of discovery and is what leads her to tell two separate—and yet intertwined—stories of trauma.
The alternating chapters in the book, entitled “Liza” and “Tony” respectively, are the perfect structure through which to tell this story. The alternating perspectives helps to create a timeline of events. These perspectives also help the reader to understand just how close Rodman’s childhood was lived in proximity to a serial killer. This structure allows a certain kind of reflection to occur. The kind of consideration this book promotes is not always fostered in the true crime genre. This book is not really about Costa, it is about his victims, as well as those who survived him—notably, Rodman herself. The Babysitter is about a little girl who was predisposed to trusting someone dangerous because of the abuse she suffered at home. Yes, we get the violent details here that true crime texts have become infamous for. But these details are told without losing sight of the lives that were lost. The prose is sensitive, detailed, and does not mythologize Costa or his crimes. It recognizes him for what he was: a psychopathic coward who killed because he could. The book spends less time with what he did and more time with those who he affected along the way, namely Rodman.

Costa was suspected in connection with more disappearances, including three women who disappeared from Provincetown in the 1960’s. In their Epilogue, Rodman and Jordan do incredible investigative work to track down the three women that were suspected victims of Tony Costa. They discovered that all three women were dead—but they had not died at the hands of Costa. I was floored by this work and the reclaiming of these women’s memories.

The Babysitter also does a wonderful job of relaying life in 1960s United States. Provincetown was heavy with hippie culture at this time, and Rodman chronicles this culture in rich detail. She also explores and explains the landscape of Provincetown from the perspective of her childhood memories. These passages were some of my favourite in the book.

Although there is no shortage of horrors in The Babysitter, all of them are relayed with a thoughtful sensitivity, and all of them serve a greater purpose. This book is indicative of how effective the true crime genre can be at relaying all the stories of people’s lives, and how those stories can be relayed with something greater in mind. This book is a must read for anyone who loves true crime or memoir—bear witness to this incredible story.

Tony the motel handyman was a terrific babysitter for Liza and Louisa when their mother needed help. They were living on the margins on Cape Cod in 1966 and Tony was nice to them. In 1969, however, Tony was revealed as a serial killer but Liza didn't know this until she was an adult. The revelation shocks her to her core, as does her mother's reaction when she confronts her. It sets Rodman on the path to learning more about Tony an, along with Jennifer Jordan, she presents a more nuanced look at a monster than is the norm. They use multiple sources to create a highly readable book that isn't, mercifully, either screaming or exploitative, Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For true crime fans.

Thank you Atria for the ARC!

True crime fans- this one is for you.

WOW! This true story spoke to my true crime heart. This was an incredibly unique story because the chapters go back and forth between Liza Rodman’s tumultuous childhood and serial killer Tony Costa’s life story. Liza and Tony’s lives intersected when Liza was 8 and Tony would babysit her over the summer- amidst the murders he committed. I couldn’t believe the adversity Liza faced and the duality of Tony’s life. This is a highly anticipated true crime book INDEED.

Officially freaked out.

4.5 stars.

Shortest Summary Ever: Liza Rodman has a pretty awful mom - one who drags her and her sister around working jobs where she can meet men, partying all night, and leaving her kids in the care of random people. One of these random people was serial killer Tony Costa who took them for rides to the woods, aka his victim burial grounds. Liza’s recollection is captured here.

Thoughts: This is a book that made me mad, sick, and troubled - which is what it should be. I was engrossed in every shocking turn and several moments forgot I was reading non-fiction. While the description casts the spotlight on Tony Costa, the true attention of the story for me was on Liza and her life story of abuse from a negligent, appallingly absent, and crass mother with poor judgement to say the least. Then, to learn this awful truth later in life and process what this means is mind-bending.

I’m a teacher and therefore abuse is a “hot-button” for me, but listening to how this selfish mother dragged her daughter around like old luggage - leaving her with a trail of miscreants made me simply sad, perhaps even as disgusted as hearing about Costa’s murders and the havoc he wreaked on so many lives.

But while Costa was surrounded by people who in many ways enabled him, Liza SURVIVED. And it sounds like she flourished and that made the book amazing to know the light is there. Perhaps the question should be - was Liza’s mom any less psychotic than Costa? 🤔 When one exposes her children (even unknowingly), to a man like this, does she share equal blame? This is my “chew on that” as you read this brilliant work. Imma go hug my awesome mom now.

All my reviews available at scrappymags.com around time of publication.

Genre: Non-fiction, True Crime

Recommend to: Serial killer readers, Fans of true gritty and downright honest details. This is the story/“deal with it” type of book.

Not recommended to: if you can’t handle child abuse/neglect. I almost quit but I stuck it out.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley and Atria Books for my advanced copy in exchange for my always-honest review and for thanking the heavens for an amazing mom.

This book is wonderfully written. It has you hooked from the fist page. I literally finished this book in one sitting and it was an easy read. Be prepared for the ride, you will get lost in this book. Its a great read, specially if you are into psychology.

This is a very dark and disturbing memoir that details the life of Liza Rodman and her encounters with Tony Costa, who was a very famous serial killer (although tbh I had never heard of him) that died in prison still claiming his innocence. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me. But as Ms Rodman was a kid when she was around Mr Costa, it was even creepier in some ways.
What was even more horrifying was her mother’s behavior and her genuine lack of any kind of motherly instinct and let anyone she could find, strangers in the grocery store even, take care of her kids so she could live her life. That’s how Tony Costa came into their world-he was looking for a job and her mother hired him on the spot without looking for any references or anything. Her mother was so self absorbed and didn’t want to be a mother that she didn’t care who cared for her kids as long as it wasn’t her.
Tony was like able and attractive and kind to the kids, but in hindsight, Ms Rodman realizes that he was just grooming them for his unspeakable acts when they were older. Thankfully, he was caught and arrested for other murders before the girls were old enough to become his victims as well. And because Liza was so desperate for love and affection that she wasn’t getting from her mother (or her absentee father, she soaked up everything Tony offered, even when it meant going into the woods with him, her only real friend.
This story is chilling and very graphic in its details, but also very factual and gripping. I was fascinated to see that Tony blamed everyone and everything he could think of for his crimes. I hope in writing out her story, the author got some closure to all she has been through.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster /Atria and Netgalley for this arc in exchange for my review.

Imagine your life as an adult is filled with nightmares that include a man who was one of the adults who was actually kind to you and your sister when you were kids…he used to take you and your sister on adventures, including visits to his garden, and was someone you thought of as just a nice guy. The nice handyman at the motel where your mother worked days in Provincetown.

Later, as an adult you ask your mom about that man you spent summers with, and she points out that he was a serial killer…and pieces of his victims were in his “garden.” YIKES! The Babysitter is Liza Rodman’s story about her memories of the time in the 60s when one of her best friends was the local serial killer.

Fascinating story, which will possibly trigger some readers, particularly anyone with sensitivity to descriptions of murder and dismemberment, childhood physical and verbal abuse, neglect, sexual and physical assault, and drug abuse. TBH, it was a bit much even for a true crime buff who loves memoirs…but well done. Four stars. Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for this honest review.

Imagine if you had strange, vivid, scary dreams in your adult life, then you recognize a man from your childhood in them, and ask your mother what became of that man, your babysitter. Her response, "Oh, he turned out to be a serial killer" would be beyond shocking and confusing, and would rattle you to your core. That is exactly what happened to Liza and she shares her early memories and facts from the case in combination in this true crime/memoir novel. Liza and her sister shared an unusual, lonely childhood with a mother who worked all day and partied all night, ignoring them most of the time. Disturbing and creepy, in both Liza's upbringing and crime facts, this book kept me up nights reading and wondering how such things could happen.

Thanks to Atria for the free book.
I found this book to be fascinating. The life of serial killer Tony Costa and the authors experience being babysat by him was weaved together in a way that kept me interested the whole time. Tony Costa is not a serial killer that I’ve heard of before. His story is interesting - if you like learning about serial killers - and he just seemed like so many different people in one body. Liza’s story was super traumatic, but I liked how she approached Costa with a childlike innocence and the reconciliation that went on in this book. I’m just amazed at how Costa was so different with different people. If you’re a true crime and memoir fan, this ones for you.
TW: descriptions of murder and dismemberment, childhood physical and verbal abuse, neglect, sexual and physical assault, drug abuse