I love a good fiction that’s based off of nonfiction events. Suspense, thrill and just enough fiction to make it easy to read

I’m sorry but the fact that this author tried to do inner dialogue for both the killer and the victim is disgusting. Also don’t get my started on the random use of Kurt Vonnegut and his daughter??

Very long book, very graphic and all the authors and their parts just seemed excessive. True crime is one of my favorite genres, but this book took me a long time to finish and I just didn’t love how it dragged on. I think the events and storyline flowed nicely; just a lot of detail.

𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐧: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑆𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝐾𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑛 𝐶𝑎𝑝𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑑
𝐁𝐲: 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐲 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

This book is true crime meets narrative story telling with some sprinkling of fiction and a dash of imagination. It’s hard to believe that this is actually a true crime story. I think that it helps that the author took some liberties with dialogue and interactions, but at the end of the day, this is a terrifying true story. If you’re a true crime aficionado, you’ll need to add this book to your TBR.

In reading other reviews, it seems like readers didn’t like the tangents into Vonnegut, Mailer, Manson and Chappaquiddick. I’ll go to the minority here because I thought it was great and added another layer to the story telling. While the author may have taken some liberties. I would encourage you to make sure you read the last chapter of the book where Sherman ties everything together.

Thank you to NetGalley, sourcebooks and the author for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I love a true crime read, this one was perfect, I won’t say I read it at night it was really gruesome at times, lol, there were parts in the book that dragged like adding the two authors who set their eyes on the killer, it’s crazy how we are able to read into the minds of Costa it was a crazy ride.

I enjoyed reading the crime and investigative parts of the book. It was an interesting story to learn about. I kind of enjoyed the way the author rooted the story in that time period and wrote about other things going on in the late sixties/early seventies. And I didn’t mind the creative liberties the author took, I think it helped the book’s flow and kept me reading.

This was a very difficult book to pick up and read. I knew it would obviously have some gruesome and horrific parts, it did indeed.
This is a nonfiction book about Antone "Tony" Costa. Costa was a hippie in 1969 living in the Cape Cod area. His reputation as a drug user and dealer as well as a narc to the police precedes him as the serial killer we discover him to be. The details in this book are very disturbing and gory. It is also very long so we not hear of these gruesome acts once, but several times as we see it through his eyes, liberties taken by the author, and we hear about it in the court trial. While I liked the fictional parts of being inside Costa's thoughts, it also took me out of the facts for a bit. It made it more interesting to read but removes some truth.
One thing that I really found interesting is the historical times that the country was going through at the time which really enriched this story. For instance I learned more about Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer, and I did not know they were in this area at this time. I also didn't make the connection that this was taking place at the same time as the Kennedy news about Bobby Kennedy and the car that had the girl in it. There are details about the hippies of the time and the witch coven's that were active. We also jump to the opposite side of the country to hear about Charles Manson and that nightmare taking place. What a horrific time to be alive. It also would make finding missing girls hard to do, and the suspects many.
Overall, I feel like I took a lot of added information away from this read. It was very sad and disturbing and not fun to read some of those details. That being said, it did make the book much longer than necessary and more drug out.

Thank you to Netgalley and Source books for the e-arc of this book. This is my honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC. However, my honest review is going to be just that. It has been a long time since I have read a book that I really did not like. Unfortunately I hated this book. It was absurdly long and had a ton of what felt to me like useless information. So much of it felt dramatized. Having read a lot of true crime books I understand taking some liberty with things but this was too much. I found myself skimming the parts with Vonnegut and Mailer. Again this book was long and so much felt totally unnecessary when reading about Tony Costa. That was the part that interested and there were so many times where the book got completely away from that. Also the totally unnecessary mutilation of a cat completely turned me off from this book and I essentially skimmed to the end. I know more about Tony Costa now but I could have just looked a lot of it up myself. While I am grateful for the copy to read, this book was not for me.

A Massive Thank You to the Author, the Publisher and NetGalley for giving me the chance to read and review this book prior to its release date.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience

I had a hard time with this book. Maybe if I was more into true crime I would have liked this book more.

I love true crime and initially liked this but as it went on I felt it got harder to keep going. If I wasn’t supposed to review this I probably would have DNF’d it. It just wasn’t for me, the writing style and how the author laid it out felt dull.

Thank you to NetGalley, Source Books, & Casey Sherman for the ARC digital copy.
I really wanted to like this book. When first received the ARC, I DNF. I wanted to give it another try and went back to it again starting fresh from the beginning. I am a fan of the true crime genre and was drawn to the story initially but something about the writing just didn’t grab my attention. I still struggled to stay engaged. I hear it’s set to become a movie or miniseries. I trust this true crime story presents on screen the way the author intended the reader receive it. Unfortunately this one was a miss for me. Hopefully it’s a win for others.

While I love true crime , this one was a bit hard to get into , at times it felt a bit confusing which means I had to go back and re read some of the stuff I had already read, but it's does get 3 from me because of some of the stuff in it .

I don’t know what I expected, but it sure wasn’t this. I nearly DNF’d, but as I was reading an advance egalley, I felt responsible to give a review of this entirely spurious account of the Helltown murders. I’m grateful for the lesson to thoroughly check out the author before agreeing to review. Two stars for describing Cape Cod in the late 60s and 70s. I visit often, and I recognized many of the landmarks that were described, particularly in Provincetown, and am grateful they still stand today. This book lost me for two big reasons. The first is the failed attempt to fictionalize what is described as a ‘true crime narrative.’ I expected embellishments, some exaggeration, and a rich description of time and place. Instead we get outright fabrications and lies. How could he have any idea that two of Costa’s victims, upon meeting him for the first time, “ … thought of their new friend as handsome, smart, a little weird, but also great fun.” along with writing such as this that I would not expect from a ninth-grader: “Gallons of coffee and cartons of cigarettes helped the throngs gathered outside the courthouse get themselves in the right mindset to greet the fateful day.” and “The cat jumped when it noticed its owner’s hands begin to quake.” Good grief.

Having visited P’town and Truro, I was enjoying the descriptions of the towns and streets, until I consulted a map. Fact-checking did not extend to verification of street names and directions, so there’s little hope for the rest of the ‘true’ elements of the ‘true crime narrative.’ The second disappointment was the tedious and sensational turn to the Mailer and Vonnegut connections. I get that they were in competition with one another to exploit the murders for personal gain, but their gigantic egos prevented me from taking any interest in their struggles. At a whopping 500+ pages, and at least two instances where ‘passed’ was used instead of ‘past’, this book was in dire need of an editor. I received this egalley from NetGalley and Sourcebooks.

Read this at your own peril. The author does a phenomenal job of giving you the gory details if that’s what you’re into but please remember that these were real women. This serial killer did serve but only for 2 of the murders. I appreciate the author giving us information on an otherwise “unknowable” serial killer. There were other stories woven in that didn’t seem to have reason to be there so it a bit disjointed there but otherwise informative.

I am a true crime junkie and somehow I had never heard of the serial killer Tony Costa, although I am not sure he meets the qualifications of a serial killer since he was only convicted of two murders which occurred at the same time with no cooling off period. The book compares Costs to Manson several times, but Costa was nowhere near Manson’s level, but that could partially be de to the fact he was quickly caught. Costa deals and does drugs- a lot of drugs. He is described a having a cult following, however it is mostly three young women who dabble in witchcraft and call him Sire. He is well known in the hippie counterculture. He has an obsession with death and taxidermy. This book gives very graphically detailed descriptions of his horrifyingly macabre murders and assault of women. The book is based on an actual murder, but reads like fiction since it includes his thoughts and conversations. The book needed some massive editing to omit repetitive and less relevant information. Parts of the book seemed to drag and the repetition made me question if I was rereading sections by accident. It also could have done without the sides stories of authors Vonnegut, Mailer, and Lawson. I found those chapters to be dry and could have been omitted. Overall, this book fell short because the repetition and side stories made it too dry and drawn out. Overall, I give it 2.5 stars since it was interesting to read about a killer that I did not know existed, but could have been shorter.

While this was interesting, I didn’t anticipate it being somewhat fictionalized. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but was still a compelling read.

This read more like a not great thriller half the time, and the other half like a historical, almost boring, account of the times. I wanted to be a fan, as I love stories that dive deep into the psyche's of horrible people in history, but this did not live up to others in the genre.

2.5 rounded to 3

As a true crime lover, I was drawn to this novel, but it wasn't my cup of tea. There were too many artistic liberties taken to create the story and dialogue.