I wanted to like this one since I read several of the books Beatrice Sparks wrote like Go Ask Alice and then was outraged when I found out they weren’t really written by troubled teenagers. I felt like this book jumped around too much.

Unmask Alice is a thrilling ride of a book. I definitely did not expect to be so enthralled in this book but it definitely kept me reading more and more.

This was so fascinating! It almost reads like a screenplay. I could see the movie in my head as we uncovered more and more of this woman's scandalous story. The fact that the world was held in a grip of nearly mass hysteria because of one woman's manipulative desperation for celebrity is equal parts horrific and compelling.

Author Rick Emerson has truly done incredibly thorough research. I love that he chose to present this non-fiction story in a fast-paced timeline format jumping from event to event and from perspective to perspective. It kept me sucked into the book.

I enjoyed hearing the true story behind the fictional and atrocious Jay's Journal. I got lost in Alden Barrett's beautiful story of the pain of living with his misdiagnosed/undiagnosed depression and almost forgot about the rest of the story I was reading.
I will say nothing more because I don't want to spoil you any further than you may have been. Do not google the tale ahead of time. You will be far more satisfied if you let Rick Emerson tell you this well-crafted true story.

Thank you to Rick Emerson, BenBella Books, and NetGalley for a chance to review this book.

I loved this! I then went back and reread Go Ask Alice, Jay’s Journal etc. very eye opening. This is a book that will definitely stay with me.

Go Ask Alice existed as a rite of passage when I was in the sixth grade back in 1984 like Forever or Flowers in the Attic. It presented an unofficial entry into adult reading and situations. It was another book to hide in a drawer from my mom and secretly consume.

Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson reveals the origins of the book and others like Jay's Journal. Kids who came of age in the 1970s/1980s/1990s, maybe even beyond that to more contemporary times, will remember Go Ask Alice. It was a seminal teen diary of drug use and debauchery by a tragic yet anonymous teen figure.

Meet Beatrice Sparks, a noted therapist and psychologist, who "finds" the diary and starts a revolution with this and other diaries written by troubled teens. Is what she discovered real or fabricated? Is Dr. Sparks who she claims she is? Many discrepancies and contradictions surface. Some will infuriate you with this supposed "expert" who convinced herself that she was helping children and society. Meanwhile, she apparently used these diaries as stepping stones to gain wealth, respect, and a fraudulent career.

In this book, the author also covers Jay's Journal, which I never finished because of the dark subject matter. Reading some of the excerpts made me glad I avoided it. However, I was so angry about this particular book's origins and believe it was instrumental in sparking the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. If you recently watched Stranger Things, it is depicted on a small but fairly accurate scale. RIP Eddie Munson.

After reading Unmask Alice, though, it will give you pause. Could this furor over the Satanic Panic, which I just read may be resurfacing, have been avoided or patted down? Who knows? And how could the truth of the journal be so warped and put a decent family in the crosshairs of a scared, impressionable public, ruining their lives in the process?

Either way, Unmask Alice is a riveting book that demonstrates how any teens suffering from mental illness, addiction, and the isolation, confusion, and pressure of adolescence never receive proper help. Nowadays, it's better but nowhere near where it should be.

With humor and tamped down outrage, the author pokes holes in both books and subsequent ones to shine a light on what the possible truth is. If you've ever been curious about these famous diaries and who wrote them, you'll need to read this book. My curiosity has been quenched.

I loved this book! So interesting and surprising, it was a captivating look into a cultural phenomenon and the women who orchestrated it all.

I will be recommending this to my followers. The true crime stories are so scary but this one was so interesting I kept reading.

I really liked this book because the Satanic Panic was before my time so I have always been fascinated by it. I think this deep dive was incredibly done and I will definitely be trying to get my hands on a hard copy.

This is the book version of taking the red pill and going down the rabbit hole. It is totally mind blowing and also a bit hilarious how one woman fooled the nation, not just once, but multiple times. From the lack of fact checking, not only into her credibility, but also in the stories, to the blatant similarities and overt use of the same style in what was supposed to be different diaries of different teens, it’s insane.
I personally never read “Anonymous” but you can bet your dollar I’ll be looking to do that soon. I do recall there being a Satanic cult scare, albeit vaguely as I was very young. If you haven’t read this book and are curious about what this rabbit hole is all about I suggest you take the red pill and get yourself a copy. It’s hard to stop reading.

Emerson effectively sets himself up as a Doctor B/Beatrice Sparks, PHD here. Let’s talk about no proof on her part regarding sources and then…provide vague sources of our own. What?

There is not one but two references in this book of someone shooting themselves in a house where other people were at the time and…no one hears the gunshots? Maybe this is my inner ghetto child showing but a gunshot is something that is not possible to ignore in a small closed space.

In the beginning of this book the author cites Beatrice’s mother leaving her two children on a train and getting off to push out baby Beatrice (phd) and then getting back on the train and meeting up with her two kids. Later on it’s said that Beatrice’s siblings are younger than her. Younger enough in fact that Beatrice ends up raising one. Is this some kind of time warp situation or was some data left out? No other siblings are ever mentioned.

I have to say the satanic panic portion of this book was way too long and not needed as a setup for the Jay story. It seemed to act as bad filler. The reader is promised some insight into the fake Vinceniel (sic) name but then just gets a quick footnote. What?

It would be silly to not mention how at the end the author states the idea for this book came about as he was driving and BAM saw a spark of light (? Acid flashback?) and thought hey what about writing a book about this fake diary from the seventies? What?

I may be going against the grain with this review. A non-fiction detailing notes about the “diary” Go Ask Alice and “memoir” Jay’s Journal seemed right up my alley. I did learn a lot – I really had no idea about the author of these “diaries” and the things she allegedly did was insane. However, I felt like the author added in a lot of extraneous details about events that may or may not be related. In fact, some of the conclusions about the relationship between these events seemed really stretched. (Note: this is my first time reading about some of this, so I could be wrong). The writing was meandering and would jump from topic to topic. I wish it would focus more on the author, Beatrice Sparks, and slightly less on other aspects.

You guys remember how obsessed I was with published journals, right?

Well, turns out they were all fake.

I was a freshman in college when it came out that the Anonymous editor, Beatrice Sparks, had actually written each and every single one of these journals. For nearly 40 years, the general public believed these journals were written by real teenagers struggling with real issues. I was 13 when I first found a copy of Go Ask Alice. I absolutely devoured the traumatic diary of a teenage drug fiend. I still am absolutely obsessed with crisis lit, and if it's told in a diary format.....even better.

Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson is the a nonfiction counterpart to the Anonymous Collection. It delves into the fraud of a woman, Beatrice Sparks, not a doctor, not a youth counselor, not an advocate for young adults. But a woman who created her own success by exploiting those who believed in her work.

The bulk of this book focuses on Jay's Journal, mainly because his family is one of the only families to come forward saying Beatrice Sparks is a fraud. Marcella Barrett contacted her after the death of her son, Alden. She handed Alden's journals over in the hopes that other suicidal teens may find solace in her son's words. But instead, Sparks took that journal and twisted it into a story of witchcraft, sacrifice, and ritualistic deaths......it was released at the beginning of the Satanic Panic.

My jaw dropped several times while reading Unmask Alice because it's just insane the amount of people who just blindly followed Beatrice Sparks and allowed her to "recreate" the journals of the teens she supposedly was working with. This was honestly one of the best books I've read this year.

I do still love the Anonymous Series, and I plan on re-reading them with this new information in mind. Regardless of if they are real journals or not, many teenagers struggle with issues found within the pages. It doesn't discredit the story in my eyes. I am appalled at the exploitation, but if you take these stories and read them as fiction, they are still compelling stories.

I grew up reading Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal and found them enthralling and yet not totally realistic, but everyone claimed they were real... I remember later hearing someone had been personally given the journals and turned them into stories and that just seemed weird to me, but whatever: some people have shitty parents.
So imagine my genuine shock and awe when I got an ARC of Unmask Alice and discovered just how absolutely made-up and awful Beatrice Sparks was.
Seriously, my mind is blown.

If you read any of those "Anonymous diaries" you will be fascinated by Unmask Alice! It's nonfiction that really is stranger than any fiction and more thrilling that many thrillers these days! Truly a bonkers story.

Have you been watching Stranger Things Season 4? During that season there is a point when the entire town is convinced the kids playing Dungeons and Dragons were worshiping Satan. If you weren't around at that time or were too young to remember, the 80's thing to fear was Satanic worship. It was caused by games, heavy metal music, wearing black, smoking clove cigarettes, burning incense, smoking pot, shooting heroin, watching horror films, reading Stephen King books, and basically just being a teen at the time. Communities freaked out that this was happening in their towns. Only no one ever had any proof of cattle being killed, babies being sacrificed, or any of the other crazy tales they came up with about the teens they accused.

It was quite the time to be alive.

At the same time the War on Drugs was also being pushed by Nancy Reagan and every celebrity she could get to Just Say No. Fun fact, I had a poster of Kirk Cameron in my room with that very slogan on it. Good stuff. Anyway, being a kid at that time they really concentrated on us being scared of everything - especially drugs. As many a Gen Xer will tell you they liked to put the fear in us about drugs, sex, nukes, and kidnapping. But we also weren't supervised most of the time so, really how concerned were the adults really?

I digress. I read both the books Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal at a fairly young age. And they stuck with me for a long time. Because I had no idea if they were even remotely true, but they were marketed as possibly being found diaries of teens so they could be true. If these books came out now, in 2022, the internet would prove them false before the first printing was done. But in the 70's even the publishers didn't fact check, apparently. Instead Beatrice Sparks was able to convince people these teens existed and trusted her with their most private thoughts. Which, okay, Jay's Journal was given to her by the kid's mom, but Sparks changed the name and basically made up 99% of what was actually published.

This book made me sad to realize generations of kids have fallen for these books. And that they helped fuel both the War on Drugs and Satanic Panic. Now we know LSD could help people. So many of the Schedule 1 drugs could be used in therapeutic settings, but instead the government just slapped a big nope on all of them and we've wasted decades where they could have been researched instead. I also felt for the Barrett family, whose son Jay's Journal is inspired by. I can't even say based on because the only two things they have in common is both boys die by suicide. Spoiler alert: Barrett was not into the occult and did not do any of the things in Jay's Journal. Instead Beatrice Spark used the family for her own gain.

My issue with Emerson's book is how the information is presented. It's easy to read and engrossing, but also lacks concrete resources to back up his facts. He talks about this in the book, but it still felt like he had a personal vendetta against Sparks the way he goes after her. His phrasing and tone made it seem he had a personal stake in the entire situation. I was sure he was going to reveal a personal story that tied into this whole mess, but he did not. Overall I'm glad he's helping get the word out about how Sparks deceived everyone and I wish these books would disappear from our culture.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

3.5⭐
Nonfiction isn't usually my cup of tea. But I took a chance and grabbed this book. Never before I flew through a book so quickly and devoured it in two sitting.

The plot and narration techniques were flawless and the facts were fascinating to someone who never lived in that country. The vivid description of drug abuse and the comments of all the people involved in this tragic real life story involuntarily gave me goose bumps all through the book.
This book was so raw and emotional that at my age I felt it all, the teenage angst, the non-understandable pain, the incurable depression, uncertainty of future, the erotic hormones wrecking havoc with your emotions.

Though the start and middle kept me hooked in the book, the ending just didn't do it for me. It was all over the place and it seemed like all the informations on satanism was hurriedly jumbled down to finish the book which didn't make sense to me. Also the book was too lengthy. Overall, an eye-opening and enjoyable read.

Thank you Netgalley and Benbella books for providing me an e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I read Go Ask Alice as a freshman in high school, and the image of the protagonist trying to claw her way out of a closet she put herself in had me scared off of hard drugs for life. Years later, I learned the bare minimum about Beatrice Sparks. I love a scam story, so when I saw the opportunity to read a deep dive on this con queen, I was very pleasantly surprised. Get this for the reader who loves a literary scandal. It's informative and salacious.

What a trip this book took me on! I’m a huge fan of true crime and this book, while a little tedious in places, was right up my alley. The “anonymous” author of Go Ask Alice took advantage of a hard time, with people looking for someone/something to blame and she set out to capitalize on it.

The constant con-woman that is B. Sparks is infamous in the most underhanded way, praying on the scared mother, the angry father, the sneaky politician, and the oily entertainment exec. The time of Satanic Panic was high & mental health was taboo, maybe perhaps not even a thing to consider during that time.

The author provides a somewhat erratic tale of her duplicity with “footnotes” thrown in haphazardly to show supporting evidence, almost in a mirror reflection of the “diary’s” format. Emerson is passionate about his research, about the history & effects of LSD on the culture, and the war on drugs.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this title.

I've been loving You're Wrong About's series on Go Ask Alice this summer, and Rick Emerson popped up as a guest to talk about the real story behind the book, which immediately piqued my interest to pick up this title. This dives into some of what he discussed there, but also dives into Beatrice Sparks' work beyond _Alice_, particularly the callous way she took actual diary entries and put them mostly unaltered into its follow-up _Jay's Journal_. This doesn't go into quite as much details as I'd maybe like it to, but does a great job of telling a propulsive story that pulls in how the changing social climate of the 70s and 80s helped these obvious fictions get to larger prominence than they maybe deserved.

Enthralling snapshot on 1970’s culture. How does someone get away with forging a diary of a teenage girl dealing with drug addiction and it becomes a highly acclaimed bestseller? Beatrice Sparks became a con artist in her search for wealth and glory. Does she have an advanced degree from UCLA? Is she a child psychologist? No, but the lies of her past creates such a high esteem and reputation. A mother in her tight knit Mormon town gives her the diary of her smart, creative, depressed son whom died by suicide. And Beatrice decides to edit his diary. I could not put this down! Emerson takes care to look into the lives of those most affected by Sparks’ lives.

The book Go Ask Alice is a landmark piece of writing -- for the past 30 years it's been on banned book lists, school required reading lists, and a wide variety of recommended reading lists. The story of Alice, a random teenager from a supposedly middle-class, "normal" family being drawn into a life of drugs and addiction, leading to a tragic end of her young life, has impacted readers in a way few other books have. The notion that it was a true story made it all the more life-changing for those who related to it in one way or another. But Rick Emerson pulls the curtain back on that farce, revealing the truth behind Go Ask Alice: the entire story is fiction written by failed author Beatrice Sparks and rooted in a time when society was desperate for a way to stop an imagined drug epidemic and "save" their children. The perfect storm of fear, mob mentality, and political manipulation helped Sparks' fictional story to gain momentum, thanks to an editor and publisher working some creative marketing strategies. Emerson shares not only how Sparks came up with the book itself but the motivation behind those who supported it at the time as well as the heartbreaking true stories she exploited in her chase for literary fame and success.

Thoughts: Emerson blew my mind with this work. I, like many others, was scarred for life after reading Go Ask Alice -- it's harrowing tale of addiction and mental anguish enough to turn my fifth-grade younger self off of drugs for my entire life. This 40-year-old has never touched anything other than the occasional alcoholic beverage thanks to Alice's tragic story, and mostly because when I read it I truly thought it was real. As a high school librarian, I still recommend this book to my students, sharing with them how it scared me when I was younger to help prove how powerful it was (and honestly still is). Emerson does his research and I was fascinated by the true stories behind this novel, even if it changed my entire viewpoint of the work itself. It is still powerful and I will still recommend it, but I am torn now knowing the exploitation behind it all. Emerson has created a very readable nonfiction and, while his own opinions and viewpoints are included, there really isn't a way to share this information without strong feelings so I can't begrudge him that. Unmask Alice is a must-read for anyone who read GAA at some point in their lives and for investigative nonfiction fans.

**Thank you, NetGalley and publishers, for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.**