While I appreciate the time, effort and research that went into the book. I cannot get past the fact that the author made little judgements to insert little stories without knowing the truth. First one I noticed was the first victim and then I continued to look for them and they’re riddled through the book.

It would have been a better book without the assumptions of the victims and their family’s.

The only reason why it’s rated as high is it is, is because the work and effort on the actual nonfiction side of it.

Jillian Lauren had no idea what she was getting into when she wrote her first letter to prolific serial killer Samuel Little. While the two exchanged dozens of letters and embarked on hundreds of hours of interviews, Lauren gained the trust of a monster. After maintaining his innocence for decades, Little confessed to the murders of ninety-three women, often drawing his victims in haunting detail as he spoke. How could one man evade justice, manipulating the system for more than four decades? Lauren delivers the harrowing report of her unusual relationship with a psychopath--but this is more than a deep dive into the actions of Samuel Little. Lauren's riveting and emotional accounts reveal the women who were lost to cold files, giving Little's victims a chance to have their stories heard for the first time. This book was published in 2018 but after the death of serial killer Samuel Little in 2020 from Covid 19, she decided to republish to include more murders solved and to mention his death. I found the story to be very interesting and the book centers on Samuel Little as the most prolific serial killer of 93 women in US history. The man was truly a monster that preyed on women as he would get them in his car and strangle them to death and then just dumped them out of his car into the area and drive away. You need to read this book in order to get the full story as he became very fond of the author, Jillian Lauren. She was made next of kin and was notified of his death and received money and scraps of papers about his murders. If you like true crime about serial murders then you would love this book.

I am a newer fan of the true crime genre and I loved the book. The book is nonfiction but there were creative elements regarding Little's thoughts and victims' last moments and I thought that was a unique and interesting choice - a good one of course.

It's also obvious that the author has done a lot of research to give us as accurate information as possible

This book was an interesting non-fiction with fiction elements, where she takes liberty in describing victim's last moments and Little's thoughts throughout the stalking and murdering. While it added an interesting element to a true crime novel it does make the story a bit uncomfortable to read, which when reading true crime it should not be a comfortable genre to be reading.

This book allowed an insight into this "monster"'s mind and the background of Little and what he had to endure throughout his life. There is always a fine line between sharing the back story to a murder and being over sympathetic for someone that choose to become a monster, but Jillian Lauren does make smart choices throughout her book and the research that she chooses to share within it. The lack of softening the truth such as Little taking advantage of the racial and gender issues in the American system, which is highly important when talking about crimes of the time.

I personally recommend this novel if you are interested in true crime, but keep in mind it is a graphic and shocking book showing aspects that can be sickening. There are a lot of trigger warnings for a book of this sort so make sure to be prepared before entering its pages.

I received a digital advance copy of Behold the Monster: Confronting America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer by Jillian Lauren via NetGalley. Behold the Monster is scheduled for release on July 18, 2023.

Behold the Monster documents journalist Jillian Lauren’s interactions with Samuel Little, the law enforcement officials working to connect the man to those he murdered, and the women Samuel chose to be his babies. Throughout Lauren shares not only her own perspective, but strives to represent the perspectives of the humans involved, particularly the women who would become victims.

The strength of this book is Lauren’s very deep dive into Little’s world. She visited the man in prison numerous times, talked with him on the phone, wrote letters to him, tracked down family members of his victims, even found the physical locations of events based on Little’s spotty descriptions. In the end, this commitment to finding the details led to some cases being solved. It also gave Lauren a tremendous amount of material to work with in this book, which gave it great depth.

The amount of material also prevented a challenge in organization. Lauren tried to include many perspectives here, including her own. For me, this also led to some issues. Lauren jumps between perspectives (Little’s, victims, officers, herself) and also in time, which sometimes made it difficult to link the events together into a clear timeline. I also found the balance of perspectives a bit difficult to deal with. Book marketing pushed that the focus of this book was the victims. While Lauren did include their voices here, there was more focus on Little and his motivations than on the victims’s stories.

In the end, Behold the Monster gives us a peek into America’s most prolific serial killer. While it did not deliver the focus on victims’s voices that marketing suggested, it did explore the impact of a lesser known murderer.

It all started when New York journalist, Jillian Lauren, sat down to interview Detective Mitzi Roberts. She could never have anticipated how her life would change. When Roberts casually mentioned the fact that she had caught a serial killer named Sam Little and shared a bit of that story, it resonated with Lauren. Little chose victims who would not be missed and those whose deaths would not be investigated: prostitutes, drug addicts, and marginalized women. The victim profile resonated with Lauren because she too has a background in drug use and sex work. Compelled to know more, she wrote Little a letter.

In 'Behold the Monster,' Lauren gives a voice to the women who suffered sexual and physical violence and, ultimately, murder at the hands of Sam Little. I found this very unsettling but in a good way. It is one thing to read about a true crime with a detached air, but you cannot be detached when the victim is sharing what happened. I can appreciate how challenging this must have been for Lauren, considering her background and the fact that she has to tap into the humanity of these women based on the information from their killer. It was heart-wrenching to read these accounts, even if they were fictionalized.

This book is also very scientific and full of police procedure, but the information is easily readable. Lauren interviewed several interesting people, not only the detectives involved in the case but also neuroscientists and psychologists. Each person interviewed shed a little bit more light on the case, Sam Little himself, and Jillian Lauren.

This book is also largely a memoir. Jillian Lauren is just as much a character in this story as Sam Little. Obviously, befriending a serial killer and becoming his confidant will have an effect on a person, and Lauren shares her thoughts and emotions throughout the story.

It would have been easy to walk away. Not many people can look a killer in the eyes, hear the horrific things they have done, and keep going back, but she did. Without her willingness to keep visiting, we would never know that Little killed over 90 women, and most importantly, we would never have known who they were."

This is a very graphic book that creates vivid imagery regarding sexual violence perpetration on women and children, death, strangulation, animal cruelty, suicide, drug usage, child abuse, abandonment, etc.

Very detailed book on Sameul Little! Jillian was able to do what nobody else did...get Samuel to confess after KNOWING he was guilty of many more crimes from her years of research!

This was a very interesting read! I don't know how, as a true crime fan, I've never heard of Samuel Little before. I loved the author's focus on the victims represented both in POV chapters and in paragraph lists designed to draw attention to the quantity of victims.
One issue I did have with the text was with the constant shift of POVs throughout the text. I found the text hard to follow as we shifted POVs and time periods throughout the book constantly. I would have preferred a single set time period or larger sections dedicated to time periods or POVs.

Overall I would recommend this book. The author was thorough, victim focused, and wrote easy to understand prose.

I couldn’t get into this like I thought I would. The writing started out with lots of info dump instead of starting with the story. It just went in and in I couldn’t finish it.

This one just did not work for me. The writing and story were too all over the place for me to latch onto it. There were also times when so much technical information was throw at you in a way that made my eyes gloss over. And this is coming from someone who is a big true crime consumer! It’s an interesting mix of memoir and non-fiction, but it wasn’t quite pulled off.

I was so intrigued about this book when I read the synopsis, but there was something about it that I just didn’t like.

I didn’t really enjoy the fictionalized retellings of some of the victims, that for me was just a bit much.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: July 18, 2023
Jillian Lauren is an interesting character all on her own. The wife of a rockstar (a member of the band Weezer) and a member of MENSA, her personal life is fascinating. One of her previous novels, “My Life in a Harem” tells the real-life story of the time she spent as the mistress to the Sultan of Brunei. Like I said, Lauren’s life is in no way a boring one. So, when she decides to write a book on Sam Little, cousin of Malcom X and murderer of anywhere from sixty to ninety women, I definitely couldn’t turn down the oppourtunity to read it.
“Behold the Monster” has a strong “Mindhunter” vibe, with Lauren sitting face-to-face with Little in his prison cell, discussing the women he strangled and killed. Samuel Little went years without being captured, although he did spend time in jail for much milder offenses, and was one of the only serial killers to cross racial lines. Even though I am a serial killer expert (and proud of it), Little has never crossed my radar.
“Monster” is unique in that it is a non-fiction, true crime novel, but Lauren adds fictional components, as she describes the last minutes of Little’s victims, and tries to capture what is going on in Little’s mind during his stalking and murdering sprees. Lauren is not a police investigator, so she does not have access to inside information, beyond what is provided to her by either Little himself or the many officers of the law involved with him. This provides for a diverse and unconventional read, and it is unlike any true crime novels I’ve read before.
Lauren did a great job of providing insight into Little’s life and upbringing, while still paying proper respect to Little’s victims. “Monster” does not ignore the societal injustices either, bringing the hard-but-true facts of the racial and gender stereotypes of the American legal system. Little started to kill during a time when Black victims were labeled as “non people”, and when no one would look twice at a missing prostitute. Sadly, not much has changed but Lauren does not sugar coat these issues, and she deserves respect and props for the attempt.
Lauren talks about her meetings with Little, her interactions with various police and law enforcement officers and agencies and adds some snippets of her personal life, all in the five hundred odd pages of this fictionally altered true crime novel. Lauren will occasionally bring up characters from agencies, or incidences from her personal life, that I had no background understanding of, so some portions were a little choppy and confusing. That being said, Lauren has earned all of the writing accolades she has received, and I’m excited to see what other infamous serial killer she introduces to us next!

This book wasn’t horrible, but I really didn’t know much about this serial killer so it was interesting to learn more about him since he was one that you don’t hear of much.

2 1/2 rounded up.
This nonfiction retelling of the life and crimes of Sam Little was very well written and researched.
However, I found all the dates, huge cast of characters and vast timeline to be overwhelming at time. Sam Little was a disturbing individual so the story was also disturbing at times.
If you're looking for an in-depth dive into a true crime story then this is the book for you. Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for this ARC.

This chilling true crime book captures the essence of a murderer and the sadness that he brings to so many.
The author gained access to a sick.but clever individual, how he managed to commit the crimes he did is mindboggling. The victims suffered horrific injuries and we pay tribute to their existence.
The story does get very in-depth at times, the specific details give authentication to the crimes committed.
Many of us would not be able to talk to a criminal who admits he committed these atrocities, without any remorse or sympathy for those involved. The research and collection of data is a great achievement by the author.
This book is an extremely useful resource for anyone in authority, a reminder to tick the boxes and to keep digging when instincts urge you on.
A brilliant must read for lovers of true crime, but not for the faint hearted!

Thanks to Sourcebooks, NetGalley and the author for the opportunity to read and review this book.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was such a fascinating read. The book shows interesting insight into the relationship of a journalist writing and talking with a serial killer. Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for an ARC.

A new true crime book about Samuel Little and his victims. I appreciate that the author wanted to bring the victims more to the forefront; however, I think imaging their words and writing through first person of the deceased was not the way to do it. It was super uncomfortable to read. I think she could have just spent more time on who the victims were based on the facts, instead of writing from their perspective.

3.5/5

A very interesting true crime that centers around the author's investigative relationship with American's most prolific serial killer. At points, this didn't quite hold my attention or lacked some narrative flow, but it was a fascinating read overall.

What an interesting way to tell a true crime story. I loved the perspective of the victims, and how Lauren was sure that the reader got to know them. They are the true story here, and Lauren makes sure they are at the forefront, even in her descriptions of talks with the serial killer, Little. Loved her style and appreciated getting to know these ladies who lost their lives too soon, and in such a horrific way. If you're a fan of true crime stories, this is a must-read.

I’m a little perturbed. Not quite sure what kind of a review I want to write. The detail in this book was amazing. The information that Jillian Lauren uncovered during her discussions with Sam Little was so detailed, so disturbing, so unexpected. I struggled a little bit with the POVs. The author alternated between flashbacks, during which she described the various kills, and today, when she was researching the serial killer, or meeting with him.

If you’re a true crime junkie, this book is for you. The author did a marvelous job of getting into the mind of the serial killer, and describing the murderers from his point of you.

Thanks to Sourcebooks for the ARC. All opinions are my own.