Behold the Monster by Jillian Lauren
Published: July 18, 2023
Sourcebooks
Genre: Psychological Pathologies
Pages: 542
KKECReads Rating: 4/5
I received a copy of this book for free, and I leave my review voluntarily.

Jillian Lauren is a writer, storyteller, adoption advocate, rock-wife, and lousy kickboxer. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoirs EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED, and SOME GIRLS: My Life in a Harem, and the novel PRETTY. She was the only journalist to extensively interview Samuel Little, the most prolific serial killer in American history. Jillian has an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. Jillian is married to Weezer bass player Scott Shriner. They live in Los Angeles with their two sons.

“If you choose victims no one believes, you get your car keys handed back to you.”

Sam Little is considered the most prolific serial killer in the United States. He was pure evil. He has an obsession with strangling women and feels no remorse. Jillian Lauren is the only journalist to interview Sam, and their relationship is different.

This was not the true crime book I was expecting. Told as a fictionalized story with factual evidence and information, we walk through Sam Little’s life and crime. There is nothing likable about Little.

I went into this book thinking it would be similar to Gregg Olsen’s style of telling a monster's story, but the tone was different. I can’t tell if Jillian had genuine affection for Little or if she was playing the part to get the scoop.

I do like the prominent focus on the victims, both surviving and deceased. Jillian write about these women with absolute respect and kindness, and despite these women being sex workers, she treated their memory with dignity.

The most shocking aspect was that when Little died, he listed Jillian as his next of kin, and she has his ashes in her garage. I cannot imagine the burden of that. I hope Jillian was able to work through processing this case with a professional and find peace.

Behold the Monster by Jillian Lauren is an intimate story between the author and Samuel LIttle. I have read a good deal of true crime novels but this story brought a unique view of the killer as well as the author's view of getting 'the story'. The author sits face-to-face with Sam and over time builds a relationship with him, learning about the women he killed and the details that led him to a life of horror. Overall this is a disturbing read. Sam's childhood was very sad and we learn of the trauma that influences his life. Sam was caught by police many times for a variety of crimes and still he was able to go on killing women by targeting women that wouldn't be missed by many if at all. The number of unknown victims shows how isolated and lonely his victims were.

The author includes information learned from Little himself but also fictionalizes the stories of the victims. I thought that this made for a great reading experience by bringing the women back to life and as you read of the many victims you feel the weight of each crime. Overall I thought the author did an excellent job of telling the story of Sam Little as well as her story and the impact of building a relationship with a killer and the toll it took on her to write this book. I thought that was really unique and impacted my reading. If you enjoy true crime I highly recommend Behold the Monster. It is a dynamic story with many layers and is sure to impact many readers.

I enjoyed this one a lot up until about 60% and then I think that's where it started to lose me. I felt like I lost a bit of the story jumping from narrative to interviews to court settings.

It was still a fine read, I just think it didn't explore what I expected it too. I appreciated the attempt at focusing on the victims and providing their story.

Thank you to Sourcebooks and NetGalley for a copy of an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

As a fan of true crime I was drawn to this tit.e. It was well thought out and written. The information obtained by the author was incredible. I learned quite a few more things about this twisted individual while reading this. I think other fans of true crime will enjoy this as well. It's not only a true crime but a part of history as well and I believe through this title she gave the victims their voices back.

Samuel Little is perhaps the most prolific serial killer in the US. He is a deranged, disgusting monster who believes he loves women. He thinks he’s basically a good guy because he doesn’t rape women, he strangles them to death. He’s only been to trial over a handful of women (few ever escaped him), but he’s admitting to over 80 murders.
Jillian Lauren has been writing letters to Sam, then meeting with him in the maximum security prison to try to help solve some of the cold cases she knows he must be responsible for, but never confessed to before. Then he starts telling their stories. And he’s more deranged and sadistic than she could have imagined, though always insisting how he loved all those women, his mother, even Jillian herself.
This book is dark, twisted, and shows the lengths a journalist would go to to play the games of Sam Little for the unnamed, unfound, unsolved numerous murders he committed for decades. Some might think her a hero to finally bring a resolution to the lost, discarded women, some might say she’s nearly as dark as he is to play his little games and listen to the demented details of what he did to these women.
This book is not for the faint-hearted, the weak-stomached, the excessively empathetic, or it could leave you weeping many tears or filled with rage. But it is an honest look at the sad stories of the victims of Sam Little, at the justice system that let him go time and again, and at the journalists and detectives who went to great lengths to solve many previously unknown murders.

I received this book in exchange for my honest review from Thomas Nelson and Net Galley. All opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of the publisher or its affiliates or the author.

I felt like I was reading a wordy research paper with this one. I wanted to get to the point much faster. All that background information while important for research left me a little bored.

Not just a true crime book, but a memoir of sorts, of what it's like to interview/spend time with a prolific serial killer, and to maybe solve a crime or two. Jillian Lauren is an interesting character in her own right, but Sam Little is fascinating. They have an interesting relationship, and Jillian isn't afraid to be honest about it. I wasn't terribly horrified reading the more sordid/violent details in this book, but I did spend over a decade as a prosecutor in the Bronx, so . . . I'm not easily shocked. The real tragedy of this book are the women - mostly women of color, prostitutes and drug addicts, so easily overlooked in our society, which is how Sam Little got away with murder for as long as he did.

He was sitting right across the table...and he would have killed her if he could. Jillian Lauren had no idea what she was getting into when she wrote her first letter to prolific serial killer Samuel Little. All she knew was her research had led her to believe he was guilty of many more murders than the three for which he had been convicted. 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? As the FBI, the DOJ, the LAPD, and countless law enforcement officials across the country worked to connect their cold cases with the confessions, Lauren's coverage of the investigations and obsession with Little's victims only escalated.

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.

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

Jillian Lauren gets to interview the most prolific serial killer Sam Little. With sixty victims so far but possibly 93 in all. I am not going to mislead anyone this is a very hard to read book due to the horrific actions Sam did to his victims. He was truly a monster and it is hard to believe he got away with these acts for 34 years at least.

Jillian did take us with her to the prison to interview Sam and it was disgusting the things she had to do to get him to tell her where he dumped some of his victim’s bodies. He was very manipulative even to Jillian.

I was hoping we would learn more details about his earlier life. It is awesome that Jillian took the time to recognize most of his victims and hopefully give some closure to their families.

I received this ARC from Netgalley for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Jillian Laurens approach to Behold the Monster was an unique one, which I very much enjoyed. The author takes you through the development of the justice system, how crime is addressed, it's strengths and weaknesses, and how it has evolved in the United States and elsewhere. She then applies it to one person, Samuel Little. He is one of America's most prolific serial killers. She explores his life from the start by interviewing family, friends, associates, vicitims, families of victims and the killer himself. You see him as he sees himself through his own eyes. Ms. Laurens covers his life through various family situations, reform schools, jails and prisons. The only drawback for some is it might be too technical and dry in parts but, overall, it made for an interesting and easy to read novel. I received this novel as an advanced reader copy. All thoughts are my own.

This was a good read. Normally I do not like reading nonfiction of any sort while in the middle of a semester, as it tends to feel like I've just added another academic textbook to my workload, but the author's style made this such a captivating read.

Behold the Monster is a perfect blend of nonfiction and elements of fictional support to help bring together the tales of Sam Little's victims, moving from past to present and back again. It can become tricky for an author to discuss the harrowing events surrounding killers while still respecting all of the victimes, but Jillian Lauren handled that well.

The way the author wrote kept things extremely interesting. At times, I found myself almost hearing a narration as a read, as if I were listening to a podcast.

I'm rounding this up from a 2.5 to 3 because I recognize all the research and investigating that was involved. This is the true crime story of Sam Little, the most prolific serial killer in America murdering women from the 1970s into the 2000s. It just didn't feel like a true crime story, more like what the author went through to get her story. The writing to me felt choppy as she inserts herself into the narrative multiple times and fictionalizes the victims with the thoughts that went through their minds. There was some name dropping of famous people and that was about her and not Sam. There were pages where over and over again there was a list of victims, cars he drove and states he was in. What he did was horrible and he was definitely sick but I didn't feel the horror as much as I should have.

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks provided me with a digital copy.

I went into this book unsure of what to expect. Being a true crime reader (and listener), I knew about Sam Little and was interested in the interview aspect of this book. He's well known, but less so than someone like Ted Bundy, so I was interested in knowing more about his crimes and his victims. Plus, hearing things from the perpetrator's mouth is always equal parts terrifying and interesting.

The interview aspects were the most interesting parts of the book. Sam Little was a deeply disturbed and infinitely evil individual who deserves no sympathy. Despite the title of the book, the interviews seemed to be almost an afterthought at time, which was unfortunate. There was a lot of time spent on the law enforcement side, which is understandable, and even more time spent fictionalizing the victims' stories. I do understand the importance of including their stories, they were more than just a name or a sketch of a face and deserve to have their stories told. But the liberties taken with the stories, and the fact that they were not factual made the graphic nature of them hard to read.

I'll be honest in that I came very close to DNFing this book, mostly because I got bogged down in the middle with all of the stories and fictionalizing. That being said, I did finish and I'm glad I did because I did learn a lot about Sam Little and his horrific crimes, I just wish there had been a little bit less creative license taken and more time spent with the actual interview process.

I didn't finish this. The timeline jumped around too much, and I also didn't enjoy the more "fictional" scenes. I think this would have been better off with a more straightforward true crime approach. Not rating anywhere else since I did not finish.

Unfortunately I did not enjoy this work. I think that this should have just been true crime. It seemed somewhat poorly conceived to essentially make up the last hours of these real victims and craft a false narrative of their actual experiences. The blend of fact and fiction didn't flow together well and you can tell what is prose and what is actual happenings so it comes off a bit disjointed.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, but being a true crime reader/listener, I was interested in the interviews with Sam Little. I felt those accounts were the most intriguing of the book - Samuel Little is most definitely a disturbed individual.
I did not really enjoy the artistic liberties taken with the victims' stories. I understand giving them air time to show they're more than just a name, but it was overly graphic and not factual.
Overall, I definitely learned a lot more about how Little came to be such a prolific serial killer - and how he evaded the system again and again. Worth a read but I wish there was less creative license taken.

True Crime nonfiction (with creative liberties) about serial killer Sam Little.

Interesting enough, but the writing is choppy and kinda all over the place and to be honest…we didn’t really get any inside information or insight from Sam. I did appreciate the life the author gave to the victims.

Well written true crime novel. The author leads us to see the monster through true, in filtered writing. Facing evil and then translating that into something readable has to be extremely hard to accomplish - she did a very good job with this one!

Wow wow wow!! This book was incredibly jaw-dropping, mind blowing, intense and amazing at the same time. Not for the faint of heart but it is written in a way where you have to keep reminding yourself that this is not a fiction book but real life. The psychology of it will keep you turning page after page! A really great read!

A good true crime book from someone with FBI experience. I liked how this book takes a look at the work of someone who worked in the BSU. I do think the flow of the book could have been better, with it at times bouncing around too much. I liked the times when the book stayed on the topic of Sam Little, America's most prolific serial killer. This was the first time I have read about Little, and I have not heard a lot about him which is interesting considering him being such a prolific killer. I didn't enjoy the way the murders were dramatized and would have rather just have the true info and not just what the author thought happened.

This is such a wild story. It's so interesting and so so brutal so definitely warning on that front. I found the writing style really enticing - it definitely kept me interested especially given this is not at all my preferred genre.