Samantha Leach was close friends with Elissa, one of the main characters of the book, as they grew up in Providence, RI together. They drifted apart as Elissa was sent away to a program and eventually ended up at a boarding school within the Troubled Teen Industry where she meets Alyssa and Alissa.

In The Elissas, the author focuses on their time spent at facilities within the Troubled Teen Industry and their lives after graduating. She discusses the struggles they faced as they grew up and the challenges they encountered when they reentered society. Leach provided important insight into this industry but the stories of the main characters were a bit hard to follow.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for this ARC.

This is a fast paced read, twenty four hours and I was done. It was incredibly sad how the three ended up. My only issue with the book was it was hard for me to keep the three girls straight at the beginning. They all are named Elissa but spelled differently and that was enough to confuse me throughout the book. If you like fast paced nonfiction this will be one you’ll want to pickup. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for a honest opinion.
3.5⭐️

Who here remembers blue’s clues ? My sister (10 years younger) obsessed over this god awful show . However, the mail tune is quite catchy …

Here’s the mail
It never fails
It makes me want to wag my tail
When it comes I want to wail
MAILLLLLLLL !!!!

Well, my tail was wagging when I heard this extra special box get tossed onto my porch !

As I have said before, I want to prioritize finding new authors and maybe even branch out from my favorite genre’s and try some new stuff!

I would like to give a BIG Thank You to Samantha Leach for honoring me the privilege to read and review her debut novel prior to its June 6, 2023 release!

Had I not been told (and stalked the internet to prove otherwise) I would never believe this is a debut . Leach knocked this one out of the park.

There was no shortage on drama! This book is a must read for all :

Teaser :

Three suburban girls meet at a boarding school for troubled teens.
Eight years later, they were dead.

Bustle editor Samantha Leach and her childhood best friend, Elissa, met as infants in the suburbs of Providence, Rhode Island, where they attended nursery, elementary school, and temple together. As seventh graders, they would steal drinks from bar mitzvahs and have boys over in Samantha’s basement—innocent, early acts of rebellion. But after one of their shared acts, Samantha was given a disciplinary warning by their private school while Elissa was dismissed altogether, and later sent away. Samantha did not know then, but Elissa had just become one of the fifty-thousand-plus kids per year who enter the Troubled Teen Industry: a network of unregulated programs meant to reform wealthy, wayward youth.

Less than a year after graduation from Ponca Pines Academy, Elissa died at eighteen years old. In Samantha’s grief, she fixated on Elissa’s last years at the therapeutic boarding school, eager to understand why their paths diverged. As she spoke to mutual friends and scoured social media pages, Samantha learned of Alyssa and Alissa, Elissa’s closest friends at the school who shared both her name and penchant for partying, where drugs and alcohol became their norm. The matching Save Our Souls tattoo all three girls also had further fueled Samantha’s fixation, as she watched their lives play out online. Four years after Elissa’s death, Alyssa died, then Alissa at twenty-six.

In The Elissas, Samantha endeavors to understand why they ultimately met a shared, tragic fate that she was spared, in turn, offering a chilling account of the secret lives of young suburban women.

Thank you to Legacy Lit for providing me with this advanced copy! Going into this book, I knew very little about the Troubled Teen Industry and seeing how it impacted three different women and their lives was heartbreaking.

THE ELISSAS is a non-fiction/memoir about 3 girls who are a part of the "troubled teen industry" in the mid-2000s. I wasn't aware of this phenomenon, so I appreciated the crash course in this upsetting "fix-it" type boarding schools for girls who need course correcting. This idea of reform school seems to be around for a while, but the author Samantha Leach is making a connection now between these girls experiences at the school and their later drug addictions which ultimately all lead to their extremely premature deaths. It reminded me a lot of THREE WOMEN, though it wasn't as much of a success.

The author was childhood friends with Elissa, though they drift apart by high school. Elissa meets Alissa and Alyssa at the boarding school. It is a little strange for the author to have a close connection with one of the girls, but never meeting the other two, which I think leads to a bit of a disconnected. The way the book is blurbed, as well, makes it seems much more like there is a true crime mystery at the heart of the book. However, it is instead an indictment on the drug epidemic within suburbia, and particularly white women, which is a tragedy but certainly not a ground-breaking book topic. While I feel the book is important and the story heartbreaking, I'm not sure who or what this is for and what the book wants to accomplish other than honoring these girls.

It's hard to say exactly what and who this book is for. On the surface, it's an examination of the troubled teen industry but the book rarely delves into the specifics of the experiences that the young women at the center of the book faced, instead it tries to trace a through line through three of these women and the author herself, and how each were shaped by the pressures and issues of growing up in the early 2000s. There's a lot of references to various other troubled teen novels and articles, but because the author was not present at the "school" it comes across as very surface level without a deeper glimpse at what was actually going on. This problem also exists through the two "Elissas" that the author did not personally know.

While the story itself is important and impactful, it doesn't fully hit you emotionally because it feels like there wasn't enough digging done into who these girls were and how the troubled teen industry actually effected them.

ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Elissa, Alyssa, and Alissa met at a "therapeutic" boarding school for troubled teens. Within eight years of leaving the program, all three girls would be dead.

The author, Samantha Leach, grew up in the suburbs with Elissa - they attended the same schools, had crushes on similar boys, and broke a lot of the same rules. Leach made it through their early teen rebellion pretty much unscathed, but Elissa was sent away to become a cog in the Troubled Teen Industry and died when she was only eighteen. To cope with her loss, Leach spends years investigating what exactly happened to Elissa and learns more about her bond with Alyssa and Alissa and the factors that lead to their tragic deaths.

This was a heartbreaking memoir about friendship, addiction, and grief that shows the seamy underbelly of the for-profit "troubled teen industry."

An eye opening look at the troubled teen industry’s raw sad look at these three teenagers experiences who sadly by the end all pass away.The author writes about each. girls story there pain & struggles #netglley#the elissas

This was impossible to put down - I read it straight through. A really harrowing look at the Troubled Teen Industry but also the societal pressures we put on teenage girls. Alyssa and I were from the same community (I would've gone to her high school if I had lived one street over, her funeral was held at the same synagogue where my brother had his bar mitzvah) and it was really eye opening to see this alternate reality world. Highly recommend this book.

The Elissas is an empathetic look at the lives and afterlives of three young women lost to the cruel "Troubled Teen" industry. Samantha Leach weaves a narrative that is equal parts moving and eye-opening. Highly recommend!!

A heartbreaking true story of three lost girls who were put into the 'troubled teen' process - with all of them ending up dead far too early.

Samantha Leach knew one of the young women and wrote this with the sorrow of losing a friend. This book is full of data points and information about this troubled industry.

It's an important book for parents and for anyone who knows a teen.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

Highly readable, really compelling, and well written -- I absolutely raced through it! It just felt somewhat unsatisfying ultimately though, because although the author wove very helpful statistics and data into the stories and narrative, it did feel like it was ultimately lacking a broader message overall at the end, besides from the obvious that the Troubled Teen Industry is absolutely awful, deceptive and manipulative.

I've only recently learned about Troubled Teen Programs, and this past month I've been reading everything I could find on it. I was so happy to not only receive the e book, but I also received a physical copy in the mail.

We follow Elissa, Alyssa, and Alissa from the perspective of Samantha--the author of The Elissa's. That's right, they all have the same name, just spelled differently. I didn't really have a hard time following, but I can't IMAGINE how this audiobook would work. In fact, I'm considering downloading it if available at my library just out of sheer curiosity.

I found this to be terribly interesting. Terribly the key word-what these girls went through is absolutely horrifying, and I love how this topic has recently been coming to light.

I think my biggest issue was the massive amount of people to keep up with. It's nonfiction, so these are real people that played a part in the girls lives, but I do wish the author had maybe chosen a few key people and left out the rest. Boyyyy was it hard to follow. At one point I finally accepted that I was gonna be confused and just quit trying. 😂

Because I haven't read many books on the topic, I will still definitely recommend this one to people who are interested.

Elissa, Alyssa, Alissa: One by one they were sent to "therapeutic" boarding schools, where they crossed paths and became friends. One by one they left those programs. And one by one they died.

"For as long as I knew Elissa, her life was defined by her desire to burn the brightest. A hunger to experience it all, despite the consequences, that made her destined to burn fast, and then burn out." (loc. 2150*)

In "The Elissas", Leach traces what happened to her childhood best friend—Elissa—and then, too, what happened to Alyssa and Alissa. And what's there is disturbing: all the messiness of the troubled teen industry, which seems largely designed to empty wealthy parents' bank accounts and keep teens under as strict a control as possible, with little regard for the consequences.

I've read a lot of troubled teen industry books—a number have come out recently, including Paris Hilton's memoir (that one I have not read, and Leach does not reference it, but she does talk about the recent documentary about Paris Hilton, which to my understanding covers some of the same material). What this reminds me of most, though, is "The Forgotten Girls" (Monica Potts), which is similarly by a woman who "got out" and is tracing the life of one who didn't. Where "The Forgotten Girls" is about small-town poverty, though, "The Elissas" is set against a backdrop of wealth and privilege—the kind that keeps girls in boarding schools rather than jail cells, but not a kind that can save them from addiction and trauma.

Leach was not immune to the things that pulled Elissa under, but while Elissa sunk deeper and deeper, Leach managed to tread water. She doesn't ask as many of the hard questions as Potts does, and the more memoir (vs. researched) sections about her own life don't draw as sharp a contrast or make so strong a point, but it's clear that this book was a labor of love—something to memorialize three girls who would otherwise by forgotten by history.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*I read an ARC, so quotes may not be final.

Sadly, this book and I just did not mesh. I did a soft DNF at about 30 percent. Thinking maybe I just wasn't in the headspace for it at that time. I picked it back up at a later date making it up to 70 percent through but finding myself skimming and finally giving up. Samantha Leach is not a bad writer and this is not a bad book. The literary portions were beautifully done and profoundly moving. The research was thorough and also well done. . I just simply lost connection between the two aspects. I strongly feel that this book will be an important book for young women for a long time to come. This book will find a large audience. Sadly, it just isn't it for me. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this. The low star rating is down to me and my inability to finish. I would like to see more from this author. More literary. Less Scholarly.

The Elissas has a great premise - what experiences shape teen girl lives? Additionally, it does a deep dive into wilderness camps, which are a popular topic of late. However, the switch between narrative and scholarly research felt disjointed throughout.

This was a super interesting read on a topic so irrelevant to me. Definitely has the potential to blow up big, a second round purchase for mid & small libraries.

Going into this one, I had no idea it was nonfiction. It first read as a fiction story and I was immediately entranced by the story. But then I started recognizing that it was nonfiction and it made me love it more. I learned so much about the Trouble Teen Industry that I didn't know before. I was shocked to read what I did and it was great to learn about these programs from someone who did so much research into them.

I usually stray away from stories that talk about eating disorders, but I thought the conversation was important here. It made me understand these girls more and put their struggles into perspective. I also thought it was so important to tell these stories of addiction from the girls perspective because when people talk about addiction, they tend to dehumanize the person and this book highlighted the beauty, wisdom and lives of these girls

I am interested in the so-called Troubled Teen Industry, so I wanted to read this book. I did not really care for the writing style and I wish it could have just been more straightforward and had more depth. Nonetheless, I am glad to see that the author chose to write about this and I hope it will shed more light on this industry.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It is sobering and sad indeed.

This felt only a little deeper than surface-level storytelling with a clear agenda - anti-troubled teen industry- but not enough research into it. It's more a narrative about these girls who happened to experience the industry for a few years maybe, but there's not much substance from their stays other than that they were generally bad and possibly abusive. Also, while I'm not supporting these programs at all, it's important to note that these girls weren't sent for no reason. They were self-destructive and even committing crimes like theft for fun. And this is important bc the author seems to link these programs to their deaths, but it seems clear to me that regardless of their stays at various boarding programs, they could have still died in those exact same ways. It seems even more likely actually bc they would have continued in their self-destructive behaviors and various drugs without anyone keeping them in check and with all the privilege that came with being wealthy young white women.

My main takeaway from this is less about the troubled teen industry, and more about her obsession with her childhood friend. She says this story is about three girls, but she only knew one of them up to maybe 12-13 years old. And she talks about herself about as much as she talks about them, which leads me to believe this is just as much about her and how she was "just as bad." Which felt weird. I think this is good look into the privileged lives of rich white girls, and nothing more.