For full disclosure (which feels extra important when discussing a book about deception) I did not finish this book. I made it to the halfway point and realized that the structure of the book wasn’t working for me, and I didn’t want to pick it back up. So, I didn’t.
Now, with that in mind, the reason I believe I felt that way was the way Abby Ellin blended the personal narrative of her lived experience being engaged to a con man with the research about deception through double lives and false identities was not landing for me. I would imagine that Ellin hoped by keeping her own story primarily to the opening chapter that she would be able to explain to the audience her need to unpack what had happened to her and people like her. From that point of view I can absolutely understand not having the book be solely about the personal deception that Ellin experienced, or even primarily about it, but the balance wasn’t working either.
In fact, it reminded me in some ways of my reaction to The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell in that it aims to unpack larger themes, but the author’s approach limits it in some fundamentally important ways. For Montell it was leaning too far into personal storytelling, but for Ellin it felt to me that she was skimming the research – something Montell would never do. And oddly, skimming personal storytelling as well. As I mentioned, her recounting of her own experience with someone living a double life was held to the very early section of the book (which may have been unpacked further in the back half of the book – I’ll never know) and she is also a bit glib in how she discusses sources she spoke to for the more ‘academic’ section of the book.
Like I said, not the book for me.
Bingo Space: Justice. A book about a kind of crime that doesn’t always get justice for its victims.
