Review of Deceit

[Annie Sanford]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Deceit" by Vernon Baumrind.]

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2 out of 5 stars

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This author is telling the story of their life, which is a difficult thing to do and is to be commended. That is the only positive thing that I can say about this book. I chose to give it a rating of 2 out of 5 due to the language, lazy writing, and sexual content. While their story is sad, the writing is even sadder. The basic premise of the book is very interesting, but the story is not well told. The writing is dry, and the author has a habit of writing run-on sentences. The most interesting parts of the story are the parts that the author transcribed from real conversations, specifically the closing arguments of the attorney. The character of the attorney is probably the most enjoyable of all of the characters in the story. A good deal of the book revolves around court drama. This author made the choice to write out the court transcription rather than use a creative license. In my opinion, this is lazy writing. If everyone did that, anyone could be an author. This was not an appropriate choice for the telling of a story. It would be more appropriate if a person were writing a textbook. There is a great deal of sexual content in the book as well, which is very uncomfortable to get through. Again, these were conversations that the author transcribed into the book. While it is sad that these conversations took place, the full description of them did not need to be shared with the world. Several pages of very descriptive phone sex, talks of masturbation, and a mention of a woman’s time of the month make for a really difficult read. The speaker on the phone uses words such as ‘f****g’ or ‘f*ck’ to speak to the other person during phone sex, which is very demeaning. A character in the story refers to another character as a ‘Jew lawyer’, which is very anti-Semitic. A character gets angry and slaps her 5-year-old child, exhibiting abusive behavior towards children. Overall, it is a very sad story and very poorly told.

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Deceit
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