If You Tell
Gregg Olsen, 2019
True crime Mystery, thriller & crime
A true account of three sisters raised by a mother who made cruelty ordinary—and the loyalty that kept them alive. The book moves with plain, steady prose through a family ruled by dread, where ordinary domestic details make the cruelty feel close.
Feels like dread, hope and serenity. About family and society.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you read true crime for close family portraits and want a survivor’s account told without sensational flourish. Be aware that the cruelty is sustained and domestic, and the dread can make long stretches hard to sit with.
Why read it
It gives a clear-eyed look at how loyalty and fear can coexist inside a family, and why speaking up can be so difficult.
A page from the book
The love a child gives before she knows it can be withheld.
I loved my mother because I didn’t know I had a choice. I had to love her. Gregg Olsen.Gregg Olsen has written dozens of true-crime books, among them Starvation Heights, about a 1911 fasting cure in Washington State.
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Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is If You Tell for me?
- You may like it if you read true crime for close family portraits and want a survivor’s account told without sensational flourish. Be aware that the cruelty is sustained and domestic, and the dread can make long stretches hard to sit with.
- What is If You Tell like?
- The book moves with plain, steady prose through a family ruled by dread, where ordinary domestic details make the cruelty feel close. Feels like dread, hope and serenity. About family and society.
- What should I read after If You Tell?
- If you liked If You Tell, try Pretty Girls (Karin Slaughter), Then She Was Gone (Lisa Jewell) and Home Is Where the Bodies Are (Jeneva Rose).
A taste of the feed
What a woman weighs before she turns a man down.
It’s the truth. I’m sorry to be blunt about it, but girls don’t like guys who are doormats. Especially pretty girls, because there’s no novelty in it. Guys are hitting on them all of the time. They can’t walk down the street or order a coffee or stand on a corner without some idiot making a comment about how attractive they are. And the women smile because it’s easier than telling them to go fuck themselves. And less dangerous, because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her.
Pretty Girls · Karin Slaughter
What it looks like to see the warning signs only afterward.
But one wrong move, one tiny kink in the time line, it was all over. Not just their love story, but all of it. Youth. Life. Ellie Mack. All gone. All gone forever. If she could rewind the timeline, untwist it and roll it back the other way like a ball of wool, she’d see the knots in the yarn, the warning signs. Looking at it backward it was obvious all along. But back then, when she knew nothing about anything, she had not seen it coming. She had walked straight into it with her eyes open.
Then She Was Gone · Lisa Jewell
The word you only get to say to one person.
I’m trying to say Mom as many times as I possibly can because I know I’ll never call another person that again. It’s reserved only for her. There is no replacement.
Home Is Where the Bodies Are · Jeneva Rose
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