A review by coralinejones
The Elissas: Three Girls, One Fate, and the Deadly Secrets of Suburbia by Samantha Leach

3.0

I'm conflicted with my rating. On one hand, there was much I could relate to. Not in personal events, but with the pop culture references. The discussions on girlhood in this time period were nice to read about. I wasn't a rich, suburban girl, but I knew of some, and I certainly was around and on the Internet to see this lifestyle unfold. Being the "ugly duckling" to your "pretty developing friends" in particular was something I could relate to while reading the beginning of this novel. Much of topics brought up by the author I could see in my mind because I've either watched the show she was talking about (Skins UK, for one), or saw the magazines she was referring to (Tabloids, mentions of Perez Hilton), or simply was alive to understand the connections (Paris Hilton, early 2000s "it" girls, diet culture, Tumblr, fashion trends, and more). Since I existed while all this was occurring, I felt connected to the story in a way I think I wouldn't if this happened in, let's say, the early 1990s. For that, I give it 3 stars.

However, as we got deeper and deeper into the narrative, I acknowledged how weird and inappropriate this book felt. There's a review on Goodreads by Paige Hettinger that explains it better than me. I will copy and paste what it says below:

"The ultimate problem is that Leach doesn’t know shit about these women. She hardly knows shit about Elissa. She is spinning myths in this book. Your childhood best friend will be unrecognizable to you by college if you have not stayed in touch, and even then still unrecognizable from their former self. Piecing Elissa’s life back together by picking apart the lives of two other women does every single girl involved a disservice.

My major, massive problem hit from the beginning: creating literal dialogue for these women’s conversations that she cannot even begin to guess at. It is nothing but fiction. What makes it unbelievably stranger is what she chose to put into dialogue: their sex lives? She had them all talking about boys, boobs, asses, grinding, music, and using what can literally only be called AAVE for it. I know the early 2000s were rife with white women appropriating that vernacular (and white women still do it en masse) but lord, if you’re going to, just acknowledge it."

Like at this point the book might as well be a fiction novel to the likes of "The Virgin Suicides". The author doesn't know any of the girls she's writing about, not really. She hadn't seen the main "character" Elissa for YEARS. Everything she's writing about is written as if she was right next to her, holding her hand while these drugs were taken, and kisses were placed, and shots were drunk, but she wasn't. It's all fictional bullshit. I can't take it seriously.