The Girl in the Leaves (Berkley True Crime)

I'm not able to impartially review this book since the crime itself happened in the little lakeside community that I live in, which naturally made me more interested in reading the story than the average person. That said, I believe the book was pretty faithful to the details, although local scuttlebut says that at least one of the victim's families disputes some portions of the story. I read it to see how true it was to the situation as I knew it from some of the people mentioned in the story. I was impressed by the fact that Robert Scott chose not to go into details that would be messy and uncomfortable for the one victim who did live through the experience. I was very surprised that he used the real names of the people who played show more roles in the rescue of the young girl and ultimate prosecution of the perpetrator. I actually saw only one reference locally that was incorrect - the grocery store Neff's was incorrectly called Noff's. But otherwise it seemed spot on as to the locals in the area. Reading the book did do one important thing for me - I am so very proud of our local police and court systems (prosecutor's office, etc.) who did a wonderful job of bringing a very horrific crime perpetrator to justice in a short amount of time, and who most notably saved the life of a 13-year old girl with their detective and police work. I think of some other cases with young victims in larger cities where it seems that the police formed a pre-judgement that led them one direction and as a result they never solved the crime. Great job for our Knox County law enforcement team! show less

Stephanie Sprang, Tina Maynard and her two children, Sarah and Kody disappeared one November day. Stephanie, Tina and Kody were never seen again. Sarah was rescued from the basement of a house where Matthew Hoffman was living. Oh and the house was filled with leaves.

For being described at ‘one of the most bizarre mass murders ever recorded’, this was a very dull and dry book. It seemed to be taken from transcripts of interviews and testimony. It was not so boring that I didn’t want to finish it, but there was no life to the book.

Meh. As A True Crime fan this was an interesting story but very poorly written. I don't mind when TC authors take a little liberty with a story and interject their thoughts or possible thoughts and feelings of the victims in a case (as long as they don't totally deviate from the truth) Makes for a better story. I don't think this author did any of the interviewing himself and just took all his information from court documents. And his endless reporting of all the incorrect and false "tips" called into the police was just plain boring and served only to increase the page count. Might have been better to just read the Wikipedia account of this case.

True crimes are always good reads, shows how many screwed up pieces of scum are in this world and the damage they can cause. This book was good, but it read more like a police report.

Tragic story but the writing didn't feel as personal as I thought it would after watching the survivor tell her story on Dr. Phil.

Good true story for a town not too far from where we live. Interesting how some people can be so sickening!!

Saw on dr. Phill