I did go back and re-read the book and I'm going to take back pretty much all the positive things I've said about it. I don't know why I remembered it as being fairly good. I need to go on the Strawberry Frappuccino-Cinnabon diet with its amazing memory-enhancing effects. :blushing:
It looks like Shana Hogan interviewed a lot of Travis' friends and family members and had access to documents, emails, etc. There was definitely some information about his early life that I either didn't know or didn't remember (!!). I wasn't aware that his parents had divorced when he was quite young and that he was raised primarily by his mother. His dad died while Travis was on his mission. I wondered why he hadn't considered going to college -- apparently he did, and found it was not for him. He worked at a bunch of jobs before starting at PPL and really struggled, scraping by financially for several years before he really got going. Maybe this is all old news to everyone else, but it was new to me.
With Jodi, Hogan seemed to rely mostly on her police interviews, court testimony, blogs and so on. (She says at the end of the book she gave up on the idea of interviewing Jodi because she knew she'd never hear the truth.) Did we know that Jodi's parents found out she was growing marijuana on the roof of their house when Jodi was 14? That was another little nugget that was new to me. Hogan kind of presents a lot of what Jodi has said as what happened, despite the fact that most of it is BS. (Not all of it, though, not the finger-kicking episode, or the French maid's outfit -- that kind of thing.) Maybe Hogan is trying to allow the reader to make up his/her own mind, but that's not really how it came across to me.
Like I said, the trial is covered in the last 25 - 30 pages so it doesn't get nearly enough emphasis IMO. Hogan says that Jodi came across as arrogant and sarcastic but you certainly don't get the feel for those days and days and days of testimony. She glosses over the problems with Samuels and LaViolette. I felt like Hogan was trying to be even-handed with everybody, but there's such a thing as ignoring important points in an effort to be fair.
So my final recommendation would be if you can borrow the book from a friend or from the library, it's not a total waste of time. But I wouldn't bother buying it.
