However, it's her nuanced consideration of our own culpability that makes this book unique. Adelmann travels the well-worn paths of some of the most famous fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm with stylistic panache and 21st-century verve. It seems Will’s therapeutic dictates are beginning to work, but as the women move past their public victimization and into the identities they would like to build in the aftermath, it becomes clear that Will has one more surprise up his impeccable sleeve. As the summer passes, the women transcend their initial rivalries and suspicions and become bonded by their unique suffering. All five women have received the same spamlike email inviting them to work through the lingering trauma of their “unusual stor” in group therapy led by the genially handsome Will, who exhorts them to Absolute Honesty, ostensibly in order to heal.

Raina, the oldest of the group at almost 40, is familiar mostly for her famous husband, though her face is vaguely reminiscent of some decades-old scandal surrounding their romance, while Ashlee, the most recent winner of the reality dating show The One, seems to be living out her happy ending in real time. Gretel’s iconic photo spread-an image of her and her brother, Hans, reunited with their father in the hospital after having been held captive in a house made of candy-is a part of American true-crime legend as is the hard-to-fathom assault on Ruby and the shabby wolf-skin coat she's made out of its perpetrator. Familiar fairy tales retold through the modern lenses of group-therapy sessions and reality TV.īernice has just entered the news cycle, the only survivor of a flamboyant tech billionaire/serial murderer who was known for his eccentric obsession with the color blue, which included dyeing his goatee a signature shade of cyan.

How to be eaten by maria adelmann