If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen

"Enduring their mother was what bound them together. And while they might have had three different dads, they were always 100 percent sisters. Never half sisters. Their sisterhood was the only thing the Knotek girls could depend upon, and really, the only thing their mother couldn't take away. It was what propelled them to survive."
                  -from the Prologue

Oh, my goodness!! I hardly know where to begin! This is a story about the ultimate dysfunctional family. I have read some memoirs that made me cringe: The Glass Castle, Educated, Hillbilly Elegy and Angela's Ashes, but this one made those narratives look like a walk in the park! I am hooked on TV series like "Criminal Minds" and "Law and Order: SVU" so I can tolerate exposure to evil people and ugly things they do but nothing really prepared me for this book! When I read The Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King a few years ago, I described it as a real-life horror story. If You Tell... is the same except the perpetrator is a mother, which makes it even more appalling!

There was evidence that Michelle "Shelly" Lynn Watson Rivardo Long Knotek was a bad seed from childhood. Her stepmother, Lara, and siblings learned the hard way. As she married 3 times, had 3 daughters and took in boarders, she took her manipulative tactics and torture methods to the Nth degree. I was shocked at the way she treated her own family and later, so-called friends that she took in. And it was amazing that Shelly's third husband, Dave, a spineless individual I must say, was an accomplice for 15 years. He was either in denial or just plain stupid!

The upside is that the 3 daughters---Nikki, Sami and Tori---survived "Psycho Shelly" and lived to tell their story to Gregg Olsen. Unfortunately, others who crossed paths with this sadistic woman were not so lucky. The Afterword was especially interesting---written by a professor of forensic psychology, Katherine Ramsland, who sheds light on the making of a monster such as Shelly Knotek and explains some reactions of their victims.

At times, the cruelty almost took my breath away but my morbid curiosity kept me reading. I could hardly put the book down before knowing there would be some justice. If You Tell.... was a riveting story, though definitely not recommended for the faint of heart. My rating is 5.