If You Tell: A True Story if Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisiterhood

Today’s Nonfiction post is on If You Tell: A True Story if Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisiterhood by Gregg Olsen. It is 405 pages long and is published by Thomas and Mercer. The cover is a picture of a valley covered in mist with a lone house. There is foul language, discussion of sex, and violence in this book. The story is told from third person close of the family. There Be Spoilers Ahead. 

From the dust jacket- After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.

For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

Review- One of the most horrendous, heartbreaking, and disturbing true crime stories I have ever read. Olson interviews as many of the first-hand participants in this story as he can, and the story they have to tell is one that is truly horrifying. The three daughters tell the story from their memories and what journals they were allowed to keep to try and get all of the facts as clear as possible. Olsen follows all the history he can on Shelly Knotek.  He interviews her stepmother who has known her from the time she was about five years old, all the way until the end with her daughters giving him access to the letter she has written them from prison. She was a truly disturbed person who should never be allowed out in public again because she would only find someone else to torture to death as she did to at least two people, or someone else to murder for their money. Knotek was cruel to everyone she met. There was not a person who knew her beyond a casual, extremely casual, acquaintances who could say anything positive about her. the fact that her daughter's managed to survive in a household where beatings, bathing with bleach, being forced to go out in the Washington winters without clothing on and being sprayed down outside, survived and have become loving giving members of the society says so much about their character. If you like true crime stories and are prepared for a story that is of this intensity level I do recommend this but with caution. 

I give this book a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.