Every woman should read | If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation |...

Excellent book! | If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation | Janine Latus

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	• If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation Janine Latus Simon & Schuster, 2007 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 129 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Enthralling once you get into it.

I didn't think I would be too into this book - I haven't come across many good books lately. I picked this up for a quick read. I was mostly afraid I'd be bored by court cases and facts and figures. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that was not the case.

People have said in reviews that this book was more about her sister than Amy. I took it a different way - I think if the author had talked about Amy's life, we wouldn't fully understand how Amy allowed herself to be in this relationship. I think the author used her own relationship as a way of explaining how it can come that you can be sucked into an abusive relationship. Then when it happens to Amy, you don't wonder about the backlog so much - backlog that the author wouldn't have had anyhow. I was able to take the author's abusive relationship and assume something similiar had happened to Amy.

This book was good because it did what I like books to do - snuck something in that I didn't quite catch until the end. (well if I hadn't read about what happened to Amy - which, btw, the title does kind of give it away!). But when I was reading it you keep waiting to hear more about Amy but before you know it, you're enthralled with the content and not so concerned about Amy. I actually stopped midway through to make sure it was Amy that disappeared and not the author (sorry I can't remember her name...).

Anyhow, I am almost at the end and am anxiously waiting to see how it goes from there.

ONLY COMPLAINT - the pictures weren't labeled and I love following the pictures that correspond with the story. Some were obviously Amy and obviously the author, but some I'm not sure who they are.

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Every woman should read

This book touched me in ways I never could have fathomed. Every woman should read this book and feel lucky if they have never been abused by a man. They should read it to be able to recognize and help other women in need. The author went years without realizing or understanding that she was being abused until her own sister was violently murdered. I will read any other book by Ms. Latus.

Excellent book!

I am at a loss to understand why some were disappointed in Ms. Latus' book. I would venture to guess they thought they were buying a book about a murder, but if you read the jacket close enough, it never claims to be a book solely about Amy's tragic death. I found the reader was actually getting many stories in one book, with the overall theme of domestic violence. The characters are superbly portrayed, in spite of the lack of information about Jenine's mother's life, which, admittedly, I would have liked to hear. Ms. Latus did a fine job of illustrating that domestic violence can cross many different income and educational levels. Congrats to her! I look foward to her next book.

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Interesting story, annoying main character

As others have pointed out, this isn't about Amy, the murdered sister; this is about Janine, though that doesn't make it a bad story. Her writing is interesting, but as the story wore on, I felt like she had no insight into the role she may have played in her screwed up life. I'm not saying it's ever ok to hit a woman (I am a woman) - that's not the point. It's just that everything is always somebody else's fault - her father, her boyfriend, her husband. I probably don't understand the psychology of a battered woman, but some of this book is also about her whining and her weight, not the abuse, and that's the part that got old. Amy seemed like a much more interesting person, the little we see of her. However, I'm glad Janine is in a better place now. If you can get through the 20,000th time her husband makes her wear a revealing bathing suit and the 150th time she tells us what a bastard he is, it's a quick and interesting read.

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In April 2002, Janine Latus's youngest sister, Amy, wrote a note and taped it to the inside of her desk drawer. Today Ron Ball and I are romantically involved, it read, but I fear I have placed myself at risk in a variety of ways. Based on his criminal past, writing this out just seems like the smart thing to do. If I am missing or dead this obviously has not protected me...

That same spring Janine Latus was struggling to leave her marriage -- a marriage to a handsome and successful man. A marriage others emulated. A marriage in which she felt she could do nothing right and everything wrong. A marriage in which she felt afraid, controlled, inadequate, and trapped.

Ten weeks later, Janine Latus had left her marriage. She was on a business trip to the East Coast, savoring her freedom, attending a work conference, when she received a call from her sister Jane asking if she'd heard from Amy. Immediately, Janine's blood ran cold. Amy was missing.

Helicopters went up and search dogs went out. Coworkers and neighbors and family members plastered missing posters with Amy's picture across the county. It took more than two weeks to find Amy's body, wrapped in a tarpaulin and buried at a building site. It took nearly two years before her killer, her former boyfriend Ron Ball, was sentenced for her murder.

Amy died in silent fear and pain. Haunted by this, Janine Latus turned her journalistic eye inward. How, she wondered, did two seemingly well-adjusted, successful women end up in strings of physically or emotionally abusive relationships with men? If I Am Missing or Dead is a heart-wrenching journey of discovery as Janine Latus traces the roots of her own -- and her sister's -- victimization with unflinching candor. This beautifully written memoir will move readers from the first to the last page. At once a confession, a call to break the cycle of abuse, and a deeply felt love letter to her baby sister, Amy Lynne Latus, If I Am Missing or Dead is an unforgettable read.

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