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She shared what she was comfortable sharing.

A reader having unanswered questions about her personal life is not a flaw in the book, it's a nosy reader. Her story is hers to tell with or without whatever details she chooses. It's a memoir, not a novel.

That missing "context" and unaddressed questions are quite frankly none of your business. Like someone else said, it's a memoir, not a novel for your entertainment.

I think all of that “context�� was addressed/implied. For instance, she explained Chad was expelled from his school which was the reason he was in another school. She also addressed how Ruby sent her letters she is leaving unanswered and how when she got the car title that was the last time they spoke - implying no relationship. Sometimes its hard to pick everything up when you binge read 😊

I completely agree with you. The people saying she didn't have to share more, are overlooking the fact that she didn't have to write the book (or sell it) if she didn't want to. When you don't learn much from a non-fiction book that you didn't already know as a very loose follower of the case, it means the book just wasn't needed. It didn't feel like it had a personal touch. It felt like any ghost writer familiar with the case could have written most of it.

Like the lady that called you nosy and the one that said "this isn't a novel for your entertainment" (when you never even implied that it was) are just haters. Your review is totally justified and you were super polite. It's your right to rate media that you pay for and consume based on what you feel you got out of it. So, don't worry about them.

Now that it’s been a few days since I read it for the first time, I also wish that there was more context, ESPECIALLY about why Chad was going to a private school that was not owned by the LDS church but based its curriculum off the LDS church. As a public educator, I’ve always been super curious about the whole private school thing.

I fear you’re missing the point of the entire book. This isn’t about you knowing every detail, this is about her sharing her personal horrors of family blogging and how people now feel entitled to know every aspect of her life and how dangerous that is. You are quite literally proving her point by saying there are “questions left unanswered��. This isn’t a fictional novel, this was her real life and you only get to know what she chooses to share. I understand the frustration but this is a real life person who experienced something so incredibly traumatic. You do not need to know every detail.

And also how she and Chad healed their rift. Was totally skipped.

If you are a chronically online person like myself, you tend to pick up clues. For example, in the aftermath of Ruby’s arrest, people online observed that some of her sisters participated in “blanket training�� their babies, which is the process of hitting babies when they move off a blanket to train them to be still and obedient as young as 6 months old. They also still participate in family vlogging, which Shari is adamantly against, and they have tried to profit off of Shari’s book on their social media. Aside from this, when Shari did break free, she chose to stay with her father’s family rather than her maternal aunts, which says a lot about her relationship with them. As for her brother, clearly being able to talk openly about their shared trauma has helped them build a new relationship, not that she owes that explanation to you. I don’t think they ever had a rift, she clearly says that even when he was being an annoying brother, she still cared for him deeply, and understands that his change as they grew is the result of being in survival mode. She was just able to get out first due to being the oldest.