Yeah. I’m gonna go there. I need to get this out of the way …
In recognition of my wonderful BestThrillers.com book review going live on their website, I’m going to expand on one theme from its critique that no other reviewer has mentioned, and that is politics.
But before I dive into that cesspool, I want to highlight some of my favorite review snippets and say how truly honored I am that BestThrillers editor Bella Wright and her team connected so deeply to Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir. The eloquent delivery and grasp of the book’s essence cannot be overstated.
Here’s the longer version of the featured quote used by my publisher WildBlue Press:
The Bottom Line: An emotional, eye-popping and personal expose of the American prison system that begins with an orchestrated stabbing and ends with a realistic exploration of second chances. … Written with a level of detail that would be the envy of any novelist, Chained Birds is … an expose on the problems with the American justice system and the challenges of breaking free from a life of crime and incarceration. Highly recommended.
Chained Birds is all of those things and I get misty-eyed if I dwell on such tributes for too long. I’d like to point out the word “personal” in that statement above and remind folks that the word “memoir” is in my subtitle. To that end, here is the last paragraph of the BestThrillers review:
The first third of the memoir is largely devoted to fascinating backstory on the book’s notable characters, including inmates, attorneys and prison officials. For context, Conti expands the narrative in the latter-half of the book to include the Airbnb craze, the COVID era and her (often hilarious) attempts to cope with the Trumpocalypse, including ordering a Trump voodoo doll. Throughout the multiple eras noted in the book, the story proves to be an effective and emotional expose on the problems with the American justice system and the challenges of breaking free from a life of crime and incarceration.
The sentence in red (my highlight) is one of my favorite passages among my many editorial reviews. Not just because I made someone laugh but also because BestThrillers dared to meander where no one else has — to mention that there’s a political backdrop to part of Chained Birds.
This shouldn’t be a secret, and it’s going to offend some people. Strike that — it already has. An early Netgalley reviewer took great umbrage at depictions of the former 45th president in my book, for which she awarded me two stars and went out of her way to cross-post her review on Goodreads. How much do you want to bet she’ll post it again to Amazon when she has the chance? (Not that I’ll remind her to, when I follow up with all my other advanced-copy readers.)
If only there were a way to warn skittish consumers about this provocative, controversial content. I guess this blog post will have to do, because the politics “trigger” is missing from the book’s back cover (as one would expect since it’s not integral to the story). And for the record, one of the main characters is a faithful MAGA disciple who gets nearly equal page time espousing viewpoints etc. Just sayin’.
By the way, authors are warned not to read their book reviews! This is sage advice, which I cannot possibly follow, at least for now … but I suspect I’ll revisit this topic another day.
In the meantime, Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir is now prominently displayed on BestThrillers’ home page, and subscribers will be introduced to the book this weekend when their newsletter goes out. All of this, sadly, keeps me refreshing my Amazon category pages to watch the book bob up and down the Hot New Releases lists … because I’m still a glutton for punishment. But surely, given enough time, I’ll reform.
Carla Conti is a true crime journalist, storyteller, and prison reform advocate. Her debut book, Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir, will be published by WildBlue Press on November 12, 2024.
