Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Elvis and Me

This was an intimate and honest insight into Priscilla’s life with ‘the King’. Having met Elvis at just 14, Priscilla spent her formative years with him and he shaped her into his ‘ideal woman’. Right from the start, she experienced the highs and lows of living with Elvis, from his generousness and fun, to his temper tantrums and drug taking.

I found Priscilla’s memoir deeply troubling, but like a train wreck, I couldn’t look away. There’s the obvious age gap and the fact that their relationship started when she was still a child. Then there’s his controlling nature - wanting her to be his vision of an ideal woman, restricting her choices and even preventing her from getting a job so that she is always available when he wants her to come to him. His frequent affairs, the drugs he gives her to take without saying what they are etc etc, the list goes on. In this day and age, he would be disgraced for a fraction of this.

Despite all of this, Priscilla still holds so much affection for the man. The benefit of listening on audio is that you really hear that - her gentle chuckles on recounting something he said, and the love in her voice when telling a tale no matter how outrageous it is. That is what makes it so particularly shocking. It’s like listening to someone with Stockholm syndrome.

So all in all, I found the book fascinating, but perhaps not for the author’s intended reason.

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siijayreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

"I knew that I must take control of my life. I could not give up these new insights. There was a whole world out there and I had to find my own place in it."

Such a revealing, jarring, and insightful memoir. Before this, my knowledge about Elvis Presley was limited aside from knowing he is the singer of the most popular hits songs I often hear on the radio when I was young. Having read this book gave me so much perspective about what the world was like back then which became even more special in the lens of someone who is in close proximity with a famous person. I only knew of Priscilla because she's the grandmother of Riley Keough, whom I have known since she’s friends with my favorite actress. I also heard a lot of controversies regarding her and Elvis' relationship and I got intrigued but didn't bother to really delve deeper into it. It wasn't until the recent Priscilla movie, which was based on this book, that I finally learned that this book exists, and it finally convinced me to read it. I listened to the audiobook and the experience was magnified because it was narrated by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley herself! I honestly didn't expect anything diving into this book but it certainly left me with so many reflections in life and I'm surprised that I can relate to some of Priscilla's internal struggles.

Throughout the book, I felt a myriad of emotions. A sense of protectiveness for teenage Priscilla who was about to become enamored with an older man, anger and shock for the things she went through while being in that relationship, sadness when the moment she realizes she's slowly losing herself, contagious joy for little things that makes her happy, and pride for the woman she slowly became after years of abandoning her needs for a man and untangling herself from those toxic cycle. I love those moments where she stood up for herself. This book also is a perfect example of how love makes us blind and tolerant of the things we don't deserve and how it makes us act more impulsively. We let others treat us badly because we're more afraid of losing them.

Priscilla spent a significant number of years in her life being tied to Elvis while she slowly lost herself in the process. It was so heartbreaking. While she did find happiness in all those years, the moment she freed herself from him, which was narrated during the latter part of the book, was one of the most refreshing and inspiring reads I've had in a while. I love stories where women break out of their shells and blossom from the inside and out. It was such an engaging experience listening to Priscilla narrate her own story. Her little laughs while reading particular sections from the book make me think she went back in time reliving the scene. I recommend this to anyone who wants to delve into reading nonfiction books!

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broncoannee's review against another edition

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dark

1.75

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mari1532's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

2.5

I was interested in reading this book because of the new Sophia Coppola movie that just came out. So, I took advantage of the audiobook being included in my audible subscription.

Now before reading this book, I knew that Priscilla was significantly younger than Elvis, but I did not know that he had essentially groomed her from her early teens. I find the rating and review of this book to be incredibly hard. It was well written in terms of a memoir and I appreciated how open Priscilla was about her story. However, reading it I was a little concerned that she didn't have any understanding that some of the things she was describing were abusive. I am trying not to project my opinions about the events she describes onto her story, but this book feels like it was written to absolve Elvis of sins rather than a reflection of her lived experiences.

For instance, she seems to take no issue with the fact that there was a massive age difference. Or that he sexualized her as a teenager while also making her guilty and threatening her should she be sexual with anyone else. There is also a moment in the book in a later chapter where it felt like she was describing marital rape.

I did listen to the entirety of this book, but I honestly wish I hadn't. I kept waiting for some self-reflective moments where she mentioned therapy or any indication that Elvis might not have been that great, but it never came. Unfortunately, I would not recommend this book.

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