Reviews - The House of My Mother

10.8k reviews for:

The House of My Mother

Shari Franke

4.31 AVERAGE

katie_allen56's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional sad fast-paced

cleverkrowreads's review against another edition

informative

abishingler's review against another edition

5.0

Listened to this memoir on audio narrated by the author. Shari's bravery was truly remarkable. The end of this book also made me really think about how harmful "true crime content" can be to victims and their families, would encourage people to read/listen to Shari's book to hear her story told by herself.

skygrace546's review against another edition

4.0

This was an incredible read. For starters, I honestly had not thought much of family vloggers before this, writing them off as just ~not my cup of entertainment~ but ofc not dangerous, right?? Nope. I was so wrong and I had never thought that deeply about it before this book, but with every scene Shari set I realized how damaging, traumatizing, and violating that is for children growing up. I try to imagine every random private moment of mine growing up being put on camera, and I can’t quite fathom it. All those little moments of their lives were flaunted in front of the camera for financial gain and to feed into Ruby’s narcissism. And then eventually snowballed into a harrowing picture of abuse once Jodi came into the picture. I hate her and I hope her fellow prison inmates make each of her days horrible. >:|

I was also exposed to the idea of certain positive impacts of religion (talking about Shari’s relationship with her god, not the church or cult lol). I usually focus on the negative, but I can see how Shari turning to God during different crisis points in her life helped pull herself away from toxic situations/people and ultimately brought her feelings of safety and love which was so obviously missing from her childhood!! So it was a much needed reminder of the importance of reading different viewpoints from your own. That being said, I think it didn’t go into some of the innate negatives of the church of LDS despite that being a fruitful foundation for this kind of cult (understandable, given she is still in the church).

What all those kids went through is heartbreaking and I hope they can all heal from their traumatic childhoods. I also had no idea Utah had such HORRIBLE legislation in place surrounding potential childhood abuse so I hope they turn that around. Best we can do is to stop being nosy about the Franke’s situation, and I just hope the press/media and general public can manage to let this story go for the sake of Shari and her family.