A review by noodle0603
The Doomsday Mother: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and the End of an American Family by John Glatt

2.0

This story was still in progress at the time of publication (Jan 2022). The book describes the story as getting a lot of media attention, but I had never come across it in the news. Basically this mormon woman ends up getting her brother to kill her two children, her husband, and Chad's wife. The husband/wife murders were clearly motivated so that Lori/Chad could married. The children's murders were less well motivated. Why... exactly... did Lori want them dead? I guess that is the thing with true crime, there always all the answers. The book didn't really provide a 'critical' accounting. It was written more in a pop-sci DRAMATIC accounting. There were some descriptions of the murder that were a little TOO graphic. Towards the end of the book I got tired of it. Even though my threshold for audiobooks is low, I almost didn't bother listening all the way to the end. It gave me vibes similar to "Somewhere Inside" about this IMPORTANT story that was partly IMPORTANT because it was happening to Privileged people. There is an entire podcast series "Through the Cracks" about missing black children that no one cares about - police don't try hard to find them, little to no media coverage, etc. The book did not present any awareness of how the victim's whiteness affected the story. Blah. Not recommend.