“If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister’s Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation” by Janine Latus

Three Stars

This book is not what I thought it was going to be, but still turned out to be a very compelling read.

Janine Latus writes a blatantly honest memoir of both her and her younger sister, Amy’s, lifelong struggle with relationships and abusive men. It begins with their father who is verbally and emotionally abusive, in addition to his habit of sexualizing his daughters, and ends with Amy’s murder and Janine finding the courage to leave her own destructive relationship.

Latus gives an honest account of the verbal, emotional, and occasionally physical abuse that she and her husband throw at each other. She doesn’t try to villanize her husband or gloss over her own behavior and actions, she simply tells the story as it was. They did love each other which is what kept pulling them back into the relationship just to resume the cycle of abuse again.

At the same time she tells Amy’s story of leaving an abusive marriage only to fall back into another abusive relationship which ended with her murder.

From the description of this book I thought it was going to be Janine telling Amy’s life story. I was disappointed at first when I realized that it was not the story I had originally anticipated, but I continued to read. While I hated the story and people in it at times, something kept me reading. It is very real story and the honesty of it is the appeal.

When I finished this book I didn’t think I liked it. But as I look back on it I realize that what makes this book good is the honest account of the lives of real people. I don’t necessarily like the people in the book any better, but I do appreciate their stories and Latus’ honesty in telling her own.