Name: If I Am Missing Or Dead
ISBN: 9780743296533

Janine Latus

A dual portrait of the author and her late sister, based on an "Essay of the Year" award-winning article, traces how both suffered from years of abuse at the hands of men before the author successfully escaped her own cycle of violence, a survival that was overshadowed by her sister's murder by a lover. 100,000 first printing.

If I Am Missing Or Dead

Kourtney

** spoiler alert **
           If you are looking for a "true crime" novel then please put this book back on your shelf. This is not a story of murder and catching the criminal and how the family moved on. This is a true tale of a sister who, in coming to terms with her sisters murder, reflects back on her own life to uncover the patterns of abuse she experienced and how it caused her to miss the clues to Amy's untimely demise. 

Janine lets us into her life starting from the abuse from her father to boyfriends, strangers and her husband. This is surprising given that her whole life she has hid most of it from the outside world. She shows us how domestic abuse pervades time and time again in ugly patterns, and how it was also in her little sister, Amy, whether Janine saw it that way at the time or not. Some parts were hard for me to read, while others I couldn't put the book down wanting to know more. 

I have read reviews on here of others complaining about how Janine barely talked about Amy's murder, or about how she was obsessed with weight and the way she looked - but that's not what this story was about. Like the book jacket states, it is the story of how 2 successful women end up in abusive relationships. The weight issue was a part of the abuse "if I looked better he will love me more" mentality. I can only hope that people can look beyond that to the true heart of the story as one woman's tale in the life of domestic violence. I can only hope that Janine can find the true happiness within and wish her and her family well.

If I Am Missing Or Dead

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