Many of you have probably heard in the news about Anna Delvey the “fake heiress” who conned fancy hotels and hedge fund managers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. If like me you read the New York magazine article about her then I am sure you were fascinated with just how exactly she managed to pull that off. When My Friend Anna by Rachel DeLoache Williams (a former friend of Anna’s who she conned out of around 70 grand) hit the shelves, I was dying to read it and here are the reasons why:
- I wanted to know how she convinced everyone that she had all of this money.
- I wanted to hear some crazy story about Anna’s past life that lead her to such treachery (perhaps she was stolen at birth by a crazy mountain man and had to escape and was just trying to have some fun?).
- I wanted to know in detail how she was able to get away with it for so long and why she got caught.
Although Williams’s book isn’t bad and gives some inside info on who Anna was and how she pulled of this scandal, it does not deliver on providing all of the juicy information that one might want…or maybe the story just isn’t that fascinating? Half of the book is over-descriptive explanations of the scenery of the hotel in Morocco where Delvey convinced Williams to foot the bill for the sixty thousand dollar vacation, and the other half is anxiety-inducing and exhaustive play by play of months and months of text messages and e-mails between the two women wherein Delvey plays around with Williams and leads her to believe that she will get her money back.
Honestly, this book is entertaining enough and an easy read and definetly brings home the message that people are not always who they say that they are (duh!). I’m glad that I read it – and I am glad that Williams got her money back…sort of.
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