Cheryl Diamond

Wow, this is quite a memoir. Living her life on the run, Cheryl Diamond constantly changed names, countries, and her religion. Her parents and her brother and sister moved from country to country. It was all a mystery to her as to why they were running, and why they had no other family, Known as Harbhajan as a child, she then becomes Crystal, then Cheryl. Finally, as she becomes older, she learns more about her family, and the secrets they are keeping.
She tries to make sense of her identity and her roots. When she finally discovers the truth, she is surprised by more than just the truth of why they are on the run, but also her family.
Hard to believe that people live this way and survive. Amazing.… (plus d'informations)

2.5 stars

Interesting, but I don't think I believe this memoir is true. Maybe I could believe a family of 5 could run from Interpol and that rando Canadian conman dad could pull it off in the 502-70s, but once you hit the 1980s and later--nope, I can't believe this is all true. Parts, sure. But I also can't believe that "Cheryl" was a near-Olympic-level gymnast, AND an excellent age group swimmer, AND a successful model, AND her brother (who drops out of the story completely) was a near-Olympic-level swimmer, AND had/has horrible Crohn's Disease AND her father tricked Israel and a Jewish University in NY into believing and participating in Israeli/Jewish life as if they were Jewish, AND that her grandfather was an important Interpol/police agent in Luxembourg, AND she was paid millions for her first book, AND so on and so forth.

When she's not whining about how hard things were, she's bragging about how awesome she is (beautiful! talented! driven! strong!). The older she got in the story, the worse it got.… (plus d'informations)