I'm rating this a 1.

Not because the author engaged in, by their own admission, horrible, shameless, and threatening stalking behavior of a reviewer from GoodReads.

I rate this a 1 because the essays of this book, every single one, are an attempt to normalize and justify such behavior. To cash in on victimizing another person with absolutely zero self-reflection, remorse, or awareness. It is a narcissistic exercise celebrating the author's inability to respect other people.

Which makes the book not only bad, but evil. ( )

Annoyed that Goodreads got funky and somehow tried to force this on my "Read" shelf. Nope, didn't read this messy book where the author is trying to justify why she stalked and then doxxed a reviewer cause the reviewer dared to not like her freaking book. Considering the crap that is going on vis a vis authors and readers on Goodreads and Amazon, you would think that more people would stay what she did was wrong. Instead, we have justifications and people out there saying that wouldn't you like to do that to someone. Nope, going after a reviewer because she or he didn't like a book is beyond ridiculous and also dangerous. The title is right, Kathleen Hale is a crazy stalker who faced no blow-back about what she did to someone else. ( )

I was intending to read only free samples on my Kindle all night, and not buy a thing - but this sample left me in the middle of the first essay with such a cliffhanger, there was no way I could leave it. So I actually bought this thing and read the whole thing, and ended up grateful it was only six essays.

The first one is about how the author couldn't stop obsessing over this possibly-fake person who has given her a bad review on Goodreads. Apparently there is a world of book bloggers on Goodreads and elsewhere in the blogosphere who can make or break a book, and get very personal about it; and there is a world of people out there who cannot simply shut down their dang computer before things get wacky (that I knew).

NONE OF IT IS REAL, PEOPLE, I want to say - go step outside and breathe the fresh air!

So the next essay was about the author's molestation in a shady massage parlor when she was a college freshman; and the jury trial she participated in to keep the man behind bars. This was gripping and sad. But she kept dropping one-sentence paragraphs of foreboding that didn't end up leading much of anywhere.

Then there was a strange one about hunting and killing a feral hog I didn't understand or enjoy. Then one about attending a Miss America pageant, which I enjoyed more; then a couple more wacky ones, including one about searching for a mountain lion, to end the mini-book.

I am usually really into the personal woman's essay, but I don't relate much to Hale and her weird dangerous wild animal obsessions. ( )

Kathleen Hale Is a Crazy Stalker by Kathleen Hale is a highly recommended collection of six previously published essays that have been revised since their original publication. This is a collection described as portraying both predator and prey. In these autobiographical essays, Kathleen Hale openly and candidly discusses her mental health and presents/confesses clearly and consistently several difficult incidents in her life. She never tries to present herself as above the fray or better than others.
Contents include:
Catfish: An essay rehashing the 2014 catfishing by a G.R. YA reviewer and Hale's response, which was to catfish and stalk the reviewer. (More on this later.)
Prey: Hale recounts her sexual assault as a first year college student and the two trials in which she testified against her attacker. This is the strongest essay in the collection.
I Hunted Feral Hogs as a Favor to the World: Hale and a friend take a trip to hunt feral hogs in Florida. Although, perhaps the weakest essay in the collection, it does capture the crazy stalker theme.
Cricket: This is a description of a trip to Atlantic City to watch the Miss America pageant, as well as describe the audiences reaction to it.
Snowflake: Hale is allowed to visit, after extensive preparation, a community of people suffering from "environmental illness" which is located in Snowflake, Arizona.
First I Got Pregnant. Then I Decided to Kill the Mountain Lion.: A pregnant Hale becomes obsessed with a mountain lion living in nearby Hollywood’s Griffith Park and is sure she needs to track it down and kill it before her child is born.

Okay, now to address the elephant in the room. While I obviously don't condone her stalking a reviewer, reviewers have to realize authors can look into their profiles and perhaps expand their research to find out more about their negative and positive reviewers. We also need to admit that "gangs" of negative reviewers can also happen when someone doesn't agree with a differing opinion, and then tells all their friends about their outrage. In 2007 I blogged a negative review. Comments from my readers were in agreement and one respectfully disagreed. Life went on until 2011 when someone online stumbled across the review and proceeded to immediately and repeatedly attacked me and called in their online friends to do the same. I pulled the post down. The stalkerish behavior and trolling can go both ways. (This is an unbiased review of the book. I did not followed the previous "Hale-no" controversy.)

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Grove/Atlantic.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/06/kathleen-hale-is-crazy-stalker.html ( )