Slenderman

A relevant true-crime cautionary tale as well as an urgent plea for mental health awareness

Kirkus Reviews

Perceptively observed, compellingly researched, Slenderman is a fluent and stylish account of a childhood folie a deux and its tragic aftermath. Through careful first-hand research and personal interviews, Kathleen Hale exposes the destructive force behind this case--not the fictional supernatural Slenderman, but the monstrous failure of the judicial system when it comes to forensic mental health. Slenderman is a work of wise sympathy

Mikita Brottman, author of Couple Found Slain

[Of the author's earlier work Kathleen Hale is a Crazy Stalker] Reminiscent of David Foster Wallace and Jon Ronson

Jesse Eisenberg

Slenderman is a tour-de-force, a riveting and shocking read. On one level, it provides a remarkable reconstruction of a chilling crime, the stabbing of a twelve-year-old by two of her friends-a murderous assault that she somehow survived. And simultaneously, it is a frightful tale of how the state of Wisconsin dealt with the deeply disturbed young girls who committed the crime. The product of immense amounts of painstaking research, Slenderman is a gripping and utterly compelling account of two overlapping nightmares. You won't soon forget this book

Andrew Scull, author of Desperate Measures

A riveting and beautifully-written exploration of a tragedy, powered by rigorous reporting and equally rigorous sense of empathy. The Slenderman story that briefly obsessed the tabloids turns out to be about so much more in Hale's capable hands: Midwestern girlhood, early onset schizophrenia, the failures of our criminal justice system, and the uneasy power of childhood friendships

Rachel Monroe, author of Savage Appetites

Kathleen Hale's Slenderman is a haunting, powerful, accomplished and necessary book that is impossible to put down

Sonia Faleiro, author of The Good Girls

Inside this intimate, plain-spoken masterpiece lies a haunted secret garden of feverish childhood fears and fantasies. It's a shadow world for which nothing can prepare you, and one which I doubt you'll ever be able to shake

Walter Kirn, author of Blood Will Out

As the first researcher into the case to draw extensively from transcripts of vital records, Hale has produced what stands as the most accurate account to date of this horrifying episode. This is a must for true crime fans

Publishers Weekly

Book of the week

People magazine

With clear-eyed prose and deep legal research... Slenderman is a skilled and detailed retelling of a story that still mystifies many years later... Hale's intervention into this recent saga of American moral panic is a fulsome, if sobering, story of misdirected pre-teen social angst and cyberspace obsession. Slenderman may have been debunked in the popular imagination but he lives on as an enduring metaphor for the shadowy corners of the internet and the corrupting danger that our online existences can have to our offline realities

New York Observer

One of the best true crime books of the year

Crimereads

A compelling yet harrowing read that reveals how a seemingly innocent childhood friendship could lead to such a devastating outcome.

Daily Mail