He captained her onto the pillowy pier of her Posturpedic

The Christa Worthington murder was in the news recently, and it made me recall the time Elizabeth Applebaum sent me a book to read called about the crime called Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod by Maria Flook.

Elizabeth didn't tell me what she thought of it, so I took it on vacation and started to read it. Well, this book was so bad, it was unbelievable; I had to throw it across the room a couple of times in frustration before I finally gave up reading it. Elizabeth hated it too, and we felt so strongly about how awful it was that we put horrible reviews on the book's Amazon site. Then people would come on and argue with our reviews saying 'experts' had loved the book so we must be wrong, then we would go and write additional reviews to try and drag the number of stars down so no one else would spend good money on tripe like that.

One reviewer who agreed with us on Amazon said:

I'm only several chapters into this book, and though the story is interesting, I can't believe the poor level of writing. Does this author write cheap romances? A few examples speak for themselves:

"...he captained her onto the pillowy pier of her Posturpedic."

(I was ready to drop the book after reading that one)

"Casanovia college boys, their surfboards strapped onto their cars like fiberglass codpieces..."

(this allusion makes no sense at all, you do not strap a codpiece on a roof, it would more resemble the "bras" on sportscars. Now if she had said fiberglass phaluses it would be bad, but at least closer)

Only 375 pages to go.

Flook however "rejects any criticism as to what's true in the book, and what's speculation. For instance, there's a scene that Flook describes between Worthington and her mother, both of whom are dead. There's another scene where Ava sees a mouse when her mother's body is on the floor.

"This is what writers do," says Flook. "They dramatize scenes to create a 'felt-life,' in fiction and in non-fiction."

And finally, a man was arrested and convicted for the crime who was never even mentioned in her book, so what was the point of all that?

You can see what you think of it yourself if you want. You can get the book on Amazon now for about 45 cents.


Background info:
Christa Worthington (1956 – 6 January 2002) was a United States fashion writer who worked for Women's Wear Daily, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper's Bazaar, and the New York Times. She was also a co-author of several books on fashion.

Worthington was raped and stabbed to death at her home in Truro, Massachusetts (on Cape Cod). Her body was found on January 6, 2002, with her two-year-old daughter, Ava, clinging to her body. The child was unharmed.