This is a courageous memoir from a woman who was scammed by Anna Delvey / Sorokin, the ‘fake heiress’. I say it’s courageous because Rachel writes in a lot of detail about the stressful and humiliating events which took a toll not just on her finances but on every aspect of her wellbeing. It would be easy for a review of My Friend Anna to focus on these events and not the actual book, as I have seen some others do, with criticism of her naivety, suspicions of her motive for writing the book and even saying that she deserved to be scammed! But this is a book review, not a character assassination, so here we go…
The book begins with the holiday in Marrakesh, which was the beginning of the end for the friendship between Rachel and Anna. We then have a little background about her life, working for Vanity Fair in New York. She meets Anna through a friend and is intrigued by her forceful, yet distant personality, her foreign air and her taste for luxury. They start spending a lot of time together but increasingly Rachel finds herself paying for things, for which she believes Anna will pay her back…
People are fascinated by con artists and how they get away with so much. This is one point of interest in the book. Luxury is another fascination and we are treated to many descriptions of exclusive restaurants, spas and hotels which the majority of us are unlikely to experience. Aside from this, the content does seem a little thin. There are many quoted emails and texts, which were obviously of use to the eventual prosecution of Anna but are very repetitive and most could have been edited out. I felt that the writing style was too straight-forward for my taste in memoirs and needed more flair. I like the title of the book because it emphasises that Rachel thought Anna was her friend but whether Anna reciprocated or was just using her, no one can know.
Thank you to Quercus for the advance copy via NetGalley. The book was first published in 2019. The paperback will be published on 14th October 2021.