Sleep My Darlings: The true story of a mother who killed her children in cold blood Mass Market Paperback – April 30, 2013

This is a rather short (ish) book on the murder of the Schenecker children (two teens, the boy 13 and the girl 16) by a mother who has had a long career of mental health issues.My first thoughts were: Yay! I've not heard of this case before. After which I felt rather ashamed of myself. True crime is one of the genres that make it seem like a horrible thing to want to read something new.rating: 3.5 rounded up. I enjoyed it but some parts I felt were repetitive (in the beginning and especially the parts about the children's memorials. Everyone basically said the same thing for several chapters straight.) I wished she'd used a little discretion to slim that down a bit. I found myself skipping a bit when it seemed like she was repeating the same things over and over again.As for the story itself, I was prepared to want to defend the mother of being mentally ill. Obviously, a mother killing her children has to be mentally ill, right? So I was strangely stuck by the feeling that I don't believe she was -- or rather, it wasn't her mental illness that propelled her to do this.Don't get me wrong. I'm not someone who doesn't believe in the not guilty by reason of insanity plea. I've worked in mental health institutions. The mother just planned it too well. Even the text messages late that night were bizarre and didn't fit the pattern.In the afterword, Ms. Fanning speaks of men who kill their children to "get back" at the mother's but then went back on that and said no woman has ever been proven to have done that. I call BS on that. From the family drama, it was obvious that the small family was riled up and the daughter would soon be living away from the mother.It fits the pattern well enough. She planned this. She was of sound, lucid mind enough to drive far away to get that gun and she killed them at a time when there was no conflict. It's rather cold blooded.I do believe the father shares blame in it. I realize it was just a short trip of two weeks but if your children come to you afraid of their mother -- afraid enough that the daughter is PERSONALLY finishing paperwork to put herself in a boarding school to get away from her mother -- than he should've done more. Hell, the kids called the police on their own about a violent incident. Why would they call the police? Because their father probably brushed them off. He was worth 2 million. He could've had someone over to "babysit".Normally, I wouldn't put the blame on the other parent but this was just too much. Perhaps it's my own personal experience, though. I'm a Navy brat and my own father was gone a lot of my childhood. My mother was very depressed and despondent as well so I guess I just feel it a bit more personally with those kids more than another person (who didn't grow up that way) might.Final thought: I enjoyed it and will probably read it again. If you like true crime, you'll probably enjoy this as well.

Sleep My Darlings was a heartbreaking read. I think the author was trying to stretch the page number in a few spots, mostly when, in the first few chapters, we learn more about the history of the academies and towns they lived in, than the people themselves. It could have had more about Beau, literally about one chapter, in total maybe 6 pages, talk about him as a person. Calyx gets better treatment in this respect and is given a proper bio and history, it makes her feel like a real person to connect with, something that I couldn't click with Beau having such little insight. We get more chapters in the military and the history of Fort Worth and Germany's beer festivals than we do information on who they are as people. Like one reviewer stated, it feels rushed, it feels stretched to meet a page count at exactly 200 pages. And the insight into these people as actual humans is minimal. I dont need to know who the first general who founded the school she went to is, if you aren't going to at least connect it, even poetically, to her in some way. It feels like the author just searched for any extra info on the little things like the history of Germany's monk brewed beer festival or the history of the town they moved to, to add extra length and those are the chapters that drag and drag. Literally the chapters between 4 and 12 were the most painful to get through. 12 being when we start learning about their personalities as kids.All in all I would recommend this to any true crime lover. It's a good book if you can trudge through the unnecessary bits, because at the heart of it is a very heartwrenching true story about two kids who sound like old souls who were taken too soon.

The book was interesting but you are left hanging at the end. You don’t find out the final outcome. It would have been interesting to know the end

Since this tragedy happened close to home, I was curious as to what motivated a woman to kill her own children. Most accounts of criminal reporting show extended research and good evidence as foundation to the psychology of the troubled female. This writer took no trouble at all. It is apparent she just strung together superficial reports from local newspapers and telecasts and threw the manuscript together hastily. It was quite superficial and a disappointment. If Ann Rule were still with us, she would have done much better in presenting the facts. I wouldn’t waste my money again.

Anyone with an interest in this particular case could have written this book. Ms. Fanning did not interview the murderer or anyone else of importance in this tragedy. She did what any good reporter should - she told us the facts, gave us an awful lot of geographical/historical background that was mostly unnecessary, then finished the book with what I consider a great, insightful last chapter. That's why I gave the book 3 stars - that last chapter. I have been a fan of Ms. Fanning's writing for a long time. She's very good at what she does and those of us who follow true crime rely on her to tell us the truth. And she did in this case. Trouble is - she probably should have waited until this case went to trial before writing this book. She might have sat in on the trial and then given us a bang up reporter type story. Her last chapter deals with what she thought might have been troubling Julie Schenecker, what made her kill her children. And she gives some thought to her husband, Parker. Was Julie insane when she shot her kids? If her husband was worried about her, why did he leave her in charge of his little family? Very thought provoking issues. I wish she had followed Ann Rule's book of crime writing and gotten more personal with her reporting. She's such a good writer I think she might have made that trial an amazing book.

Too much information about things that didn't relate to the story and did not find it interesting. Skipped a lot of pages, would not recommend this book. This is only my opinion.

Unbelievable, that a mother could be so cold hearted. I too suffer from severe depression, but I could never do that to my children.

The story line dragged on. Paraguay about things that weren't necessary

was a good but sad book

good book just reading it now