BOOK REVIEW: My Friend Anna by Rachel DeLoache Williams @gallerybooks #botm #bookreview

This is the type of story that is easy to judge if you don’t delve into the details. A young woman stuck paying for an expensive vacation she took because she thought someone else was going to pay for it? Not exactly someone’s grandmother being swindled out of her life’s savings! But trust me when I say, the blurb cannot capture what Rachel went through. And the most interesting part of this is the power of trust and history. I couldn’t put this book down!

About the Book

Sex and the City meets Catch Me if You Can in the astonishing true story of Anna Delvey, a young con artist posing as a German heiress in New York City—as told by the former Vanity Fair photo editor who got seduced by her friendship and then scammed out of more than $62,000.

Vanity Fair photo editor Rachel DeLoache Williams’s new friend Anna Delvey, a self-proclaimed German heiress, was worldly and ambitious. She was also generous—picking up the tab for lavish dinners at Le Coucou, infrared sauna sessions at HigherDOSE, drinks at the 11 Howard Library bar, and regular workout sessions with a celebrity personal trainer.

When Anna proposed an all-expenses-paid trip to Marrakech at the five-star La Mamounia hotel, Rachel jumped at the chance. But when Anna’s credit cards mysteriously stopped working, the dream vacation quickly took a dark turn. Anna asked Rachel to begin fronting costs—first for flights, then meals and shopping, and, finally, for their $7,500-per-night private villa. Before Rachel knew it, more than $62,000 had been charged to her credit cards. Anna swore she would reimburse Rachel the moment they returned to New York.

Back in Manhattan, the repayment never materialized, and a shocking pattern of deception emerged. Rachel learned that Anna had left a trail of deceit—and unpaid bills—wherever she’d been. Mortified, Rachel contacted the district attorney, and in a stunning turn of events, found herself helping to bring down one of the city’s most notorious con artists.

With breathless pacing and in-depth reporting from the person who experienced it firsthand, My Friend Anna is an unforgettable true story of money, power, greed, and female friendship.

Reflection

Rachel DeLoache Williams begins the book at the time of the trip to Marrakesh and goes through the heart-pounding moment when she put her own credit cards down to cover the expenses her friend Anna Delvey assures her she can cover. These scenes had my heart racing, because Rachel describes that sick feeling that happens when you do something you know is a bad idea, but you have no other choice.

From there, the story actually goes back to the beginning when Rachel is working at Vanity Fair and meets Anna through a mutual friend. When I say you need to read the book to understand how Rachel fell victim to someone like Anna, this is the context you need. The headline makes Rachel sound opportunistic, but the story of Anna and Rachel’s friendship will have you rethinking that assumption.

In fact, Rachel and Anna had built a friendship over time, and it was mutual at first. At the beginning, they both paid for things, though Anna had more money than Rachel. Overtime, Anna wanted to pay for them to do more expensive things and would cover the bill, but Rachel would also reciprocate in her own way. And as their trust built, I began to understand why Rachel second-guessed her own gut instincts that Anna was lying. This wasn’t a casual friend, this was someone she spent most of her free time with for over a year.

The rest of the book documents what happened during and after the vacation, the financial implications of this amount of credit card debt, the slow realization the Anna wasn’t the person she claimed to be, and ultimately how Rachel was able to help assist in the capture and conviction of Anna.

One thing I absolutely loved about this book was that it was grounded with primary source materials. As Rachel became more suspicious of Anna, she exported every communication they had, from texts to emails, phone time stamps, and logged all of the times they met in person. The texts are printed in full in the book, and it helped me understand not only why Rachel was conflicted over whether Anna was telling the truth or not, but also how committed of a liar and a fraud Anna was.

The communications about the payment went on for months and months, even including electronic wire transfer numbers, communications with Anna’s family accountant, and continued back and forth about the payment. And peppered throughout this are the normal aspects of friendship. Anna doesn’t disappear over this, and Rachel doesn’t write her off.

Eventually, Rachel’s efforts to reach out to Anna’s parents through other friends of Anna reveals a troubling web of information that is part fact and part fiction. I was fascinated and appalled by Anna herself. Similar to Rachel (and many others defrauded by Anna), I found it hard to pinpoint how intentional her lies and fraud were. Did she go in with the plan to do this all along? Was it a fraud of circumstance? Does she regret it?

I’ll let you form your own opinions on those questions. Personally, I think she did plan to defraud Rachel and I don’t think she regrets it. Anna’s pattern is to take advantage of people just like Rachel. She tests their loyalty and friendship, and then she does what she wants with no thought to the consequences for others. It resonated through the book for me that Rachel really had a hard time separating her friendship from Anna, even to the very end.

In fact the ending where Rachel helps the authorities locate Anna and ultimately capture her was so compelling. Even to the final moment where Rachel set Anna up for capture, I saw her struggle to follow through with the plan. I learned a lot about why people fall victim to these things. It’s hard to have your guard up against someone you are close to. People like Anna take advantage of the goodness in others.

This is a fantastic book, and a must-read for those interested in the psychology of fraud.