Customer Reviews

Everything She Ever Wanted

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Yes, folks, it's true. I was born and raised where this nonfiction book took place. It started the year I was born and Ann Rule got it all right.

This was one sick individual. Once I started reading this book I just couldn't leave it until I was done. This story is about a woman that wants everything no matter how she gets it..could it be Murder? Drugs? Property? Possessions? Greed? --or possibly all of the above. This woman just didn't care about anything, or anyone. She had to be the centre of attention at all cost. If your looking for a really good book to read, this is it. I'm just happy she wasn't one of my "friends" or living next door to me.

...like so many of the other reviewers have written, Pat Taylor Allanson is almost too bizarre to be a real person!!! She is the definition of selfish, evil, egocentric, spoiled, and trashy. The fact that she and her mother consider themselves to come from "good breeding" is laughable -- they are a family who, generation after generation, put on teenage shotgun weddings with what seems to be no shame at all...

This is one really selfish and blinded family -- save for the one daughter who bravely reveals the evil deeds of her mother (that, surprisingly, no one else seems to see though they seem blatantly obvious!!!)...

No, this is not Ann Rule's best, in my opinion (I will always be partial to "The Stranger Beside Me"), but despite other reviews, I would highly recommend it... It tells a winding and bizarre tale of a truly selfish and evil woman who will stop at nothing to get "everything she ever wanted", which appears to be the attention of everyone around her... She's pitiful.

I can't much improve on the one review where the fellow who wrote it said he wish he could've reached into the book and strangled Pat Allanson.

This sociopath was never made to face reality. But, then again, her mother indulged in illusion. Marguerite had three illegitimate children before she was 20 years old by a married man, but acted as if she was this paragon of virtue and looked down her nose at everyone else. Meanwhile, her precious daughter, who drove her own brother to suicide, is ruining lives right and left.

I think the entire family was nuts and if Pat Allanson got the opportunity she would just repeat her past conduct because she knows her family...save the only sane member, her daughter, Susan...will continue to defend her and cover up for her!

Heaven preserve us from people who think they are entitled to everything they want and don't care who they run over to get it.

In "Everything She Ever Wanted" we are introduced to Patricia Vann Radcliffe Taylor Allanson, a woman fixated on emulating her role-model Scarlett O'Hara, a modern-day refined southern belle of infinite selfishness and a complete lack of remorse or empathy, devoid of conscience and incapable of love for anyone or anything save for herself, in search of her paradisaic "Tara".

While some have mistaken this as a story of a freak, it is quite the opposite - a tale of a clever, stubborn, adorable spoiled child whose submersion in unmitigated gratification and complete lack of disciplinary boundaries during her formative years turned the Shirley-Temple dream child into the Jekyll/Hyde adult. Do I recall that Pat Taylor Allanson served as the model for Caleb Carr's cold-blooded, manipulative, and realistic if fictional "Libby" in his chilling classic "Angel of Darkness"? If she didn't, she certainly could have.

The tale of a monster? Perhaps, but a common monster, one that breeds and multiplies and festers in the milieu of our modern society, that arises again and again, in ever more resistant strains, to test the limits of our enfeebled enforcement and justice systems.

Ms. Rule adroitly demonstrates the chameleon nature of the sociopath, the quicksilver-like ability to evade culpability and responsibility, while churning a carnage-laden path of ruined lives and festering emotional trauma through the lives of those who love them. We sense the frustration of a legal system than can never adequately resolve those crimes against the innocent which ultimately only a higher power can fully and fairly address, as is acknowledged in the novel's concluding and ironic axiom.

A fascinating read (I read it in about 3 long sittings) for those willing to wade into the restricting mire of non-idyllic reality far removed from Hollywood fantsies of quick revenge and violent retribution. Recommended.

The very best of Ann Rule. This story is amazingly bizarre - and is made even further outrageous when other "socially elite" family members join in her collusions. Ann Rule got me hooked on this genre of serial killer, - the delicate southern belle with a sharp mind, a great big gracious smile, and an icy, stone-cold heart.

This is probably the 5th or 6th book of Ann Rule's books that I've read, and I'm glad I did. I enjoy reading books that chronicle human behavior, and this book does just that. I find it amazing that people like Patricia (whatever her last name is now)exist! She's definitely one of a kind, and I just wish I'd had the opportunity to run into her so I could give her a piece of my mind. Very well written and a page turner!

Excellent account of a diabolical woman's need to have her every wish granted. It's a textbook portrait of a sociopath/psychopath's inner workings and, as always, Ann Rule has captured the causes and effects of what these people can do in society. Pity Pat Taylor's family, friends and anyone with whom she's every come in contact.

Pat Taylor Allanson suffered from Munchausen's, Munchausen's by proxy, narcissistic and histrionic personality disorder, as is obviously displayed in the book, though her doctors diagnosed her with other things at the time. She's four star performer! The sad thing is, her family practically trained her to believe that she was more important than anybody else, since she was a baby. She never learned to accept the word "no" and never really moved beyond a toddler's jealous dependance on her mother. This failed serial killer, who may have tried to kill her own daughter, is out now; a free woman. Anne Rule makes this book a real page turner. Every time you think Pat can't go any lower, she does. Had she gone legit, she could have really had "everything she ever wanted," she was so talented, but she chose a path of evil.

I found this book to be very lengthy and boring. I love true crime books and I never stop reading a book, so I toughed it out and finished it. It took me about six weeks to do so. I was finally able to finish it because of a long plane trip.

The main character, Pat, was truly trash. I thought the author overexagerated Pat's beauty and refined upbringing. It is not a story of a high-society woman gone bad, but rather a trashy woman from a trashy background doing some pretty trashy things.

I would not recommend this book, based on the above. I have read other books of Ann Rule that I have enjoyed, but this does not make the list.