Exposed

The Secret Life of Jodi Arias

By: Jane Velez-Mitchell

Narrated by: Elizabeth White

Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

On June 9, 2008, the butchered body of Travis Alexander was found in his Mesa, Arizona, home. The grisly nature of his death made instant headlines: With 29 knife wounds, his throat slit, and a gunshot to the head, Travis was left to die. The prime suspect in the case was Alexander's ex-girlfriend, the attractive and soft-spoken Jodi Arias.

Though Arias initially said that she was nowhere near the scene of crime, little about this case was as it seemed, and before long she had been caught lying to police. As the investigation progressed, her lies evolved multiple times before finally resting on an appalling claim: She had killed Travis in self-defense.

Along the way, startling details emerged about the Mormon couple's relationship, and soon graphic stories of their lurid sexual encounters and jealousy-driven blowouts revealed a dark side to their life together. These revelations launched a trial filled with sex and deception but also raised substantial questions about Arias' deceit, as people from across the country struggled to understand the bizarre world of Jodi Arias.

Now, award-winning broadcast journalist and best-selling author Jane Velez-Mitchell, a veteran of some of the most storied court cases in recent memory, goes behind the scenes of the trial and into the mind of a killer. Using insider accounts from friends who knew Travis and Jodi, Velez-Mitchell turns her sharply-focused lens on Arias and offers her seasoned perspective on the case's most pressing questions. Separating fact from fiction, she reports on the bizarre and explicit stories that have both shocked and fascinated the American public - from Jodi's romantic history before meeting Travis, to their torrid sex life together, to the complicated role their Mormon faith played in the relationships demise. With unbridled access to the evidence and the case's key players, Velez-Mitchell unearths Jodi's contentious life with those closest to her, examining the paranoid and erratic behavior behind each relationship and illustrating the disturbing pattern of a murderer in the making.

Complete with photos from the case and Jane Velez-Mitchell’s fresh insights on the crime, Exposed takes readers behind closed bedroom doors to uncover the truth behind the secret and sordid life of Jodi Arias.

©2013 Eastwind Enterprises, Inc. (P)2013 HarperCollins Publishers

Nothing new in this book

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

If you didn't follow the trial, this would be a good read. If you followed the trial, this is just a summary of the murder case and court coverage.

What could Jane Velez-Mitchell have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Done some more background research on Jodi Arias. There has to be some "family secrets" out there that formed her twisted personality.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Nothing

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Probably not.

Any additional comments?

Basically this book was an HLN summary of their trial coverage.

Thanks for making this showing her TRUE COLORS!

Where does Exposed rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It was Amazing! I highly recommend. I listened numerous times.

What did you like best about this story?

That the book showed Arias' true colors and wasn't supporting her, it proved how crazy she was like we didn't know already but, yes I feel this book was very supportive for the Alexander Family.

What about Elizabeth White’s performance did you like?

It was very emotional and clear as day.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me sad but very excited to see justice served.

Any additional comments?

no..

Very well done.

Both the author and the narrator were excellent. The storyline was riveting and I couldn't stop listening.

Great content..

Great content.. But the narrator's voice was so robotic that it was hard to listen. Recommend the book.

Great Story, Weird Narration

The Jodie Arias story is pretty familiar with most people. This audiobook offers details that the television documentaries and features don't provide, especially related to Jodi's personal history before meeting Travis and Travis's personal history before meeting Jodi. We learn about Jodi's childhood, her endless of financial troubles, her weird romantic history. We learn about Travis's terrible childhood, which motivates his incredible self-improvement as a young adult. We learn that Travis wasn't a perfect Mormon golden boy, and see how his aspirations for status and wealth also motivated his decisions. Unexpected: a word for word recount of the infamous phone sex session between Jodi and Travis, with the more graphic details described briefly rather than read word for word. This book also offers a fantastic epilogue which breaks down Borderline Personality Disorder and applies it in a very understandable way to Jodi's behavior.

The only thing I'd change is the narrator. Her cadence and pronunciation of certain words (especially "defendant") is just weird and almost robotic. It's distracting. Loosen up.

Meh

I feel like this is book focused. more on attacking Jodi rather than provide real insight of what Travis and Jodis relationship was really like and what drove Jodi to commit that awful crime.

This is the most frighting Devil in disguise .

Obsessed with this case a trial. disappointed in the outcome and the judge for letting Jodi make such a mochary of the judicial systen This book very on point, it's just how it went down, I have nightmares about Jodi she is so frightening. talk about a Narcissist.

Solid but nothing new

Not a new perspective or insight on a truly horrendous case. If you didn’t follow the trail you may find it interesting but there are better books available

Great Narrator, Untrustworthy Writer

I read/listen to a lot of true crime, or a certain type of it, anyway. I'm drawn to the genre not for the prurient aspects, but because the extremes of human behavior and thought fascinate me. Good true crime manages to retain a certain impartiality while still delving into the personalities, motivations, and flaws of the killer and other characters in a way that feels "inside." I won't say it's sympathetic, exactly, but my favorite true crime writers seem to have a desire to understand, and that brings humanity to the work.

I wanted to find a book about the Arias case, and chose this one over one written by the prosecutor because I thought an outsider perspective would put forth a less biased portrait of the killer than the law enforcement view would.

I was wrong. At first I wondered if the writer might be a relative of the victim, her tone was so bitter right from page one. In pretty much the first paragraph, she says, "She has earned her reputation as a pathological liar." Well, I remember the case, and I remember that Arias made up some whoppers in her attempt to first proclaim her innocence and later explain her actions. But does that make her a pathological liar? Pathological liars lie irrespective of social pressures or avoidance of consequences. Arias lied, like so many criminals do, because she was in trouble, because she was obsessed with the man she ended up killing, etc. etc.. I know she's a hard girl to like, considering her open courting of the media, but here the liar accusation is used simply to throw large, sharp stones at Arias. That tone continues throughout, as the writer follows the familiar path of painting Arias as the manipulative man-eating lioness to Travis' innocent lamb. It's hard for me to put any real trust in a writer who seems to be holding her nose in disgust toward her subject throughout. She doesn't even try to get inside the head of Jodi Arias.

At least, she doesn't try to until she calls in Dr. Drew. When she introduces the celebrity therapist near the end of the book, the writer gushes over him as if he were a venerated psychological authority instead of the ill-informed and ethically challenged internist he actually is. He "diagnoses" Jodi by talking to some of his psychologist friends about her without ever having met her, then goes off on a diatribe that makes it seems like all bipolar sufferers are a breath away from homicide. This is the expert opinion this writer seeks.

I'm not defending Jodi Arias, not at all. But I don't think it's so unreasonable to expect a writer to maintain some writerly distance on the one hand and to explore the flawed human being she's writing about on the other. Without that, there's no reason to read a book about a case as well documented in the press as this one. A good true crime book reveals something that's alternately relatable and deplorable. A bad one - and I'd put this in that category - doesn't reveal anything I didn't already read in the paper.

On a positive note, kudos to the narrator, who made it tolerable.

Interesting

I have been following this case so I have been following the author's show on HLN. However, I did learn some new things in this book.