Rating: 
Summary: Bewildering, Frustrating and Heartbreaking
Review: I was not aware the anniversary of Andrea Yates's horrific crime was near when I started this book. I had tried to stay away from the story. The subject of a mother killing all five of her children was just too difficult. I leafed through the book one day, and found I could not put it down. While the all too familiar story of the killings, the subsequent revelations of Andrea's mental illness, her husband Rusty's seeming inability and unwillingness to recognize the signs and to render aid to his struggling wife,the role religion seemed to play in the mix...I guess I wondered if there was that "something". That fact or truth that would make it all seem to make sense. There is no such revelation. As you read
the story you are almost compelled to yell at the main characters, "Wake up"! The only real "new" insight is in the portion of the book dealing with Michael Woroniecki, the itinerant preacher who influenced Rusty Yates and later Andrea Yates. He casts blame towards Rusty,calling him arrogant, unwilling to bow to God's plan. Woroniecki is more concerned with the continuation of hiswork and his word,then to pause for a moment to see what role,if any,he and his expectations may have played in this tragedy.
Now we read in the papers that Rusty has filed for divorce, seeking to have more children. He says cannot remain married to Andrea because he cannot "trust" her with children". Huh? And Andrea slips in and out of reality,each time she becomes more in tune with reality she must recognize her children are gone, and she had a hand in their deaths.
Suzanne O'Malley skillfully, and compassionately writes about this tragedy. There are no winners,only the grim reality of missed chances to recognize the crisis, to aid, to step in and to perhaps change the horror. No matter how skillfully written, this books left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I could only see those five smiling faces.
Rating: 
Summary: a theory of the Yates murders
Review: Suzanne O'Malley has a thesis to present: That Andrea Yates, convicted of drowning her five children in their bathtub, was improperly diagnosed. O'Malley sees Yates as a classic victim of bipolar disorder, rather than the "extreme" postpartum depression for which she was being treated.
This book, exhaustively detailed and written in sometimes casual, conversational language, will keep you turning pages. When you finish you may decide that O'Malley's ideas are correct. The case she makes is not entirely convincing; many aspects of this tragedy remain mysterious. For readers who have been hungry for more details about the Yates family, their marriage, their devotion to a small eccentric cult, Andrea's homeschooling of her children, and other matters, O'Malley's book will feed that curiosity from her own perspective and conclusions.
Rating: 
Summary: Are you there alone? by Suzanne O'Malley
Review: A true story exceptionally well written. Many kudos for Suzanne O'Malley for her courage of putting Andrea Yates tragic story on paper. The amount of investigative research and just plain leg work that went into this book along with Miss O'Malley's compassion for Andrea gives me hope that there are still some people out there who care. If there were more people of O'Malley's caliber possibly Andrea would be home taking care of her beautiful five babies, taking her medicine and coping with every day life. Gunta Krasts Voutyras
Rating:
Summary: Troubling look at Yates case
Review: An intimate portrait of the disintegration of Andrea Yates leading up to the murder of her five children, if I had one complaint about this book it would be that it fails to take a long, hard and critical look at Rusty Yates.
Eloquently portraying Andrea's long history of mental illness, O'Malley gives the reader a tightly-written accounting of Andrea's continual mis-diagnoses and the disturbing tendency of her family to turn a blind eye to her obvious distress. Adding to the pressures of a diffident and immature spouse were religious fanatics who I sincerely hope are suffering some consequences for the things they said, saw and encouraged Andrea to do.
O'Malley obviously came to know the Yates family fairly well, Rusty in particular. While she does talk about some of his shortcomings, she loses her objectivity and fails to hold him as accountable as she does many of the other people involved, including Andrea's doctors and a medical system that was not equipped to manage her mental health care properly. Rusty is portrayed as a sort of bumbling victim himself, always trying to do the right thing but always falling short in an innocent way. A very large part of the book is dedicated to telling Andrea's story and describing what was happening around her at various stress points in her life, but in essentially choosing Rusty's side and perspective, O'Malley fails to capture any real emotional sense of Andrea's illness and its effect on her.
This isn't a lurid account of the crime itself, but more of a study of most of the people, behaviors and systemic failures that contributed to Andrea Yates' eventual collapse and the murder of her children. It's not an easy book to read, more because of its content than any problems with the writing itself. I encourage anyone seeking a rounder picture of the Yates' marriage to read this; the general media has never done such an in-depth look at all of the contributing factors.
Sadly for Andrea, the moderately hopeful note the book ends on, with her correct diagnosis and medication, has apparently not continued. As of a couple of weeks before this review was written, Rusty had filed for divorce and Andrea was hospitalized because she had stopped eating in prison, her mental illness reportedly uncontrolled again.
Rating:
Summary: Best book written on the Yates case so far
Review: Any psychiatrist reading this book must half hope to come upon evidence of some obvious malpractice, so as to be able to say "such a thing could never happen to one of my patients" rather than "there but for the grace of God go I."
Some of the professional errors O'Malley describes are defendable. Experts may reasonably differ, as did some of the experts she talked to, about whether the case was one of bipolar disorder or of schizophrenia. Treating a bipolar patient with anti-depressants alone is often stated to be undesirable because of the danger of precipitating mania, but the practice has its advocates. O'Malley does not make Dr Saeed sound like an empathetic character with good verbal skills but that may be a subjective judgment.
She skates over the decision by the Yates's to have a fifth child. Rusty Yates has been much criticized for this. Dr. Starbranch made a written note that a further pregnancy would guarantee another psychotic episode but we do not know what she said to Rusty Yates about it.
I cannot imagine tolerating the practices she describes at Devereux. Of course O'Malley's description is based on a a written record that may not have reflected all of what went on. The chart and treatment plan would normally have been reviewed by Magellan. In any inpatient facility I have known there would have been extended and worried discussions, involving social workers and nursing staff, about the fact that there were five small children at risk. On the other hand it is possible that even with such discussions the staff migh have been reassured by the fact that the husband was supportive and a grandmother was arriving who would be in the house while he was at work. (The killings took place between the time Rusty Yates left for work and the time Dora Yates was due to arrive in the morning.)
I do not feel qualified to cast the first stone.
Rating:
Summary: A New Style of True Crime -
Review: Have you noticed how it is that when you mention the name "Andrea Yates" people's jaws go slack? Wait 'til you read this book. It is SO good. Not sensationalized at all. It doesn't have to be. The facts are sensational enough. The author, Suzanne O'Malley, has used interviews with Yates by various psychiatrists,interviews with her husband, mother and dozens of others as well as the court transcripts and letters from Andrea Yates herself to the author to tell the story. Apparently, O'Malley is the only reporter to have carried on a correspondence with Yates from her cell in prison. (Would love to read the entire letters and not just the exerpts in the book - wow!) What I like, is that the writer does not intrude on the subject - it tells itself seemingly effortlessly. Just every now and then, like one of the classic tragedies - which surely this is - she will very subtly point out something that is so ironic or just plain stupid that you have to laugh out loud. Thank goodness! Anyway, It's terrific. The killing of her children was and is, of course unspeakable" but the depth of her understanding combined with the sensitivity of Yates's portrait makes this an extraordinary book. Read it. You won't be sorry. Truth is, after all, stranger than fiction.
Rating:
Summary: For the information...
Review: I gave the book four stars because of the information packed into it, and the fact that it reveals a lot about the trial and how Andrea got screwed over by the prosecution (*a big part of the prosecution's case was based on an Law and Order episode that never existed--they said that Andrea watched this episode, about a mentally ill woman who kills her kids, and got ideas from it). However, it is boring and not a quick read at all. Suzy Spencer's "Breaking Point" is an easier read, but is not as thorough. This one gives more details as to how and why the kids were killed, while the other has a lot more on the previous life of the Yates' family. Both have their strong points. Overall, I would probably recommend Breaking Point. Most of the 'extra' stuff this one provides can be found on CNN. And, unfortunately, there are no pictures in this novel. Mary isn't even shown on the cover, so if you're relying solely on this novel, it's hard to picture her. She, and brothers Noah, John, Luke and Paul were beautiful children. This book could've been better had it included some pictures, simply to give the readers some illustration.
Rating:
Summary: Best book written on the Yates case so far
Review: I stated that this was the best book written on the Yates case so far. It is, but bear in mind that is not saying a lot given the material that has been published so far. While O'Malley makes a strong case that Andrea Yates was suffering from severe mental illness and would have been better served by being sentenced to a mental hospital, I personally felt that Ms. O'Malley had become too personally attached to this case and some of the key players, esp. Rusty Yates. As a result, it is very difficult to wade through the author's bias and get a clear understanding of the events that lead up to this tragedy. For instance, very little is said about the Yateses' decision to have a 5th child even after they had been warned by Andrea's doctor that such a decision would almost certainly "guarantee future psychotic depression." Furthermore, the author fails to point out the contradictions in Rusty (and Andrea's) philosophy to have as many children as "nature intended." (i.e, The couple lived together almost a year before they married and Andrea was on the pill during that time.) Also, Rusty claims that he is not a doctor and thought all psychiatrists were essentially the same, yet he also KNEW that Andrea's last doctor, Dr. Mohammad Saeed (who, IMO, became a scapegoat of sorts for both the Yates and the Kennedy families),should have given her the drug Haldol. O'Malley never bothers to point these out, yet strangely enough, she takes it upon herself to inform the reader that when she met with Dr. Saeed for her first and only appointment, she noticed that his BWM "could have used a wash." It was comments like that which made me wonder just what Ms. O'Mallery was trying to accomplish in this book. Lastly, I would have liked to hear more from the Kennedy family who since the trial, have levelled many criticism against their son-in-law and what they see as his inablity to acknowledge that his wife was as bad off as she was until it was too late.
Rating: 
Summary: Read this ONLY If You Want To Get Angry
Review: Self-serving tripe by an author who is out to proclaim herself as a savior to this murderer. She'll let you know how very grateful Yates' defense lawyers were to her, her little "test" performed on a Yates' psychiatrist (which proved nothing), and her conjecture that the blame should lie, not on the murderer, but rather other members of the family and friends. Aside from her own proclamations of heroism, this author is most interested in getting readers to buy into the fact that Yates should have been found innocent by reason of insanity, and at most should have been confined to a mental institution instead of a jail. Yates knew exactly what she was doing and planned it out to precisely coincide with the small time frame she had to work with between the time her husband left for work, and her mother-in-law arrived. After she carefully drowned each one of her 5 children (the 7 year old while the 2 year old was already dead in the tub - can you imagine the terror he went through?), she calmly informed the police. To blame all of this (any of it!) on post-partum depression, anxiety, or any other mood disorder is ludicrous. Aside from some horrendous serial killers such as Dahlmer, Bundy, and Gacy, I can't think of anyone who deserved the death penalty more than this brutal, sadistic killer of innocent, little children.
Rating: 
Summary: Huntress on the prowl!
Review: Suzanne O'Malley is a huntress on the prowl, out to prove that everybody connected with the Andrea Yates case was incompetent. I found the book to be extremely disjointed and tedious. O'Malley pads the book with psychiatric interviews that go nowhere. She even resorts to jury selection to fill up pages. There is one new tidbit, specifically that Andrea Yates was bi-polar before she got married and that her pregnancies pushed her over the edge, but that would be material for a magazine article, not a 262-page book.
O'Malley maintains that Andrea Yates was misdiagnosed and that one psychiatrist especially, Mohmammed Saed, was especially delinquent. Yates tried to commit suicide twice before she drowned her children and she was at one time committed to Devereaux Texas Treatment Network, where Saed was on staff. He prescribed several anti-depressants rather than Haldol which had worked for Yates in the past and never seemed to bother to see his patient. The anti-depressants may have exacerbated her problem. There is one especially funny sequence where O'Malley plays investigative reporter, making an appointment with Saed and complaining about not being able to get right down to work as a journalist, suggesting that she may have ADHD. He prescribes Wellbutrin.
At first it appears O'Malley will focus on Michael Woroniecki, an itinerant preacher the Yates were involved with. Yates had contended that she drowned the children to save them from Satan, that because they were so young and innocent they would go to Heaven. She, Satan, would be annihilated. O'Malley infers Woroniecki was partially responsible. He told Andrea that she was a bad mother and that she was going to hell, supposedly because she let them watch cartoons and would not spank them when they were naughty. This guy is the most interesting character in the book but, alas, O'Malley couldn't get him to agree to an interview.
The huntress returns when the psychiatrist for the prosecution contends that Yates was imitating a segment from the television program, Law and Order, during which a woman drowns her children in a bathtub. O'Malley, a former scripter for the show, checks it out, learning that there was no such program. But, this being Texas, the judge refuses to declare a mistrial. O'Malley takes credit anyway, claiming that if it had not been for her sleuthing Yates would have got the death penalty.
Overall this book reads like one of those quickie exposes that come out after a headline disaster, only those are usually written in two weeks. It took O'Malley two years to write this one.
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