What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter, and Me

Rielle Hunter’s What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter, and Me may be the best book ever. “I don’t like to think of myself as a stupid person but I have done a lot of things in my life that were just plain stupid. Snorting cocaine is stupid. Snorting cocaine for just under a decade, desperately attempting to recreate the euphoric high from the first line ever snorted, is so far beyond stupid it may even qualify as criminal.”-pg. 3 “It was during this same time period that I was attempting to fix my website with a woman named Pigeon O’Brien.”-pg. 15 There are 241 pages just as awesome as all of those quotes! What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter, and Me fulfilled all my prurient and ratchet curiosity. I love to know what people are thinking when they make crazy decisions, and I now have the complete perspective of the ultimate ride or die side chick. Fun random facts: at some point, she met all of John & Elizabeth Edwards’ kids, and Elizabeth Edwards may not have liked her, but she unwittingly hooked her up career wise and consciously got her a good lawyer. Rielle actually calls John Edwards’ behavior insane at one point, and she gets more right than wrong about human behavior-if your husband isn’t sleeping with you, it doesn’t mean that he isn’t sleeping with anybody. I love that everyone on Edwards’ staff complains about Elizabeth Edwards’ behavior, but here is the thing: you are trying to hide an affair or ten from her so she is not going to take that well, and she may epically lose her crap at you, her husband and the world from time to time. Basically Rielle is oddly amoral, but I enjoy her peculiar brand of honesty and her simplistic way of dealing with the world. She should have been born in France. If The Ratchet Hatchet had a book club, I would recommend What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter, and Me.