*I received this book, Romance Scam Diary, free of charge so I could read it and create this review. All opinions are my own.*
The very first thing I need to say about this book is that it’s translated from German. The woman who’s story it is lives in Germany and speaks quite a few languages, but she wrote this diary in German. Because of the translation I tried really hard to not be too picky about the grammar and sentence structure. The writing style is not great, but it definitely reads like a diary, and it’s easily understandable. So keep those points in mind while you read my review please!
This story is about a 50-something German woman who gets scammed on a dating site. She loses some money (and some self-worth) before she realizes the pleasant Canadian she’s been chatting with is a professional scammer from Ghana.
Brigette then decides to report this man (and others who contact her over time) to Romance Scam. This is a website where people report scammers so others won’t be taken in.
I found this book a bit hard to read because the author really lays out her feelings in this diary. She feels ashamed, used, and often quite upset with herself. The diary also jumps around and has a lot of names of scammers. I did get a little lost because some of the scammers would have more than one profile on the dating site she was using and so I wasn’t always sure who she was talking to (or if it was the same person with a different name.)
It was also interesting to read her real-life dating that she was doing concurrently with all the scammer stuff online. She fell very hard for the scammer in Ghana (who she thought was a soldier from Canada) before she had her rude awakening, and so she is having a hard time with “real” men who don’t live up to the story the scammer fed her about the Canadian man. Sadly I can see how people are taken in by these scammers.
This book, Romance Scam Diary, was interesting to read. I didn’t enjoy the flow of the diary, or that it reads like a translation. I did like reading the real story of someone affected by what I’m sure is a big problem on online dating sites.
~Jess