Why you always lying?
Memoirs, biographies, and non fiction that have been either proven to be fabricated, or are heavily suspected to be false.
Always open to more suggestions in any category as I’m most familiar with false memoirs!
created by FeralAcademic
last updated September, 2026
Comments
A NOTE: “A Child Called It” is only included here because of the controversy surrounding how much is truth in them. I do believe he was abused but he’s shown a history of lying and artificially inflating his numbers by buying and reselling THOUSANDS of his books, as well as a fervent ego problem so I’m less likely to believe that every horrendous detail in the book happened and there wasn’t some embellishment. It’s actually more argued about whether the later two books were less real than the first, but I didn’t want to include the whole series.
.... 😐 Okay, lemme un-Interested that one. Thanks for the info!
I’ll be real: I read all of the books and truly I don’t think…. They need to be read. It’s kind of misery lit trauma porn and honestly it scarred me as a kid to read them, you don’t need to read about every horrible abuse a child suffered to be happy they came out of it okay and know that you can make it through bad things too. It is GRAPHIC and disturbing and just a very very bad time, the later books are better but like?? I don’t think…. It’s necessary to put yourself through that.
0% overlap, iktr 😝😝 but also YIKES. the amount of nf out there with untrue/non factual information is kinda crazy 😭
This. Is. Beautiful. And I'll literally have to keep referencing it when I'm out thrifting for books!! I feel like it's unfair to call these non-fiction!!
I was SO MAD about some of these honestly like EVERYONE read this when I was growing up what do you mean it was a scam!!! At this point it’s a fair bet if Oprah featured someone they were a scammer lol
WOAH what an interesting list!!
Thank you! I’ve been falling down a rabbit hole lately about this stuff! I’ve been ranting about two of the books for ages but after discovering the story of JT Leroy (which FASCINATES ME seriously I recommend checking it out), AND discovering that two popular books from my childhood were disproven, I wanted to list as many as I can to learn about!
i just found out about jt leroy last week!!
my dnr list has expanded THANK YOU
Ok that's a crazy concept, how could someone lie that way if it's supposed to be a memoir or nonfiction?? Won't read the books, will do research 👀
Go Ask Alice is like if a D.A.R.E. campaign was a book but I will admit I was fascinated by it when I was a teen. I can’t remember if I thought it was real or not though!
Go Ask Alice was Scared Straight Lit lol and it only worked on half the kids I think the other half went hmmmmm I think I’m built different though I’d be fine.
Lolol for sure
You’re Wrong About podcast starter pack lol
Oop looks like I’ll have to check this out!!!
Woooo this is so interesting thank you!! I have a couple in my mind that AFAIK would fit here: firstly The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam, which is heavily exaggerated or made up/incorporates other people’s stories (this was actually assigned to me as an undergraduate in a seminar on memory/knowledge and feminist theory before it was exposed!); secondly In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park, which definitely has made up and inconsistent parts, but I believe there’s some controversy over whether it was intentional or not.
Thank you so much!!!!
I’m adding The Tell, it’s currently going back and forth but like I’ve listened to stuff about it and literally I don’t believe so much that she says already…. I don’t know if she intentionally lied or if she convinced herself of her repressed memories but none of it adds up for MULTIPLE reasons (girl you did not recover repressed memories through hallucinating your abuser five minutes after taking mdma and this is causing SO MUCH misinformation to be spread about mdma it’s making my head spin since when it this a “psychedelic drug” shut up) and her outing a victim out of spite is gross so…..
