Naked Addiction (33 page)

About the author

New York Times
 bestselling author Caitlin Rother has written or co-authored nine books:
true crime thrillers
I’ll Take Care of You, Lost Girls, Poisoned Love, Dead Reckoning, Body Parts, Twisted Triangle,
and
Deadly Devotion, 
and the memoir
My Life, Deleted
. Rother, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, worked as an investigative reporter at daily newspapers for nineteen years before deciding to write books full-time. Her work has been published in 
Cosmopolitan
, the 
Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 
the
 Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post 
and
 The Daily Beast
. She has done dozens of media appearances as a crime expert, featured on 
Nancy Grace
, the 
Jay Thomas Show
, Investigation Discovery, E!,
Snapped
, Greta Van Susteren’s 
On the Record
, XM Radio, America at Night, C-SPAN and various PBS radio and TV affiliates. Rother works as a book doctor and editor, and coach/consultant in publishing and research. She also teaches narrative nonfiction writing and news/feature writing at UCSD Extension and San Diego Writers, Ink. For more information go to http://caitlinrother.com.

Book club discussion questions for
NAKED ADDICTION

I am hoping that some of you will suggest NAKED ADDICTION as the monthly pick for your book clubs.

If you have a large enough club or combine forces with another one, I’m open to doing speaker phone or Skype sessions with groups that meet outside my home town of San Diego. You can contact me at [email protected] to see if I’m available, or if you’d like to arrange for a shipment of signed copies for your club.

Here are some questions to get your discussion started:

1) At what point did you figure out who the killer is? Did you think it was someone else earlier in the book?

2) Addiction is a major theme in this book, with each character having his or her own substance (or behavior) of choice and respective coping mechanism. Identify which characters have which addiction, and discuss the possible seminal causes.

3) Based on Tania Marcus’ emails and journal entries, some of which are pieces of creative writing by the character, what can you tell about the true personality of this character?

4) If you have read any of author Caitlin Rother’s other books—true crime thrillers—can you see any parallels to her fiction writing or vice versa? Keep in mind that NAKED ADDICTION was her very first book, most of which she wrote before she’d published any of her other books.

5) Who is Ken Goode? What type of man is he, and what are his issues?

6) From an ethical standpoint—and in terms of his ability to solve this murder case—how do you feel about the scene in which Goode and Alison kiss? And also, without giving any spoilers here, what about their interactions later in the book?

7) One of the author’s favorite scenes is the description of Sunset at Windansea, which she believes is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. What was your favorite scene in the book and why?

8) Make a list of characters with the most admirable and redeeming traits, and those with the least so, and discuss why.

9) Who is the most sympathetic character and why?

10) Were you surprised by what happened at the end of the scene with Norman and Clover?

11) By the end of the novel, what is the message(s) you take away from the book? Do you agree or disagree?

12) A heavier question for the brave book club members: Rother lost her husband to alcoholism and suicide after she’d already started writing NAKED ADDICTION, and parts of the book, including the opening scene, were inspired by her personal experience. The novel has these and a number of other underlying themes such as sexual abuse, drug addiction, and mental illness. What if any personal issues did any of these themes bring up for you in terms of events that have happened to you or your family?