David Cristofano

This book is about a young woman who has spent her life from the age of six living in the Federal Witness Protection Program because of a mob murder witnessed by her family twenty years earlier. Her parents having been found and murdered, she lives her live both bored and afraid. She longs for relationships, but how can she connect with another person when she can't tell them the truth? Then she meets the son of the mob boss who had her parents killed and she is drawn to him, mainly because show more he knows who she is. I was intrigued, but in this case the whole adds up to much less than that idea.

Melody, who has also been known as Michelle, May and Anne, has a good sense of how unfair life is. She's hard to get to know, beyond her constantly renewed sense of grievance. In the course of being relocated, once again, by seriously the most incompetent federal agent not played by Chevy Chase, she encounters Jonathan and thus begins a trite, chick-lit style story that takes over anything interesting that had been developing. It's full of new clothes, which are miraculously a size smaller than she previously wore, and a carefully detailed day at a spa. Oh, and she falls in love with the violent man who nabbed her. Oh, and despite her desperate need to connect with anyone and her habit of parading naked in front of whoever's in charge of her, she's still a virgin. This is chick-lit written by a man and, boy, did it bring out my inner feminist. Jonathan is violent, but he has good reasons and he (and every other guy in the book) thinks she's really beautiful. She also needs a lot of rescuing. The emphasis on her "purity" really bothered me, especially when the sexual lives of the men around her are never an issue. And while I know that this is fiction and willing suspense of disbelief and all that, but every government agent as well as the entire government in general, is so incompetent as to boggle the mind. My cat could do a better job. There was a sub-text here that I really felt uncomfortable with. At the end Spoiler Alert she is still safely a virgin, and now she's wearing a purity ring, which is much more important in the world of this book, than believable plot, original sentences or a strong woman leading her own life. Blech. show less

The publicists at Author Exposure provided me with a complimentary copy of The Girl She Used To Be by David Cristofano after I chose it from a selection of over fifty other titles to review.

When Melody Grace McCartney was six years old, she and her parents witnessed an act of violence so brutal that it changed their lives forever. The federal government lured them into the Witness Protection Program with the promise of safety, and they went gratefully. But the program took Melody's name, show more her home, her innocence, and, ultimately, her family. She's been May Adams, Karen Smith, Anne Johnson, and countless others--everyone but the one person she longs to be: herself. So when the feds spirit her off to begin yet another new life in another town, she's stunned when a man confronts her and calls her by her real name. Jonathan Bovaro, the mafioso sent to hunt her down, knows her, the real her, and it's a dangerous thrill that Melody can't resist. He's insistent that she's just a pawn in the government's war against the Bovaro family. But can she trust her life and her identity to this vicious stranger whose acts of violence are legendary?

The short synopsis sounded appealing enough and the title struck a chord with my own morphing sense of female identity, but the real grabber for me was that the author is male. Written in the first person from the viewpoint of the main female character, the story presented an intrinsic challenge and I was curious to see how well the author could rise to it.

The story starts with a twenty-six-year-old woman who has lived a series of identities after having been witness to a murder at the age of six. At that time she was Melody Grace McCartney, but through the Witness Protection Program, she has lived her life revolving in and out of eight other identities, complete with new names, social security numbers, geographical locations and occupations. Along the way, she has lost her family, her childhood and the roots that nurture a human being, and now as an adult it would appear that she will have to forgo the joys of human bonds, relationship, motherhood, all the simple pleasures of everyday life with family and love—she is alone in the deepest sense of the word.

Her true original sense of identity lays buried beneath the impossibility of living a normal life while constantly on the run. And yet, she is pleasantly surprised to find it alive and kicking when she comes up against Jonathan Bovaro, the son of the mafioso responsible for the murder she and her family had witnessed. He knows the real her, even calls her by her real name, so long forbidden and yet somehow now mesmerizing. He represents the ultimate danger to her but he presents to her an interesting proposition, the opportunity to clear the way for a chance to live her own life. His intentions toward her are slightly askew from the job he has been appointed to do—to kill her—and in this we are privy to the morality and inner psychology that can temper writing, the type of crafting that shifts the reader’s attention into the higher gears of true excellent literary entertainment.

But what makes the story so incredibly compelling is the true chords the author achieves with the female character’s inner conflicts. The fact that he is a male writer immediately evaporates from page one with the opening: “Name me. Gaze into my eyes, study my smile and my dimples and tell me who you see. I look like an Emma. I look like an Amy. I look like a Katherine. I look like a Kathryn. I look like your best friend’s sister, your sister’s best friend.” From then on it is Melody’s story, told so tightly and compactly that one can’t help but turn page after page as we become truly invested in her outcome. The author masterfully crafts a twisting, turning tale of romance, intrique and human drama and does so without falling into any trite stereotypical or tired themes.

The nuances he provides to the reader in both the narrative main female character and Jonathan Bovaro are refreshing. Picture a youthful mafia man wearing glasses, or one who corrects himself when he’s about to swear in front of the woman he loves and you begin to get the picture. The characters are so viable you can almost touch them. Indeed, the author has developed an extremely palpable love scenario, but even more the sense of danger and impending confrontation with “the girls” nemesis, the Bavaro Crime family, provide enervating anticipation for the final conclusion.

Anyone who enjoys the combination of mystery and romance, or intrigue and thriller or even chick lit with a deeper literary bent will love The Girl She Used To Be. I give it five out of a possible five stars! show less

When I first began reading The Girl She Used To Be I got a weird sense of dejavu. Never been in the Witness Protection Program (and god willing I never will be), but the restlessness, the need for something different, new, extraordinary to happen in my life I understood well. The need to be an active participant in my life and not just a piece to be moved in some game I'll never understand.

Melody was a surprisingly strong character that I found much to identify with. Not the math show more jargon--anything but the simplest math goes over my head--but she made mistakes I could easily understand and see myself making. What's more natural for a teenager to do then to hit their parents' weakest point and exploit just so they know they can? So that next time their parents will think twice about countermanding their wishes and remember?

Jonathan definitely made a romantic hero. As Melody admits later on, "Perhaps I did fall in love with Jonathan because he set me free." (pg. 240) Which I think she proves when she originally meets her new Witness Protection Handler and has a number of flirty thoughts regarding him and immediately places him on a hero pedestal because he is so different from the last handler she had. She was ready to fall in love with whomever made her life less dull and un-extraordinary.

What made me love this book however is the second part to the quote: "But I believe we all fall in love for some esoteric and simple reason: the first time a man comes to your rescue, the way he holds you when you kiss, his smile that haunts you and has you endlessly daydreaming." (pg. 240) That is possibly the most realistic explanation I've seen of what 'love' means. In the end she wanted to be with him, trusted him, loved him because he made her feel like a real person. He made her feel extraordinary just by holding her hand.

My only lingering question was early in the book Jonathan mentions the fact that his family has a very reliable contact within the Witness Protection Service and that's how he was able to track her all these years. Nothing more is said and its left dangling with no clear closure.

This was David Cristofano's debut novel and it leaves me eager for more in a genre I don't normally read (straight fiction that is). show less

Melody McCartney hasn’t been “herself” for twenty years -- since she was six and, with her parents, witnessed a mob hit. They fled the scene but the feds tracked them down and pressed her parents to testify, then enrolled the family in the witness protection program. She’s been through numerous identities since, changing names and cities every time a slip inadvertently reveals her true identity.

But as the novel opens, she’s grown lonely and angry and her slip is intentional: she show more wants to reclaim herself -- to be Melody again, the girl she used to be -- and so she calls her federal contact and lies that the mob has located her. But oops, her lie is the truth: it turns out that the Mafioso’s son has known her whereabouts all along -- and now he appears, claiming not to want to kill her but to save her.

Thus is just one of the twists in a terrific roller-coaster of a read. Before long, each time I felt a decision point approaching, I found myself laying out the possibilities -- and each time, Cristofano surprised me with originality, every twist adequately set-up and believable. My only quibbles were that Melody’s narrative voice was inconsistent, varying from reflective (almost literary) to silly (and perilously close to chick-lit); and that a clever emphasis on math in the chapter titles seemed discordant with the limited development of math in the story. Still ... woohoo! what a ride! With this as a debut, I'm eager for Cristofano’s next novel. show less