Recommended by NPR, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine, New York Post, and Bustle A gripping memoir of friendship with a tragic twist–two childhood best friends diverge as young adults, one woman is brutally murdered and the other is determined to uncover the truth about her wild and seductive friend. As girls growing up in rural New Jersey in the late 1980s, Ashley … friend.
As girls growing up in rural New Jersey in the late 1980s, Ashley and Carolyn had everything in common: two outsiders who loved spending afternoons exploring the woods. Only when the girls attended different high schools did they begin to grow apart. While Carolyn struggled to fit in, Ashley quickly became a hot girl: popular, extroverted, and sexually precocious.
After high school, Carolyn entered college in New York City and Ashley ended up in Los Angeles, where she quit school to work as a stripper and an escort, dating actors and older men, and experimenting with drugs. The last time Ashley visited New York, Carolyn was shocked by how the two friends had grown apart. One year later, Ashley was stabbed to death at age twenty-two in her Hollywood home.
The man who may have murdered Ashley–an alleged serial killer–now faces trial in Los Angeles. Carolyn Murnick traveled across the country to cover the case and learn more about her magnetic and tragic friend. Part coming-of-age story, part true-crime mystery, The Hot One is a behind-the-scenes look at the drama of a trial and the poignancy of searching for the truth about a friend’s truly horrifying murder.more
Susannah Cahalan describes Carolyn Murnick’s The Hot One as “riveting” on the cover copy, and I can’t think of a more apt description. A memoir more than anything conventional True Crime, The Hot One spans the years from Carolyn’s childhood friendship with victim Ashley Ellerin to her untimely, violent death and beyond.
What happens when best friends drift apart? When you can’t take back whatever caused the rift? When you wonder who someone you were once inseparable from became in the year before she died? How do you reconcile a nine-year-old pianist with a twenty-something stripper at a low-rent club in Vegas? How do you honor someone after you’ve disconnected? And how do you move on?
First and foremost, I have to commend Carolyn’s writing. She’s a seasoned industry veteran and her skill and talent are apparent. I purchased The Hot One after reading a passage posted on a blog. The voice hooked me immediately. The only criticism I have is the constant recycling of the phrase “bearing witness.” It’s overused and while it may be the purpose of Carolyn’s writing this book (though I’m sure not the only one), the phrase becomes quickly redundant.
As for the True Crime aspect of the book, Ashley’s murder is covered as is the alleged killer identified, but this isn’t a “follow the clues” kind of story nor is there a resolution as the trial is ongoing. More is said about who Ashley was from the viewpoint of others and through Carolyn’s final time with her a year before her death when it seems clear these were not the childhood friends detailed in the early chapters but two young women who grew irreparably apart.
It is inherent in writers to write from the heart, and Carolyn’s feelings may be what makes this book unputdownable but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the whole thing doesn’t feel so much a platform to give Ashley an identification outside of her impressive Hollywood circles as it feels a little—self-serving.
If Carolyn’s intention was to humanize and endear Ashley as a victim, she has perhaps only driven home that Ashley’s role as the “Party Girl” and her behavior contributed in unfair ways to her death. Throughout the trial everyone in Ashley’s life during her last year was questioned extensively about the extent to which Ashley partied. Drugs. Sex. LOTS of sex, and sex work at the Cheetah (made famous by the scandalous Showgirls movie of the 90s).
There should be no cause-and-effect of too high heels or even working in a P&P (pasties and panties) bar as a dancer and one’s victimhood in a perfect world, but this isn’t a perfect world and risk is risk. To call this a proper homage when even the childhood stories refer to near-nude photographs might be an overstatement.
Sex sells, I get it, but the sex in this story is front and center at the expense of what kind of woman Ashley might have been in Carolyn’s absence. Was she kind? Generous? What were her interests? Her goals? Did she want a family one day? What endeared her to those who spoke at her trial, the friends she had made in LA?
I don’t mean to detract from Carolyn’s travel, time, effort and research, or even her grief but this story is written with a measure of reserve, of distance, and I wonder if there isn’t an unexplored facet that is the “real” Ashley (which I don’t factor into my rating because this is an excellent book even if I feel a bit exploitative enjoying it). For this young woman I will never know I am sad that more isn’t made clear about her life other than her being, even in death, The Hot One.