Once upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy

4.2 | 1,252 ratings

Price: 19.68

Last update: 01-04-2025

About this item

A NEW YORK TIMES, LOS ANGELES TIMES, USA TODAY BESTSELLER

The life and legacy of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, wife of John F. Kennedy Jr., are reexamined in this captivating and effervescent biography that is perfect for fans of My Travels with Mrs. Kennedy, What Remains, and Fairy Tale Interrupted.

A quarter of a century after the plane crash that claimed the lives of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn, and her sister Lauren, the magnitude of this tragedy remains fresh. Yet, Carolyn is still an enigmatic figure, a woman whose short life in the spotlight was besieged with misogyny and cruelty.

Amidst today’s cultural reckoning about the way our media treats women, Elizabeth Beller explores the real person behind the tabloid headlines and media frenzy. When she began dating America’s prince, Carolyn was increasingly thrust into an overwhelming spotlight filled with relentless paparazzi who reacted to her reserve with a campaign of harassment and vilification.

To this day, she is still depicted as a privileged princess—icy, vapid, and drug-addicted. She has even been accused of being responsible for their untimely death, allegedly delaying take-off until she finished her pedicure. But now, she is revealed as never before.

A fiercely independent woman devoted to her adopted city and career, Carolyn relied on her impeccable eye and drive to fly up the ranks at Calvin Klein in the glossy, high-stakes fashion world of the 1990s. When Carolyn met her future husband, John was immediately drawn to her strong-willed personality, effortless charm, and high intelligence. Their relationship would change her life and catapult her to dizzying fame, but it was her vibrant life before their marriage and then hidden afterwards, that is truly fascinating.

Based on in-depth research and exclusive interviews with friends, family members, teachers, roommates, and colleagues, this comprehensive biography reveals a multi-faceted woman worthy of our attention regardless of her husband and untimely death.

a reader

Objective, Well Reseached, & JFK Jr is sort of dim

Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2024

I didn't know anything about CBK beyond post mortem tabloid snippets & the famous wedding dress. I'd seen a good looking 20-something JFK Jr roller blading & riding the bus around town, but never gave him much thought. This bio, drawn from significant research and interviews with multiple sources, presents CBK as a smart, vivacious, happy, savvy woman who had a strong career in the fashion business - rapidly rising at Calvin Klein which was no small feat - and many friends long before JFK Jr arrived in her life.

Oddly, the book offers as much of a look at JFK Jr as it does CBK. His friends - many of whom considered CBK to be "non-prep school, non-Ivy" - saw her as a threat to their proximity to John & were the source of many of the vicious, cruel, lies that were spread about her. Really? Did they think he was never going to grow beyond the cool college guy into a 39 yr old whose wife would be more important to him than they were?

The paparazzi hounded her until she became reclusive yet she was criticized for not working after marriage. She couldn't leave the apt because paps were positioned there 24/7. Her experience w/them is described as something close to trauma & her husband seemed to not understand it even though his mother was notable for getting a restraining order against 1 particular aggressive pap. CBK is pushed against an elevator by a mob of them & her husband does nothing. Much was made of her low dose antidepressants that washed up on a beach after the crash - sounds perfectly natural for someone to seek psych help after years of being hunted.

It's not until p. 238 that one of John's friends is quoted as saying what I'd begun to think - why isn't he at least moving her to a building w/a doorman? hiring security? Why is a couple whose celebrity has become so enormous so quickly without professional management for business & social purposes? John's magazine was launched just as the internet starting the decline in paper magazines why not push re-set with business management? John seems completely out of touch w/reality when he claims that his mom raised her kids in NYC so why is CBK reluctant to get pregnant w/JFK III? He totally ignores that John's mother lived in the White House when he was a toddler and then married Onassis to raise her kids on a private island in Greece to get away from the publicity following his father's assassination. She wasn't pushing a stroller alone in the narrow streets of Tribeca!

The author gives a balanced account of the marriage to the extent that any outsider could. They died before they'd been married 4 years so there were adjustments to be made & given that they were both Catholic wouldn't have taken divorce - if it was ever mentioned - lightly.

It's a good and credible read.

Sappia

Well worth reading (though it could use some improvements)

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2024

I only partially understand the negative reviews of this book. It could use improving. The author does include her own conjecture too often (but she makes it clear when she's doing this - it's not like she's deliberately mixing fact with hidden fictions). There is also repetition among some of the points she makes.

That said, I have no idea why some reviewers say there's "nothing new" in this book.

I've read every book about Jackie, Jackie & JFK, Jackie & Lee, JFK Jr., and JFK Jr. and Carolyn published in the last 35-40 years.

There's a whole lot of new information in this book. The author left no stone un-turned in tracking down those who knew Carolyn and were willing to talk about her.

She's amassed input from all kinds of people that none of us have ever heard from before. Further, it's not the author's fault that a whole lot of the compliments people give Carolyn are similar (which can make the text seem repetitive).

There were dozens of people who knew Carolyn and remember her with tremendous affection. They agree she was smart, hard working, highly intuitive about and compassionate towards the needs of others, generous, fun, and uniquely beautiful.

When all kinds of people called up from her past are saying the same thing, I tend to believe it.

The author does mention some of Carolyn's character weaknesses and failings - but she tries to explain them away, which is why some people think it's a book about "Saint Carolyn." That's a mistake on the author's part. Yet, having read a lot about Carolyn in the past 2.5 decades (much of which is suspect, and seems wildly unfair to her reputation), I can understand the author's desire to counteract what seem to be false narratives.

Regarding the insights of the overall book, there are 7-8 things this author has tracked down regarding the very beginning and middle of Carolyn and JFK Jr.’s dating relationship that I have NEVER heard before (two in particular left my jaw on the ground).

Carole Radziwill's book mentions they dated intensely for a bit, broke up (this book tells us why) then got together at a later point.

This book gives way more insights. After parting ways (dramatically!) the first time, they got back together, sort-of, again (interspersed with him returning several times to Daryl Hannah) - then only several years after all that did they become exclusive.

This book also has A LOT of interesting detail, also previously unrevealed, about her career at Calvin Klein (not to mention her childhood, teen, and college years).

It also paints a likeable, and admirable, picture of Carolyn's mother, Ann.

I'd like to thank the author for the hard work she put into this. No book is perfect, and she's certainly contributed to Carolyn's memory in what I think is a truthful, and sorely needed, way.

Robyn Bolle

Insightful

Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2024

We are given a glimpse into her life, successes, fears, achievements, comedic side , empathy, and unique connection to people. We get a chance to know the real Carolyn. Not what the media has lead us to believe about her life. It is a tragic story of an individual who like Jackie Kennedy valued and treasured her privacy yet was hounded day after day. John could have done so much more to help her navigate being his wife. A very nice read.

Mary W.

A long-awaited book with minimal new facts

Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2024

This is a book about Carolyn, a girl who tragically died too soon along with her sister and JFK Jr., her husband. The problem is that the author for the most part regurgitates what has already been written about her by people who actually knew and loved her. It's painful to read the minimizing of relationships and then using information from these persons' books. I did enjoy the history of Carolyn's childhood, which I hadn't read about before. It gave a clearer understanding of who she was as an adult and the angst she carried with her. Marriages are not fairytales, even when famous people are involved. We will never know how John Jr. and Carolyn would have worked out if they had been given more time. Both were flawed and yet good people, maybe better separately as neither were caretaker types. This book smacks of Me-Too-Movement vibe. All this happened in another time that only people who were young then will know to be true and understand.

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