The Age

"Meticulously researched and elegantly composed, The Woman Who Fooled The World is a journalistic detective story for the smart-phone age. Donelly and Toscano not only chart con artist Belle Gibson’s rise to global acclaim and her crashing fall, they explore and explain modern society’s willingness to believe in anyone, or anything, that offers hope of beating what is perhaps our greatest collective fear: cancer. For me, the book reaches its highest point when we hear from genuine cancer sufferers who believed in Gibson. Their honesty about their fears and uncertain futures counter balances the bullshit of Gibson and her profit-minded enablers. Donelly and Toscano give a master class in old-fashioned investigative journalism and a reminder of its potency and importance."

The Sunday Times

"A salutary tale for our social media times."

The Australian

"The Woman Who Fooled the World is a balanced and authoritative account of Gibson's career … essential reading for anyone seeking an understanding of how so many people could have fallen for her pernicious lies."

Dr Ian Freckelton AO KC

​"The Woman Who Fooled the World​ is more than a record of outstanding investigative journalism. It provides an opportunity to think further about the spurious wellness industry, which presents itself so beguilingly, and it leads us into the complex psyche of a woman prepared to publish online (again and again) an elaborately fabricated account of her own health history. ​The work is a riveting detective story weaving in and out of the wellness industry and self-help movement. The Woman Who Fooled the World will frighten, intrigue and challenge. It can be thoroughly recommended at many levels."

Good Reading

"From Gibson’s wellness empire and fabricated health claims, her childhood, to fraudulent charity fundraisers, reading this book feels like falling down an immaculately researched rabbit hole. Grippingly written by Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, the journalists who broke the story while working for The Age in 2015, the book is not only a documentation of Gibson’s rise and fall but blow by blow retelling of the investigation that uncovered her rouse. Beyond being a true crime expose this book equips readers with the tools to approach health and wellness claims with more cynicism. Throughout the book, the authors intersperse Gibson’s story with chapters diving into topics including wellness, superfoods, and clinical trials. These chapters not only provide readers with context to Gibson’s rise to popularity but remind us of the golden rule; if it’s too good to be true, it probably is." 

Sunday Business Post

"The Woman Who Fooled the World bracingly retells a memorable chapter in the history of human folly."

The Mail on Sunday

"The book’s main lesson is how easy it is, in this age of social-media-driven 'fake news', to dupe the public. It’s also an excoriating attack on the charlatanism of 'wellness warriors'."

Benjamin Law, author of Gaysia and The Family Law  

"The Woman Who Fooled the World isn’t just a detonating exposé, but a forensically researched, compulsively readable, and frequently staggering behind-the-scenes account of an unravelling on an operative scale. It’ll also restore your faith in journalism’s ability to uncover the truth and expose it to light."

The Dr Robert O'Connor, Head of Research at the Irish Cancer Society

"'[I] couldn't recommend it more. It not only forensically dissects the mind and actions of this modern fraud but cuts to the core of the growing unhealthy abuse of lifestyle and wellness by modern media and social media."

Anthony Warner, The Angry Chef

"It gives me great pleasure that this story has been told in such a compelling and readable way, as this surely means that it will reach the wide audience it deserves to. Not only does The Woman Who Fooled the World detail the sordid story of a young woman lying her way to fame and fortune, it also savagely exposes the wellness industry that enabled her rise. Although Belle Gibson has now been exposed, this brilliant book reveals how many others were complicit and culpable. I hope they are all thoroughly ashamed, and that this book serves as a powerful reminder, helping to ensure that this sort of deception is never allowed to happen again."

Publishers Weekly

"This fascinating and thoroughly reported tale will have readers casting a gimlet eye on both the wellness industry and social media."

Rennie Sweeney

"Thoroughly researched, well written, entirely engrossing journalistic account of a badly executed fraud that took advantage of incredibly vulnerable people in a lot of pain, physically and mentally, and how it all came crumbling down, with plenty of relevant and fascinating segues into history and the cults/culture of healing."

Broadly

"Where The Woman Who Fooled The World really excels is in a nuanced depiction of a woman more commonly represented in one-note terminology as an evil liar and a fraud."

Booklist

"The Woman Who Fooled the World is a fascinating character study that will appeal to true-crime fans."

The Saturday Paper

"With the proliferation of writers inserting themselves into sensational news stories – arguably a tactic that has accelerated the decaying trust in objective reporting – it is refreshing to read an account by two professional journalists. Donelly and Toscano provide a timely reminder of the power and importance of the Fourth Estate in exposing charlatans such as Gibson who eschew ethics in the pursuit of popularity." 
 

The Adelaide Review

"Donelly and Toscano track the rise of wellness and how this has been hijacked by some to push pseudoscience over western medicine. Investigated with a nice touch of empathy, it is at its most devastating when the stories of cancer sufferers, and those who fell for Gibson’s lies, are told. Though they broke the story in 2015, it is a timely reminder of why a good dose of skepticism is needed in this era of unaccountable social media and the importance of investigative journalism in these perilous times for traditional media."