Dinner for Vampires
Ratings3
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings3
Average rating4.5
A deliciously witty and inspiring memoir by One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz about her decade in a cult and her quest to break free. In the early 2000s, after years of hard work and determination to breakthrough as an actor, Bethany Joy Lenz was finally cast as one of the leads on the hit drama One Tree Hill. Her career was about to take off, but her personal life was slowly beginning to unravel. What none of the show’s millions of fans knew, hidden even from her costars, was her secret double life in a cult. An only child who often had to fend for herself and always wanted a place to belong, Lenz found the safe haven she’d been searching for in a Bible study group with other Hollywood creatives. However, the group soon morphed into something more sinister—a slowly woven web of manipulation, abuse, and fear under the guise of a church covenant called The Big House Family. Piece by piece, Lenz began to give away her autonomy, ultimately relocating to the Family’s Pacific Northwest compound, overseen by a domineering minister who would convince Lenz to marry one of his sons and steadily drained millions of her TV income without her knowledge. Family “minders” assigned to her on set, “Maoist struggle session”–inspired meetings in the basement of a filthy house, and regular counseling with “Leadership” were just part of the tactics used to keep her loyal. Only when she became a mother did Lenz find the courage to leave and spare her child from a similar fate. After nearly a decade (and with the unlikely help of a One Tree Hill superfan), she finally managed to escape the family’s grip and begin to heal from the deep trauma that forever altered her relationship with God and her understanding of faith. Written with powerful honesty and dark humor, Dinner for Vampires is an inspiring story about the importance of identity and understanding what you believe.
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I have never seen a single episode of One Tree Hill. Prior to picking up this book, I had no idea who Lenz was, even after looking through her IMDB page. I did check reviews prior to picking it from Book of the Month, because I didn't want to pick something that was all fan service if I wasn't part of that fandom, but that was not a concern at all. OTH is in the periphery throughout, but this is not a book about being on that TV show. It just happened to be filming at the same time as all the other shit Lenz was going through.
While light in tone, and Lenz is a good writer, this is a heavy book. She didn't start out her life in a cult - in fact, her relationship with God and church has some similarities to mine, where she was just hopping around and trying to find a place to fit. She joined a Bible study with some friends while she was in L.A. auditioning for TV roles, and it slowly got taken over by someone outside the group that morphed into something grotesque. And Lenz was so desperate to have close relationships and family, that so many red flags got ignored. Over and over, until finally the only people she felt close to were in the Big Family and they worked to keep her from building real friendships with her coworkers and her actual family, by continually implying that they weren't safe, couldn't be trusted, would never understand.
You see Lenz getting worn down, knowing she doesn't want the things the rest of the Family want, but not being willing to lose the relationships of her Family. You see her knowing that the choices she's making are terrible, and she wants someone to save her but can't bring herself to do anything about it either. She turns down opportunities for more and better acting jobs because she would have to continue traveling weekly for work, and the Family can see themselves losing their grip on her if that happens. And then she marries someone in the Family, and - MY RED FLAG BELLS were DING DING DINGING - gives him joint access to her bank accounts.
You see where this is going. By the time she's ready to get out and save herself and her daughter, she's lost over $2 million through shady investments and manipulation and outright theft.
She does talk about how easy it could be for anyone to get sucked into this kind of cult relationship, bit by worn-down bit, and I appreciated that. I never felt like Lenz was a sucker, I just wished that she'd had more wherewithal and self-confidence to see that this was not going to a healthy place. I also wish there had been more about how she healed after this time period, other than reconnecting with her parents and two friends that had known her outside of the cult experience. Years afterward were sucked up into legal battles to disentangle herself from the Family, and whether it just meant there wasn't enough time for that healing to occur prior to publication, or if she chose to leave it off-page, I'm not sure.
Still, an interesting and worthwhile read that is not in my typical wheelhouse.
CW: manipulation, physical assault, sexual assault (off page), using mental health as a reason to not trust someone, divorce, custody battle
