Dinner for Vampires

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