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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I enjoyed this book as a bit of voyeuristic 'not in my back yard' type of read. It's so strange to think that there is this extreme pocket of conservative religious sect on the West Coast. The abuse is awful and I like how the author didn't shy away from that, but also focused on the good parts.
I did find the writing very simple and stilted at the beginning of the novel. When recalling the community and her life at Gloriavale, the story just didn't flow as well as in later chapters. I realise it might be because she was recalling times from childhood but for me there was a big change after she left and was able to reflect. The latter part of the book was better written but felt almost rushed... And I know that most people would read this book for the cult part, it still felt like it needed a good edit to flow a bit better.
But ultimately this is a book about triumph, about female power, and about not letting your past dictate your true path. I couldn't help but feel a bit of pride for Lilia and I hope our paths cross one day so I can tell her how inspirational she is.
I did find the writing very simple and stilted at the beginning of the novel. When recalling the community and her life at Gloriavale, the story just didn't flow as well as in later chapters. I realise it might be because she was recalling times from childhood but for me there was a big change after she left and was able to reflect. The latter part of the book was better written but felt almost rushed... And I know that most people would read this book for the cult part, it still felt like it needed a good edit to flow a bit better.
But ultimately this is a book about triumph, about female power, and about not letting your past dictate your true path. I couldn't help but feel a bit of pride for Lilia and I hope our paths cross one day so I can tell her how inspirational she is.
My husband and I listened to this together. Growing up religious, we related to a lot of it. I wished she had spent more time telling us about her deconstruction process but that's a small complaint for me--I overall really loved it and appreciated her frank portrayal of fundamentalism.
This is a memoir about a girl who was raised in the New Zealand Gloriavale cult. It was somewhat of a mixed bag for me. I found the descriptions of life there interesting and appreciated that she talked about both the bad and the good - the connections and genuine love she had for her family and friends - which make it easier to understand why it’s hard to leave.
I wasn’t a huge fan of her writing style and after she left the last chapters felt a little boring. Was it worth it to read more about this cult? Yeah. Am I glad it’s a library book instead of one I paid for? Also yeah.
I wasn’t a huge fan of her writing style and after she left the last chapters felt a little boring. Was it worth it to read more about this cult? Yeah. Am I glad it’s a library book instead of one I paid for? Also yeah.
For anyone outside of NZ, Gloriavale is probably NZ's most notorious cult, nestled in an isolated part of the country their have been some massive movements against the cult around child welfare in the past decade. According to another book "Cult-trip" Gloriavale apparent hasn't had any new members join (other than a recently convicted sex offender) other than births within the group.
Lil's story is a strange combination of the mundane life of the commune with the occasional glimpses into the true disturbia of the place - I've noticed this is kind of the nature of stories about Cults - the birds eye or full story (usually focused on the leader(s)) are very salacious and read more like true-crime documentaries, whereas the lived experience of members is often a strangely day-to-day affair often because the Cult's behaviour is seen as normal.
It must have been difficult and emotional for Tarawa to write and publish this book, and I'm thankful she took the brave step, it would have been instrumental and a powerful tool for others needing to free themselves from the place.
Lil's story is a strange combination of the mundane life of the commune with the occasional glimpses into the true disturbia of the place - I've noticed this is kind of the nature of stories about Cults - the birds eye or full story (usually focused on the leader(s)) are very salacious and read more like true-crime documentaries, whereas the lived experience of members is often a strangely day-to-day affair often because the Cult's behaviour is seen as normal.
It must have been difficult and emotional for Tarawa to write and publish this book, and I'm thankful she took the brave step, it would have been instrumental and a powerful tool for others needing to free themselves from the place.
2.5 stars! - (Content warnings for this book listed at the end of my review)
“Daughter of Gloriavale: My Life in a Religious Cult” is the revealing memoir of author, speaker and entrepreneur Lilia Tarawa, following her difficult journey escaping the Gloriavale Christian Community and reclaiming her life. Gloriavale, located in New Zealand, is a fundamentalist religious cult that abides by a strict patriarchal society, where men are seen as the providers of the family and heads of the household, while women are seen as keepers of the home and baby-makers.
Tarawa offers a particularly unique perspective to this cult, as she's one of the grandchildren of the group's founder Neville Cooper, aka "Hopeful Christian." Tarawa provides details on her family's history, how and why her grandfather started the group, and how the group eventually became as puritanical and destructive as it is today.
Personally, I think “Daughter of Gloriavale” had a lot going for it, especially insight into growing up in a high-demand religion and cult. I think there's a lot of value in this book with how honestly Tarawa speaks of her thoughts and experiences with cognitive dissonance, expanding her belief system, and seeing the cult's toxicity firsthand.
However, this book desperately needed more showing, rather than telling. Tarawa's writing style is quite simplistic and often repetitive, especially in the second half, and the pacing would grind to a halt many times from that brutal combination of simplistic sentence structures and Tarawa's repetitive inner monologue, which constantly told us in the exact same way how surprised she was to learn about new things in the world.
But first, let's discuss what I enjoyed about this book. Tarawa does a sufficient job providing the positive and negative sides of growing up in such an isolated community like Gloriavale.
She talks about the friends and family members that she spent time with while living and working in the community, which helped her get through difficult times and helped her make sense of what she was feeling and experiencing.
Some of my favorite scenes in the book were of her and her best friend Grace, who moved from Chile to Gloriavale with her family as a child. The two of them had a lovely relationship in the book, and I’m so glad they continue to stay in contact.
These familial and friend connections actually created some of the most heartbreaking moments in the book because Tarawa had to leave a lot of those people behind when her family ultimately fled the community. There are some family members that Tarawa has not spoken to in years because people in the community are not allowed to acknowledge or contact people who leave the community. That's one of many reasons why Gloriavale is a cult, and it's heartbreaking to read about how these kinds of groups tear families and relationships apart.
Tarawa did a great job at humanizing the people in Gloriavale, which is crucial for a memoir about a person growing up in a high-demand religion like this. It's important to humanize the people in these organizations because they're just like you and me -- ordinary, average people who came to Gloriavale with the hopes of finding a religious community that they could be a part of.
These people have dreams, desires, beliefs, and struggles, just like you and me, and these high-demand religions and cults like Gloriavale are infamous for taking advantage of these people. They find their weaknesses, including religious insecurities, and manipulate them to keep them in the organization for longer.
Tarawa is also honest about the many negative sides to the community, like the brainwashing, the cognitive dissonance, the fear she and her friends and family lived with on a daily basis, and the control tactics that the leaders use to make people obey. Also, she talks about the emphasis on toxic purity culture, which seemed to really hinder her view of her own body and her sexual development, which often happens with purity culture.
In the book, Gloriavale thrived on religious manipulation, public shaming, and fear tactics to get members to obey, and it was wild to read about them.
For example, when Tarawa’s brother refused to pull his pants up and comb his hair the right way, he was reprimanded by their grandfather. Then, the women in the community sewed all of his shirts and pants together to make one-piece outfits that he and the other rebel boys had to wear as a form of public shaming in order to deter disobedience.
If they continued to disobey, they could then lose their privileges, be abused during an elder meeting as they try to exorcise the “demons,” or even be beaten by the elders. It all depended on how the elders were feeling and what they believed God wanted them to do. The ultimate goal seemed to be creating fear in order to ensure compliance and obedience.
Another example of faith manipulation came from one of the lessons that Tarawa and other children learned in the Gloriavale school:
"For the rest of class we were taught that to sacrifice one's own self-will and serve the church was the only way to salvation. There was a godly order established in the church — the highest power was God and then Church leaders — husbands were to submit to the church and wives must submit to their husband. Children came last and were expected to obey their parents who served the Lord." (pg. 106)
This is an example of religious manipulation because the Church is directly correlating its toxic, rigid social structure to eternal salvation. This is how they are able to coerce people into obeying this patriarchal hierarchy. If anyone opposes it, then they would likely be shunned, targeted with retaliation from the group and even be threatened with eternal damnation of their immortal soul.
Tarawa talks extensively in the book about learning all of these harsh religious rules as a child and being so terrified of going to hell when she dies because the preachers she grew up listening to, like her own grandfather, terrorized her with that kind of messaging every single day. There were moments where Tarawa described actually feeling panicked and out of breath because she was so scared of that reality, which is horrific for any child to experience.
The book also included moments that left me on the edge of my seat and filled me with the kind of emotional highs and lows that Lilia probably felt at that time. One of them came at the very start of the book, where a family is being torn apart by Gloriavale.
A man is trying to come back and regain custody of his daughter who's still in the group, who he had never even learned about for years since the mom, still in Gloriavale, hid her for years. (This scene is in the audiobook sample for this book on Amazon, and honestly, it's one of the best written scenes in the book.)
Also, I can tell that a lot of love and heart went into this book, which makes me appreciate it even more. Lilia definitely had a story to tell, and I think many people will be able to find value in it.
But I believe this book's weakest moments came from its glaringly simplistic writing style. This book desperately needed more showing instead of telling. Yes, Tarawa talked about how she felt about something that happened to her, which I appreciated, but the way she wrote about the way she felt often lacked depth, description, or color. Let me show you a couple of examples.
First, here's a passage about Tarawa learning about the way weddings happen in the outside world, with women wearing white and the father walking the bride down the aisle:
"There was sin all around us at Moana. I was fascinated by the bridal magazines somebody'd left in the house. Those weddings were a revelation. The women wore white. The dresses hugged their bodies. Lace, chiffon, sparkles, jewellery. All those naughty, wicked things. Oh my goodness. If only I could wear a dress like that one day.
We watched a movie where a bride's father walked her down the aisle. I thought I'd love to see my dad in a suit giving me away to a man of my own choosing. It was mind-blowing and empowering -- the idea that I could choose my own husband. It felt so good." (pg. 238)
There are so many unique ways that Tarawa could have written about this realization from her younger self's perspective. For example, she could have mentioned the fact that, if she had gotten married in Gloriavale and if she were to get married in Gloriavale, she would have missed out on a special ceremony that she would've loved, one that she would've gotten to decide on her own, without the requirements of the elders. I'm sure she could have talked about feeling grateful that she hadn't missed out yet on creating her own wedding one day.
Also, it could've been really impactful if she had mentioned how Gloriavale robs people of these special individualized moments and ceremonies when they force people to get married in their arranged marriages.
I just wish Tarawa had let this moment simmer a bit more! Right now, it's the definition of telling and not showing.
What movie did she watch? What did she think of the wedding scene in that movie? She should've described the movie to the audience. Had she ever seen anything like that before? Was she confused about how the traditional wedding customs in the film worked? How did they differ from Gloriavale?
I would've loved to get her perspective of how the bride looked, how the dad looked when he walked her down the aisle, and how she imagined her own dad "giving her away" at her own wedding. The way the scene currently reads, I think it just barely scratches the surface of what it could be.
Here's another perfect example of telling-not-showing from a section where Tarawa goes clothes shopping for the first time. This took place soon after she decided she wanted to shave her legs for the first time:
"I didn't want to miss looking at a single piece of clothing. There were so many options and for a girl who'd never worn anything other than the Gloriavale uniform all her life, this was an intoxicating opportunity of a lifetime. But I had no idea what to wear...What was normal for a worldly person?
Short skirts, dresses, blouses, T-shirts, pants...Pants! Maybe I should get a pair of pants. No, I shoved the idea aside quickly. Dad would never let me do that because it was a rule that women were not to wear men's clothing. Perhaps though it would be OK to just look at them, so I headed for the rack and found a pair of loose black pants. They looked cool and I was sure Sara had a pair just like them. If I copied what she wore I couldn't go wrong.
I'd collected a bunch of items when Mum rushed through the store door. She handed me some cash then turned to leave." (pg. 218)
This could have been one of the easiest ways for Tarawa to include as many descriptions and as much color as she wanted. Shopping can be overwhelming sometimes, even when you're used to all of these choices. So I can't imagine how it must have felt for someone who isn't used to so many choices! But she doesn't include anything!
Imagine if Tarawa had looked around and described the store in this passage. Yes, I'm sure it was intoxicating for her, but it could've been such a stronger scene if she had actually DESCRIBED IT.
How was the store arranged? What did it look like? Was it just for women's clothing, or did they also include some men's clothing? Were there any accessories? What did the store smell like? Was she the only one in the store? And what did the clothes look like? Did some of them have a lot of glitter, or sequins, or "worldly" designs on them?
Then, what did she try on? Did she try anything on? If she didn't, why not? Was she afraid to try stuff on? Did she even know what size she was, since she's mostly just worn handmade Gloriavale dresses her entire life?
And even with those loose black pants she mentioned, were they dress pants? Yoga pants? Black jeans? How did they fit? Did they hug her curves? Did she try them on? Were they loose at the waist, but tight at the ankles? How did they fit her?
We don't get any answers to any of these questions. I wish she had actually DESCRIBED this scene, instead of just telling us that she went shopping. She barely scratches the surface of what this scene could've been, and there are plenty of times when this type of missed-potential scene happens in the book.
This glaring problem throughout the novel honestly made me frustrated to a certain point because I found myself wanting deeper insights and more thorough, colorful descriptions of the scenes. But she wouldn't give them to me!
One example that really threw me was when she suddenly mentions how some darker-skinned members, like herself, were targeted more than other lighter-skinned members in the community, even though those lighter-skinned members committed the same “sinful acts.” In this example, Tarawa was pointing out the racism that she and other children of indigenous heritage experienced in the community.
But this passage took me aback because we never saw anything like that in the book before she brought it up. I would have wanted to see actual examples and descriptions of that happening, rather than just being told that out of nowhere. Seeing it play out on the page would’ve really helped me understand what she was talking about because I wanted to understand how she and other indigenous members were being treated in this cult.
If she had expanded more on that and actually described examples of that happening, then it would’ve helped me connect more with that struggle in the story, instead of it just being left really shallow.
Also, there is so much repetition in her internal narration, and it became so tedious to read near the end. This became especially noticeable by the end of the book when she’s discovering new things and realizing that the world isn’t as terrible as her grandfather and the elders brainwashed her into believing.
The writing was so shallow and just consisted of her constantly saying over and over, “Wow, I thought this was strange, but I also really liked it. I learned not to judge things before I tried them.”
Obviously I’m paraphrasing, but that was the level of revelation and introspection that we got near the end of the book, and it was really disappointing. I would’ve loved some deeper insight or introspection and variety in her internal narration.
But I think the repetition also stems from that glaring problem I mentioned earlier: This book needed more showing, not telling. Since Tarawa didn't really expand and describe a lot of scenes, her writing was really shallow, which then became tedious and repetitive by the end.
In conclusion, I really wanted to love this book, but I found its writing to be pretty basic and lackluster. I just wish the writing had more depth and description, as well as less repetition, because those changes would have taken it to the next level for me.
Despite my criticisms, though, I’m still glad this book exists because it helped me learn more about Gloriavale, and it helps to continue spreading the word about this toxic group. Even in a peaceful country like New Zealand, cults can still thrive, and many of these cults across the world use the same tactics to control people. (See Dr. Steven Hassan's B.I.T.E. Model on Authoritarian Control to learn more about what these common tactics are.)
If you would like to learn more about the experience of a person overcoming cult manipulation and learning how to regain their freedom, I recommend giving this book a read. Also, if you're like me and enjoy reading about high-demand religions and cults, I think you'll find a lot of it pretty interesting, even if the writing is often basic and lackluster.
My rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
⚠️Content Warnings For This Book:
• Abuse in all forms, mainly against children (physical, spiritual, financial, psychological, emotional, and domestic)
• Child labor
• Homophobia
• Oppression of women (sexism, misogyny, purity culture)
• Religious trauma/manipulation
• Cult brainwashing/manipulation
“Daughter of Gloriavale: My Life in a Religious Cult” is the revealing memoir of author, speaker and entrepreneur Lilia Tarawa, following her difficult journey escaping the Gloriavale Christian Community and reclaiming her life. Gloriavale, located in New Zealand, is a fundamentalist religious cult that abides by a strict patriarchal society, where men are seen as the providers of the family and heads of the household, while women are seen as keepers of the home and baby-makers.
Tarawa offers a particularly unique perspective to this cult, as she's one of the grandchildren of the group's founder Neville Cooper, aka "Hopeful Christian." Tarawa provides details on her family's history, how and why her grandfather started the group, and how the group eventually became as puritanical and destructive as it is today.
Personally, I think “Daughter of Gloriavale” had a lot going for it, especially insight into growing up in a high-demand religion and cult. I think there's a lot of value in this book with how honestly Tarawa speaks of her thoughts and experiences with cognitive dissonance, expanding her belief system, and seeing the cult's toxicity firsthand.
However, this book desperately needed more showing, rather than telling. Tarawa's writing style is quite simplistic and often repetitive, especially in the second half, and the pacing would grind to a halt many times from that brutal combination of simplistic sentence structures and Tarawa's repetitive inner monologue, which constantly told us in the exact same way how surprised she was to learn about new things in the world.
But first, let's discuss what I enjoyed about this book. Tarawa does a sufficient job providing the positive and negative sides of growing up in such an isolated community like Gloriavale.
She talks about the friends and family members that she spent time with while living and working in the community, which helped her get through difficult times and helped her make sense of what she was feeling and experiencing.
Some of my favorite scenes in the book were of her and her best friend Grace, who moved from Chile to Gloriavale with her family as a child. The two of them had a lovely relationship in the book, and I’m so glad they continue to stay in contact.
These familial and friend connections actually created some of the most heartbreaking moments in the book because Tarawa had to leave a lot of those people behind when her family ultimately fled the community. There are some family members that Tarawa has not spoken to in years because people in the community are not allowed to acknowledge or contact people who leave the community. That's one of many reasons why Gloriavale is a cult, and it's heartbreaking to read about how these kinds of groups tear families and relationships apart.
Tarawa did a great job at humanizing the people in Gloriavale, which is crucial for a memoir about a person growing up in a high-demand religion like this. It's important to humanize the people in these organizations because they're just like you and me -- ordinary, average people who came to Gloriavale with the hopes of finding a religious community that they could be a part of.
These people have dreams, desires, beliefs, and struggles, just like you and me, and these high-demand religions and cults like Gloriavale are infamous for taking advantage of these people. They find their weaknesses, including religious insecurities, and manipulate them to keep them in the organization for longer.
Tarawa is also honest about the many negative sides to the community, like the brainwashing, the cognitive dissonance, the fear she and her friends and family lived with on a daily basis, and the control tactics that the leaders use to make people obey. Also, she talks about the emphasis on toxic purity culture, which seemed to really hinder her view of her own body and her sexual development, which often happens with purity culture.
In the book, Gloriavale thrived on religious manipulation, public shaming, and fear tactics to get members to obey, and it was wild to read about them.
For example, when Tarawa’s brother refused to pull his pants up and comb his hair the right way, he was reprimanded by their grandfather. Then, the women in the community sewed all of his shirts and pants together to make one-piece outfits that he and the other rebel boys had to wear as a form of public shaming in order to deter disobedience.
If they continued to disobey, they could then lose their privileges, be abused during an elder meeting as they try to exorcise the “demons,” or even be beaten by the elders. It all depended on how the elders were feeling and what they believed God wanted them to do. The ultimate goal seemed to be creating fear in order to ensure compliance and obedience.
Another example of faith manipulation came from one of the lessons that Tarawa and other children learned in the Gloriavale school:
"For the rest of class we were taught that to sacrifice one's own self-will and serve the church was the only way to salvation. There was a godly order established in the church — the highest power was God and then Church leaders — husbands were to submit to the church and wives must submit to their husband. Children came last and were expected to obey their parents who served the Lord." (pg. 106)
This is an example of religious manipulation because the Church is directly correlating its toxic, rigid social structure to eternal salvation. This is how they are able to coerce people into obeying this patriarchal hierarchy. If anyone opposes it, then they would likely be shunned, targeted with retaliation from the group and even be threatened with eternal damnation of their immortal soul.
Tarawa talks extensively in the book about learning all of these harsh religious rules as a child and being so terrified of going to hell when she dies because the preachers she grew up listening to, like her own grandfather, terrorized her with that kind of messaging every single day. There were moments where Tarawa described actually feeling panicked and out of breath because she was so scared of that reality, which is horrific for any child to experience.
The book also included moments that left me on the edge of my seat and filled me with the kind of emotional highs and lows that Lilia probably felt at that time. One of them came at the very start of the book, where a family is being torn apart by Gloriavale.
A man is trying to come back and regain custody of his daughter who's still in the group, who he had never even learned about for years since the mom, still in Gloriavale, hid her for years. (This scene is in the audiobook sample for this book on Amazon, and honestly, it's one of the best written scenes in the book.)
Also, I can tell that a lot of love and heart went into this book, which makes me appreciate it even more. Lilia definitely had a story to tell, and I think many people will be able to find value in it.
But I believe this book's weakest moments came from its glaringly simplistic writing style. This book desperately needed more showing instead of telling. Yes, Tarawa talked about how she felt about something that happened to her, which I appreciated, but the way she wrote about the way she felt often lacked depth, description, or color. Let me show you a couple of examples.
First, here's a passage about Tarawa learning about the way weddings happen in the outside world, with women wearing white and the father walking the bride down the aisle:
"There was sin all around us at Moana. I was fascinated by the bridal magazines somebody'd left in the house. Those weddings were a revelation. The women wore white. The dresses hugged their bodies. Lace, chiffon, sparkles, jewellery. All those naughty, wicked things. Oh my goodness. If only I could wear a dress like that one day.
We watched a movie where a bride's father walked her down the aisle. I thought I'd love to see my dad in a suit giving me away to a man of my own choosing. It was mind-blowing and empowering -- the idea that I could choose my own husband. It felt so good." (pg. 238)
There are so many unique ways that Tarawa could have written about this realization from her younger self's perspective. For example, she could have mentioned the fact that, if she had gotten married in Gloriavale and if she were to get married in Gloriavale, she would have missed out on a special ceremony that she would've loved, one that she would've gotten to decide on her own, without the requirements of the elders. I'm sure she could have talked about feeling grateful that she hadn't missed out yet on creating her own wedding one day.
Also, it could've been really impactful if she had mentioned how Gloriavale robs people of these special individualized moments and ceremonies when they force people to get married in their arranged marriages.
I just wish Tarawa had let this moment simmer a bit more! Right now, it's the definition of telling and not showing.
What movie did she watch? What did she think of the wedding scene in that movie? She should've described the movie to the audience. Had she ever seen anything like that before? Was she confused about how the traditional wedding customs in the film worked? How did they differ from Gloriavale?
I would've loved to get her perspective of how the bride looked, how the dad looked when he walked her down the aisle, and how she imagined her own dad "giving her away" at her own wedding. The way the scene currently reads, I think it just barely scratches the surface of what it could be.
Here's another perfect example of telling-not-showing from a section where Tarawa goes clothes shopping for the first time. This took place soon after she decided she wanted to shave her legs for the first time:
"I didn't want to miss looking at a single piece of clothing. There were so many options and for a girl who'd never worn anything other than the Gloriavale uniform all her life, this was an intoxicating opportunity of a lifetime. But I had no idea what to wear...What was normal for a worldly person?
Short skirts, dresses, blouses, T-shirts, pants...Pants! Maybe I should get a pair of pants. No, I shoved the idea aside quickly. Dad would never let me do that because it was a rule that women were not to wear men's clothing. Perhaps though it would be OK to just look at them, so I headed for the rack and found a pair of loose black pants. They looked cool and I was sure Sara had a pair just like them. If I copied what she wore I couldn't go wrong.
I'd collected a bunch of items when Mum rushed through the store door. She handed me some cash then turned to leave." (pg. 218)
This could have been one of the easiest ways for Tarawa to include as many descriptions and as much color as she wanted. Shopping can be overwhelming sometimes, even when you're used to all of these choices. So I can't imagine how it must have felt for someone who isn't used to so many choices! But she doesn't include anything!
Imagine if Tarawa had looked around and described the store in this passage. Yes, I'm sure it was intoxicating for her, but it could've been such a stronger scene if she had actually DESCRIBED IT.
How was the store arranged? What did it look like? Was it just for women's clothing, or did they also include some men's clothing? Were there any accessories? What did the store smell like? Was she the only one in the store? And what did the clothes look like? Did some of them have a lot of glitter, or sequins, or "worldly" designs on them?
Then, what did she try on? Did she try anything on? If she didn't, why not? Was she afraid to try stuff on? Did she even know what size she was, since she's mostly just worn handmade Gloriavale dresses her entire life?
And even with those loose black pants she mentioned, were they dress pants? Yoga pants? Black jeans? How did they fit? Did they hug her curves? Did she try them on? Were they loose at the waist, but tight at the ankles? How did they fit her?
We don't get any answers to any of these questions. I wish she had actually DESCRIBED this scene, instead of just telling us that she went shopping. She barely scratches the surface of what this scene could've been, and there are plenty of times when this type of missed-potential scene happens in the book.
This glaring problem throughout the novel honestly made me frustrated to a certain point because I found myself wanting deeper insights and more thorough, colorful descriptions of the scenes. But she wouldn't give them to me!
One example that really threw me was when she suddenly mentions how some darker-skinned members, like herself, were targeted more than other lighter-skinned members in the community, even though those lighter-skinned members committed the same “sinful acts.” In this example, Tarawa was pointing out the racism that she and other children of indigenous heritage experienced in the community.
But this passage took me aback because we never saw anything like that in the book before she brought it up. I would have wanted to see actual examples and descriptions of that happening, rather than just being told that out of nowhere. Seeing it play out on the page would’ve really helped me understand what she was talking about because I wanted to understand how she and other indigenous members were being treated in this cult.
If she had expanded more on that and actually described examples of that happening, then it would’ve helped me connect more with that struggle in the story, instead of it just being left really shallow.
Also, there is so much repetition in her internal narration, and it became so tedious to read near the end. This became especially noticeable by the end of the book when she’s discovering new things and realizing that the world isn’t as terrible as her grandfather and the elders brainwashed her into believing.
The writing was so shallow and just consisted of her constantly saying over and over, “Wow, I thought this was strange, but I also really liked it. I learned not to judge things before I tried them.”
Obviously I’m paraphrasing, but that was the level of revelation and introspection that we got near the end of the book, and it was really disappointing. I would’ve loved some deeper insight or introspection and variety in her internal narration.
But I think the repetition also stems from that glaring problem I mentioned earlier: This book needed more showing, not telling. Since Tarawa didn't really expand and describe a lot of scenes, her writing was really shallow, which then became tedious and repetitive by the end.
In conclusion, I really wanted to love this book, but I found its writing to be pretty basic and lackluster. I just wish the writing had more depth and description, as well as less repetition, because those changes would have taken it to the next level for me.
Despite my criticisms, though, I’m still glad this book exists because it helped me learn more about Gloriavale, and it helps to continue spreading the word about this toxic group. Even in a peaceful country like New Zealand, cults can still thrive, and many of these cults across the world use the same tactics to control people. (See Dr. Steven Hassan's B.I.T.E. Model on Authoritarian Control to learn more about what these common tactics are.)
If you would like to learn more about the experience of a person overcoming cult manipulation and learning how to regain their freedom, I recommend giving this book a read. Also, if you're like me and enjoy reading about high-demand religions and cults, I think you'll find a lot of it pretty interesting, even if the writing is often basic and lackluster.
My rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
⚠️Content Warnings For This Book:
• Abuse in all forms, mainly against children (physical, spiritual, financial, psychological, emotional, and domestic)
• Child labor
• Homophobia
• Oppression of women (sexism, misogyny, purity culture)
• Religious trauma/manipulation
• Cult brainwashing/manipulation
Let's say that this is a strong 2.5.
First, let me say that Lilia Tarawa is an intelligent, brave young woman who has done a lot of good with her life already. I am genuinely excited to see what else she does in her life to empower others and to expose religious abuse. While reading this book, I watched her TedX talk and the TV interview she did while still in the cult.
Unfortunately, despite her talents and the potential for this book, it is just not engaging. Everything is told, not shown. Instead of a more fluid approach, the narrative progresses in a dogged linear fashion. Some events are clearly glossed over, which represents missed opportunities to illuminate the cult more. There are times when I wish she'd answer obvious questions or flesh out clearly important moments more. She does so towards the end of the book, but the rest is filled with missed opportunities.
I'm glad I got to learn more about this fascinating, bizarre, and horrifying little world, but I do wish reading the book hadn't felt like so much of a chore. I hope Tarawa writes more in the future.
First, let me say that Lilia Tarawa is an intelligent, brave young woman who has done a lot of good with her life already. I am genuinely excited to see what else she does in her life to empower others and to expose religious abuse. While reading this book, I watched her TedX talk and the TV interview she did while still in the cult.
Unfortunately, despite her talents and the potential for this book, it is just not engaging. Everything is told, not shown. Instead of a more fluid approach, the narrative progresses in a dogged linear fashion. Some events are clearly glossed over, which represents missed opportunities to illuminate the cult more. There are times when I wish she'd answer obvious questions or flesh out clearly important moments more. She does so towards the end of the book, but the rest is filled with missed opportunities.
I'm glad I got to learn more about this fascinating, bizarre, and horrifying little world, but I do wish reading the book hadn't felt like so much of a chore. I hope Tarawa writes more in the future.
challenging
emotional
sad
medium-paced
A bit all over the place but an insightful memoir. The emotion and heavy topics are respectful while also being moving. I really enjoyed the style of writing as I could hear the voice of the confused child trying to understand her world.
Highly recommend especially for a Kiwi or Australian.
Highly recommend especially for a Kiwi or Australian.