Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

Don't Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM by Sarah Berman

15 reviews

annieliz's review

challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Trafficking, and Gaslighting

robinwritesallthethings's review against another edition

dark hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

What It’s About: This book covers the rise and fall of the cult NXIVM. You may have heard of NXIVM already, since it was the subject of the documentary The Vow on HBO. I watched that first and then picked up this book because of it.

Plot: NXIVM is a fascinating and terrifying study of human behavior and how it can be manipulated on an extreme level. For those who are familiar with narcissists, a lot of the events in this book probably won’t be terribly surprising, but for those who aren’t, they’ll definitely learn how to spot one in the future, and I think that’s one of the big selling points of books like this. As it should be, the focus is on the victims and how they are continuing to recover from the ordeals they suffered. The story starts with the history leading to the creation of the cult and ends with the cult leader’s trial, so the narrative is complete.

Research and Organization: There’s a lot of research here, and it’s organized and sourced well. Berman did a lot of legwork and conducted a lot of interviews to make sure she had the full story. I also appreciate that she explained the various techniques the cult used to prey on its victims, which makes a big difference to understanding how so many clearly intelligent people could buy into the organization.

Trigger Warnings: Obviously, there’s a lot of abuse of several varieties present in this book. Emotional and sexual abuse are probably the biggest ones. Some of these abuses are against minors as well.

Final Thoughts: I wasn’t sure this book was going to provide any new information after watching The Vow, but I felt like it did. It also presented everything in a more chronological order, which made it easy to follow. The ending felt a little rushed to me, perhaps, but I did read the last half of the book in one sitting, so that might have been why. I didn’t reduce my rating because of it since, ultimately, I feel like the book accomplished its goal of explaining how a group like NXIVM became what it was. If you can handle reading about the terrible things that happened, it’s an illuminating story.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Confinement, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Trafficking, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Cancer, Self harm, Abortion, and Pregnancy

makcrowley's review

slow-paced

3.0

More pages than material, it was clearly well-researched but more detail than I needed and felt like the investigation was glazed over completely.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Eating disorder, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Abortion, and Sexual harassment

emmyg_photo's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective tense medium-paced

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

cotalf92's review against another edition

challenging dark informative medium-paced

3.0

Solid retelling of the progression of Keith Raniere’s control over NXIVM members. While the author covers many details and people involved with NXIVM, the story line is relatively easy to follow while listening to the audiobook.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Trafficking, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Injury/Injury detail

meaglovesbooks's review

challenging dark informative tense medium-paced

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Child abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Violence

moonyreadsbystarlight's review

challenging emotional informative reflective tense

4.25

What does it take to make a self improvement curriculum into a cult with an even more sick cult inside of it? It starts with one man with too much stock in a sketchy self-administered IQ test and an obsession with psychogical manipulation, MLMs, and Ayn Rand, but couldn't be realized without an intense social network. 

The writing itself is very engaging and this is thoroughly researched. There was intense background on Raniere along with the full scope of his network and how it grew, but Berman also interviewed many women who were in NXIVM and used information from the court case to show their stories. 

The events of what happened are truely wild. At a few points, I had to take a break from it and even considered stopping about 3/4 of the way in because as horrid as things had been at that point, there were a few really intense experiences that they went into. But I'm glad I did finish it. I didn't plan it this way, but I think this was a good bridge from Hey Hun by Emily Lynn Paulson into some of the books on Scientology that are on my TBR (yes, Raniere was clearly inspired by both Amway and L Ron Hubbard, though he denies clearly being inspired by dianetics).

If you're interested in cults or social psychology (and are ready for the sort of content that is present when talking about such awful groups), I would definitely recommend this. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Confinement, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Suicide, Xenophobia, Trafficking, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Abortion

Branding, forced abortion, spiritual abuse, abuse under threat of deportation

valzsc's review

dark informative tense medium-paced

3.75

After listening to a few podcasts through the years, I thought I knew some things about NXIVM but I was wrong.

I love the way the story was told by the author. The fact that it is not written chronologically made it a lot more engaging, letting you know a little bit by bit until you get to the full story of each individual she interviewed or had context of.

As this story is really sad and dark, I don’t think it’s a book I would go back to (nor sooner, nor later). It is dark, twisted, and I feel bad for all the things these women went through. Really bad. 

Overall, storytelling is great, it is engaging and entertaining and the story is heartbreaking. If you want to add to the mix you can also watch the show, it’s called The Vow, so you get the audiovisual experience (also getting to know more of Nancy Salzman’s side of the story, whom I think is not mentioned a lot on this book)

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Abortion, Gaslighting, and Sexual harassment

growintogardens's review against another edition

challenging dark informative medium-paced

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Trafficking, Stalking, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Grief, Abortion, and Deportation

Minor: Cancer and Alcohol

winnifred's review

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Pedophilia, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Stalking, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Mental illness, Self harm, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Trafficking, and Stalking

Minor: Pregnancy and Alcohol