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944 reviews for:
Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church
Megan Phelps-Roper
4.15 AVERAGE
944 reviews for:
Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church
Megan Phelps-Roper
4.15 AVERAGE
After seeing the Louis Theroux documentaries this has been on my tbr for a while. It was a brilliant book and manages to convey the emotions she felt very vividly. My only critique was that the bible verses were slightly too frequent and after a while I tended towards skimming over them.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
This was an amazing read. Megan Phelps-Roper is such an admirable woman. Fascinating and informative look into the process of a person waking up to a cult and beginning the journey of perspective change. Megan’s story is ultimately one of freedom that provides hope for future generations.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia
I wanted to love it. I wanted to celebrate her story, but I found her to be so unlikeable. I also found the story draggy, too long, and repetitive.
In the vein of “Educated” this feels like a nuanced, thoughtful insight into the WBC, and is an important reminder of how we should try to prioritise the humanity of the person rather than the flavour of the institution that they follow or represent.
This book presents a fascinating look inside a closed community, revealing what keeps people tied down to it and what eventually leads some of them to break away. (Hint: It's not insults and mockery.) In the end, I feel like I understand the Westboro Baptist Church a bit more (though I certainly don't condone it), and I very much appreciate the strength of [a:Megan Phelps-Roper|18720261|Megan Phelps-Roper|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1547861951p2/18720261.jpg] and her relatives who have left.
I was really interested to read this when I heard it was being released but it left me feeling very cold. A harder edit may have made the journey that bit more striking, it take two-thirds of the book to get to her leaving the church and it feels quite repetitive in parts but it's also too descriptive for much deeper insight or reflective analysis. If you're looking to flesh out what you may have seen in Louis Theroux documentaries about the church and its practices, then this might do it for you, but it didn't really deliver the human understanding I was looking for.
slow-paced
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
The value of this book lies in getting an inside perspective on cult mentality. The most profound lesson in this book is when she discusses the realization that blind certainty and a lack of humility and openness to other perspectives created the worst aspects of this church. At the end she compares this to the current political climate.
5 stars in part because of where and when I grew up and went to college (KS during the height of WBC's activity) and the author's nearness to me in age.
I remember wondering about these hate filled people as I walked by their picketing children holding monstrous signs.
I worried (like I do with all memoirs from famous figures) that the writing would be painful and amateurish, but it was not.
This was extremely insightful and helps make sense of how individuals can act like WBC members do.... how when people believe God is on their side, it's almost impossible to reason them out of even the most heinous actions and ideas.
I remember wondering about these hate filled people as I walked by their picketing children holding monstrous signs.
I worried (like I do with all memoirs from famous figures) that the writing would be painful and amateurish, but it was not.
This was extremely insightful and helps make sense of how individuals can act like WBC members do.... how when people believe God is on their side, it's almost impossible to reason them out of even the most heinous actions and ideas.