A review by speculativeshelves
Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.5

As a fan of both One Tree Hill and the Drama Queens podcast I was intrigued to learn more about Bethany Joy Lenz's story of being part of a cult. This memoir is well-written, engaging, and an overall excellent celebrity memoir. It's easy to understand how she got sucked into the cult in her early 20s. That age is a vulnerable time for everyone and she had the perfect combination of qualities to make her the "perfect target" - devout, talented, and lonely. There were many points in which my heart broke for her - especially learning that she sacrificed her dream of Broadway TWICE.

This may not be the most wild cult story but it's probably one more people, particularly anyone with any sort of connection to American Christianity (especially nondenominational Evangelical Christianity) can understand. Not all Christian churches/bible study groups are cults but this book depicts how easily faith can be used and twisted by narcissistic, power hungry people into something that manipulates and harms others. As Bethany Joy Lenz shows in this book, a lot of the reason why she didn't question things in the beginning was because a lot of it wasn't any different than things she was taught in church growing up - covenants, complementary gender roles, making sacrifices to prove one's faith, talk about "The Enemy", etc. This manipulation of faith is insidious and unfortunately more common in American Christian Culture than I think people realize (with varying degrees of severity). As with any cult, it's hard for people to question - especially because there are a lot of sects that will tell people who question things that they're being manipulated by The Enemy and will lose their salvation because of it. It always saddens me to see Christianity being used as a weapon in this way and I hope her story will help save a lot of people from spiritual abuse.

I respect Bethany Joy Lenz a lot for not losing her faith completely through all of this as it would be very easy to do. There's a beautiful scene in one of the last few chapters of her pleading with God and then subsequently feeling His presence which was particularly moving. My own Christian faith and hers don't quite align (my own views contrast quite a bit with the Reformed Christianity of Tim Keller who she mentions in this book many times) but I always enjoy reading about people's individual faith journeys.

I also highly recommend the audiobook! Bethany Joy Lenz's narration is excellent, full of emotion, and she's capable of doing many distinct voices in telling her story. I'd love for her to get more into audiobook narration in the future.