I wanted to give this book a 3 for entertainment, but by the end I was honestly getting really bored. I don’t want to be that person, but it’s a 2 for me.

My main complaints were:
1) Murky thesis. I finished this book unsure of the boundaries and the details of the cultish language she’s trying to highlight as a thing. For the first half of the book I wondered how she would differentiate between jargon related to specific knowledge vs cultish language. I shouldn’t get halfway through the book before I get a statement about that.
2) Perhaps connected to the first thing, what is the organization of content here? Generally speaking it moves from awful cults to more cult adjacent things. But the chapter breaks and the parts were there for unknown reasons. They broke up the book but provided no structure for her points.
3) Self insertion. This is a personal preference. I know that other readers really enjoy this because it can make nonfiction more fun to read. Personally, however, I do not enjoy nonfiction with so much of the author’s personality coming through the writing or the extra, irrelevant descriptions of people interviewed.
4) Lastly, while I don’t think you need a PhD to have insights, I was annoyed by what seems to be deliberate obfuscation of the author’s bachelors degree. It feels like we are meant to assume she has a higher level degree than the one she’s got.

What I did like/learn:
1) Cults! I actually am not someone who has already learned about a lot of cults already, so much of that information was new to me.
2) It’s interesting to reflect on what makes someone susceptible to a cult, and I hadn’t thought it would be someone who is actually very driven and disciplined. It’s also interesting to reflect on the appeal of cults in a secular world.