Book Stats
- Advanced Reader Copy from NetGalley
- Format: ebook
- Chapters: 5 (each broken down into several sections)
- Pages: 295
- Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Review
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The psychology behind cults is fascinating to me and always has been. This book has given me some new perspectives on some aspects of the cult life, particularly in regards to the followers and understanding how they could get tangled up in such dangerous groups.
In Killer Cults, Emma Kenny explores 5 of the most infamous and destructive cults in our history. She provides detailed information about David Koresh and the Branch Davidians (as well as the heartbreaking Waco siege of 1993), Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, Heaven’s Gate, The Solar Temple, and Aum Shinrikyo.
I loved how Kenny didn’t just dive right into the heart of the cult, but rather took us on an adventure starting from the very beginning. She went into detail about the early childhood of each prominent cult leader and the pivotal moments in their lives that impacted their choices and ultimately led to their ends. She showed how they were able to manipulate themselves into a position of power and how they maintained control of their followers.
It’s wild that while these horrific events occurred, taking the journey through the cult leaders’ lives allows us to see how they got to that point and to help us to really understand what was going through their minds. This is especially true of the leaders who weren’t just manipulating for power, but also because they truly believed in what they preached.
It was also fascinating to see how so many of the followers were brought into the cults and why they remained, sometimes until their very deaths. So many vulnerable people gave up everything to be a part of something they perceived to be a greater purpose. Many of them didn’t even know the full extent of what the cult leaders were doing, as many cults had hierarchies and only members of the highest levels really knew what was going on and why.
I appreciate that while the material in this book is sensitive and includes many triggering topics (sexual abuse, manipulation, death, etc.), Kenny handled it professionally. She provided facts and was respectful of every victim she wrote about. I applaud her ability to provide a heartbreaking, deeply emotional story with lines such as “Heather Jones would be the last child to leave the compound alive” or “Vernon Gosney was so desperate to escape that he left his four-year-old son behind”. Despite these emotional sentences, Kenny remained seemingly unbiased and stuck to providing the facts.
I’ve already recommended this book to my family and I will continue recommending it to others.
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