Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties by Dianne Lake

2 reviews

librarymouse's review

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

3.5

This book has killed my desire to know more about cults. It was an upsetting read, but I think I'm glad to have read it. I almost put this book down and completely stopped reading it in the first quarter. When describing her early life, Dianne describes her early childhood sexual assault with a positive spin that was viscerally upsetting to read. As I got further into the book, I realized that description fits the severity of the incident when compared to Dianne's experiences in her teens. The writing feels a bit academic in the beginning, but once I got into the book, I found that the narration described Manson and the family's descent into extremist madness that was thorough, yet easily consumable. Manson's carefully created magnetism and Dianne's curious, rose-colored memories of the events of her early time with the Manson family explain just how impressionable young people were twisted so deeply.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Murder, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Addiction, Child abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Fatphobia and Eating disorder

Minor: Forced institutionalization

daydreaming_fae's review

dark sad tense

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and Violence