Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

Don't Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of Nxivm by Sarah Berman

13 reviews

annieliz's review against another edition

challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Trafficking, and Gaslighting

robinwritesallthethings's review

dark hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

What It’s About: This book covers the rise and fall of the cult NXIVM. You may have heard of NXIVM already, since it was the subject of the documentary The Vow on HBO. I watched that first and then picked up this book because of it.

Plot: NXIVM is a fascinating and terrifying study of human behavior and how it can be manipulated on an extreme level. For those who are familiar with narcissists, a lot of the events in this book probably won’t be terribly surprising, but for those who aren’t, they’ll definitely learn how to spot one in the future, and I think that’s one of the big selling points of books like this. As it should be, the focus is on the victims and how they are continuing to recover from the ordeals they suffered. The story starts with the history leading to the creation of the cult and ends with the cult leader’s trial, so the narrative is complete.

Research and Organization: There’s a lot of research here, and it’s organized and sourced well. Berman did a lot of legwork and conducted a lot of interviews to make sure she had the full story. I also appreciate that she explained the various techniques the cult used to prey on its victims, which makes a big difference to understanding how so many clearly intelligent people could buy into the organization.

Trigger Warnings: Obviously, there’s a lot of abuse of several varieties present in this book. Emotional and sexual abuse are probably the biggest ones. Some of these abuses are against minors as well.

Final Thoughts: I wasn’t sure this book was going to provide any new information after watching The Vow, but I felt like it did. It also presented everything in a more chronological order, which made it easy to follow. The ending felt a little rushed to me, perhaps, but I did read the last half of the book in one sitting, so that might have been why. I didn’t reduce my rating because of it since, ultimately, I feel like the book accomplished its goal of explaining how a group like NXIVM became what it was. If you can handle reading about the terrible things that happened, it’s an illuminating story.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Confinement, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Trafficking, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Cancer, Self harm, Abortion, and Pregnancy

valzsc's review against another edition

dark informative tense medium-paced

3.75

After listening to a few podcasts through the years, I thought I knew some things about NXIVM but I was wrong.

I love the way the story was told by the author. The fact that it is not written chronologically made it a lot more engaging, letting you know a little bit by bit until you get to the full story of each individual she interviewed or had context of.

As this story is really sad and dark, I don’t think it’s a book I would go back to (nor sooner, nor later). It is dark, twisted, and I feel bad for all the things these women went through. Really bad. 

Overall, storytelling is great, it is engaging and entertaining and the story is heartbreaking. If you want to add to the mix you can also watch the show, it’s called The Vow, so you get the audiovisual experience (also getting to know more of Nancy Salzman’s side of the story, whom I think is not mentioned a lot on this book)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Abortion, Gaslighting, and Sexual harassment

mondovertigo's review against another edition

dark informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Confinement, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Trafficking, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Abortion and Pregnancy

Minor: Cancer, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts

hannahmci's review

dark fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Rape, and Gaslighting

jordanpoole1's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Confinement, Eating disorder, Pedophilia, Abortion, and Gaslighting

Minor: Self harm

melissahawco's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Confinement, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Toxic relationship, Trafficking, Abortion, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, and Deportation

winnifred's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Pedophilia, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Stalking, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Mental illness, Self harm, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Trafficking, and Stalking

Minor: Pregnancy and Alcohol

kalifer's review against another edition

dark informative sad tense

5.0

Honestly, this is overall a horrific case. I had watched the documentary "The Vow" before I had read this book, so I had an idea of what I was getting into. However, this book goes into heavy detail of all the awful things he does, and it's just absolutely disgusting to me. The book was well researched and definitely got me invested in the case, but just the reality of all the crimes he committed are just horrendous and I just kept waiting to hear everything that happened in court and everything he was guilty. All in all, this was a well researched book and definitely go and look up the trigger warnings before going into the book, because it's pretty bad. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, and Trafficking

cassiecraycray's review against another edition

challenging dark medium-paced

5.0

I knew very little when I started this book, and holy sh*t, I wasn't prepared for everything I was about to read. Several times I had to put the book down to give my mind a minute to process. 
This book was very informative, and I feel laid out in a good way. It covers alot of heavy topics but in a respectful way. It wasn't extremely graphic, covering what needed to be said while not giving some more horrible details.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body shaming, Eating disorder, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexism, Suicide, Trafficking, Abortion, and Gaslighting