I have clearly really been enjoying reading some heartbreaking memoirs lately! I am fascinated by cults, and love hearing from the perspective of people who have since left those environments and speak about what life was like for them - Educated by Tara Westover is one of my favourite books and so I was excited to read Hollywood Park as it covered similar topics. However, I think comparing it to this, and to the other incredible memoirs I have read recently, was possibly placing unrealistic expectations on this book to live up to. I did really enjoy its exploration of boyhood and growing up with difficult parental relationships and addiction struggles, but I found the narrative to be confusing at times, and it being sold as a cult memoir seemed a bit misleading to me as it was about so much more than that.

A really interesting biography. I wasn’t aware of Mikel Jollett before reading but I didn’t feel that was necessary. His stories about growing up in a sect and the aftermath of leaving were fascinating but also heartbreaking.

I received a copy of the book from Netgalley to review. Thank you for the opportunity.
A dark and irresistible story with patchy writing.
An OK read.

Intense, honest and gripping. I love the narrative style and the empathy with which the book is written. Extraordinary!

I'm going to come right out and say it: this is one of those celebrity memoirs which wouldn't have been published if the author wasn't already well-known (I personally had not heard of him but it seems many have as frontman of the band Airborne Toxic Event). Reviews and pre-publication hype I'd read framed this as a cult memoir, but that's not really what it is; Jollett was so young when his family left Synanon that he doesn't recall much of it and instead we get lots of anecdotes about time spent with his parents which are completely inconsequential. The chapters written as if by a chid were also not to my taste, and while many have praised the writing it really wasn't anything special.