Review by Booklist Review
Dinavahi's debut is a memoir that lands with authority and a stunning, well-documented account of a family's entanglement with a religious cult. Her author's note includes an enumeration of cult tactics used against vulnerable people. At 19, Dinavahi was such a person. She excelled academically, yet her classmates' deaths by suicide left her depressed and hopeless. Her own suicidal gestures terrified her parents, immigrants from India. In desperation, they found an internet stranger guaranteeing happiness. They traveled to meet Mr. Lyon, and he professed unconditional love for Dinavahi. He summarily diagnosed her as manipulative and borderline. How could she trust herself? A master of compliments that felt like indictments and an expert at leveraging information and relationships to keep the author in check, Mr. Lyon dispensed personal dogma and Mormonism. Dinahavi's eventual initiation into Mormonism brought rules for being a better person (no coffee or tea, wear religious undergarments) and a good wife (provide casseroles, have children), and eye-opening communications with other True Happiness victims. Dinavahi's story is candid and wise, shocking and hopeful.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
How could an intelligent woman, with robust family support, be sucked into a cult? Dinavahi explores that question in her poignant debut, which traces her path from a comfortable Maryland upbringing through multiple suicide attempts, her time under the spell of an abusive charlatan, and her eventual escape from his control. After a high school classmate died by suicide in 2007, Dinavahi became obsessed with the tragedy, and soon tried to take her own life. That led her desperate mother to scour the internet for help, landing on True Happiness Company founder Bob Lyon, who claimed he could reinvigorate Dinavahi's love of life (later, Dinavahi would find out Lyon was a former eye surgeon with no training in psychology). When Dinavahi and her parents visited Lyon in his Georgia home, his calmness impressed Dinavahi, kicking off her eight years "in his orbit." Though Lyon's treatments could be disturbing--he insisted a 19-year-old Dinavahi call him "Daddy" and allow him to cradle her like an infant--she pushed down her misgivings. Her apprehension grew after she learned that Lyon was a proselytizing Mormon, and an episode in which Lyon asked her to remove her clothes so he could touch her finally broke the spell, moving her to cut ties with him and enroll in a college psychology program. Dinavahi's conversational tone and clear-eyed sense of her own vulnerability make for a powerful self-portrait. It's equal parts fascinating and edifying. Agent: Maria Stovall, Trellis Literary. (May)
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Review by Library Journal Review
At 19, Dinavahi was depressed and suicidal. When conventional methods failed, her desperate parents took her to see Bob Lyon, founder of the True Happiness Company. Lyon immediately connected with Dinavahi and promised unconditional love, which made her feel heard and accepted. Eventually, she became reliant on him, and he manipulated her into doing things such as marrying her boyfriend. In her memoir, Dinavahi describes her rationalization of Lyon's influence and his strange behavior. Additionally, she reflects on the cultural differences between herself and her immigrant parents, which led to a rift that Lyon exploited, isolating her from her friends and family. Eventually, a disturbing encounter led Dinavahi to conclude that the True Happiness Company is a cult, from which she started to reclaim her life. Dinavahi deftly describes the feeling of unknowingly sinking further into a precarious situation and uses her psychology training to explain clinically how Lyon was able to manipulate her. VERDICT An absorbing and heartfelt reflection that will immerse readers interested in cults and memoirs.--Rebekah Kati
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Breaking away. When Dinavahi was an overachieving sophomore in high school, a friend in her math class took her own life. The tragedy was the latest in a series of incidents at Severna Park High, a Blue Ribbon school in Maryland with a suicide epidemic so severe that when Dinavahi was admitted to a psychological ward after her own suicide attempt, she ran into a classmate she presumes was there for the same reason. Dinavahi continued attempting to take her own life throughout her teens. Desperate to keep her daughter alive, Dinavahi's mother took her to see a man named Bob Lyon, who ran the True Happiness Company (the names are pseudonyms). Although he was a former ophthalmologist with no background in psychology, Lyon diagnosed Dinavahi with borderline personality disorder and said that the only way for her to stop her self-destructive behavior was to speak to him daily. Over the course of the next decade, Lyon insidiously took over Dinavahi's life, manipulating her into dropping out of college, getting married, and joining the Mormon church. It was not until Lyon molested Dinavahi that she found the courage to leave. "Sometimes conformity can be a protective mechanism," she writes. "If everyone is heading in the same direction, you figure someone must know what they're doing. They can't all be wrong. But this overwhelming psychological pressure to conform kept me in True Happiness for so long, doubting my own instincts." Dinavahi is a talented writer with a dark sense of humor. Her intensely vulnerable storytelling vividly illustrates the ways in which society preys on the insecurity of neurodiverse women and, in particular, neurodiverse women of color. A brilliant, personal take on the pernicious power of cults. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
