Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape by Jenna Miscavige Hill

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape by Jenna Miscavige Hill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book back in Oct 2013, but as always, I needed a little bit of time to think about the book before I wrote my review. I also youtubed Jenna Hill and got more of a personal insight by watching her on video (and I admit, I liked her less after watching her in person then after reading her book. On TV, she comes across as looking for her five minutes of fame; in the book, she seems more "real").

Jenna grows up in a scientology family - something I only had the vaguest ideas about before reading this book. After she becomes an adult, she marries and becomes a scientologist in her own right.

Her childhood is filled with a variety of abuses and things most people don't have to deal with in their every day lives: from chanting and lack of privacy, to controlled public punishment for imagined wrongdoings, to a uniform dress code, isolation from the rest of the world (and told that the rest of the world is "bad"), to doctrines that are never quite explained, to out and out abuse like slave labor, mental and physical abuse, public humiliation, and let's not forget brainwashing.

Jenna's writing throughout is a bit childish, as is her story, but as she was a child during most of the book, that makes sense & isn't necessarily a negative, as you really do feel for her. I do feel like she enjoyed throwing herself a pity party - not saying she didn't deserve our pity, mind you. My biggest point for mentioning this is that Jenna, sadly, does not seem to grow at all as a person within the pages of this book.







View all my reviews