Play Book Tag discussion

This book was better than I thought it would be. It's not easy to write a book like this as balanced as I think it is. On the one hand, Leah Remini was a victim, but on the other hand, she's honest about her mistakes; she started in Scientology when she was a child and her family was in a vulnerable situation. This book covers both her years in Scientology and her life, including her start and career in Hollywood as well as her family life. It couldn't have been easy to write what she did, because leaving something as controlling and consuming as Scientology after all those years was difficult, emotionally, and I would say harder than a divorce because it was even more all-consuming from such an early age for her than a marriage.

It's easy to sit outside of this situation and ask how anyone with any brains could get sucked into anything like this and I don't know anyone personally who has been in something this controlling. That said, I know a few Ivy League university graduates and other brilliant people who grew up in loving homes with good people skills who have had to leave abusive religions (not necessarily as financially draining as Scientology). Not everyone who gets involved in these situations is weak, hurt or unintelligent.

I am not sure if there was a ghost writer--there might have been--but the books sounds like Remini when she is being serious. There is no way to really know a person just be seeing them in an interview or reading a book they have written, of course, but I have to say that this book has given me more respect for what Remini did by speaking up and while I can't know for sure the veracity of everything she writes (it's a memoir starting from when she is a child, and memories aren't always completely reliable for any of us, it smacks of authenticity, and I am not referring to the philosophy.