Review by Stacey O’Carroll
Author: Bethany Joy Lenz
RRP: $34.99
Release Date: 30 October 2024
“He had only injured his hand punching holes in several of our walls and doors. A sweatshirt was really nothing.”
If you are of a certain age, you will perhaps be familiar with the popular teen drama series One Tree Hill. In recent years, the dreadful behind-the-scenes treatment of cast and crew has made headlines and forced fans to reflect on a show that shaped their adolescence. What some people may not be aware of is main cast member, Bethany Joy Lenz, was in a cult for the entirety of the show. In Dinner For Vampires: Life on a cult TV show, Lenz’s memoir, she recounts her childhood and early adulthood in the lead-up to meeting the people who would change her life and not for the better.
“‘What do you mean you’re asking God what you should wear before you get dressed in the morning?’ Dad asked over the phone one evening.”
As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction and Dinner For Vampires is a memoir that could easily be a movie script. But it is not. After building the foundations of a career as an actor in New York City close to her New Jersey-based family, Bethany Joy Lenz moves to Los Angeles to try and further her career. While establishing herself in her new home, Lenz is introduced to a Bible study group. The small group starts out as like-minded friends who meet each week, but with the arrival of the parents of the creators of the group comes self-proclaimed minister Les. Slowly, Les starts to visit the group more regularly, ingratiating himself into their world. Before the group can question his continued presence, the manipulation has begun. Soon, her choices are stripped from her, and the only sanctuary from the cult is in Wilmington while filming the hit television show One Tree Hill. After the birth of her daughter and the end of One Tree Hill, the orchestrated world of the cult starts to lose its tint, and Lenz must take drastic actions to save herself and her daughter.
“It did sound like a wonderful way to participate in the community, and I believed in wonderful, magical things—such as people with zero hospitality industry experience successfully running a multimillion-dollar business overnight.”
Before Dinner For Vampires was published, Lenz hinted at her unusual past in interviews and on the One Tree Hill retrospective podcast Drama Queens’ which she hosts with fellow cast members Hilarie Burton Morgan and Sophia Bush. However, the real details of control, abuse and theft are so shocking that there are moments that will make the reader want to scream at the page, ‘RUN!’ Despite attempts by her family and co-stars to alert Lenz to their concerns about the Bible study group (what she came to call her family), it took her a decade to escape the cult’s control. By the time she was free, the alarming damage to all aspects of her life was done. However, finally free, Lenz has rebuilt her life and created a safe and secure future for her daughter.
“If all it took for me to make a difference in the lives of the people I had come to love the most was letting of my ego and embarrassment and sharing my heart, then that’s what I would do.”
The reflective structure of Dinner For Vampires helps the reader immerse themselves in Lenz’s terrifying reality. Starting with the turning point and moving back to build a picture of how she became entrenched in the cult develops an understanding and empathy for the author. With each chapter, the reader watches Lenz slip further under Les’s control and farther away from the fiercely independent life she craved as a teen. Lenz has been a prolific journal writer her whole life, which has clearly aided her detail in her memoir. Would we have such a full picture without her journals? Possibly not.
“Amid all the banter and bustle as plates were cleared, someone handed me a red glass bottle of cough syrup.”
In Dinner For Vampires, Bethany Joy Lenz is finally able to tell her story. Dinner For Vampires will intrigue fans of One Tree Hill and those interested in the inner workings of cults.