The Incredible Journey of Paul Haggis: How He Faced the Challenges of Hollywood and Scientology

ShirlP: I’m a fan of Leah’s and was so anxious to read this book. Leah has put herself on the line and has taken a lot from Scientology to get her story out and her book opens the eyes of what really goes on inside the organization. Hats off to Leah. Great read!

United States on Nov 24, 2023

SianL91: I am a little obsessed with Leah Remini and all things cult so this was always going to be a winner for me! Very interesting read!

United Kingdom on Nov 24, 2023

Marjolaine Dufour: I adore Leah Remini and have followed her career with much appreciation. I have gotten to know her as she has courageously turned her life around, contributing to helping others do the same. This book was well written, touching and so real. I felt like I was getting to know a very down to earth person who wishes to be as transparent and honest as can be. She allowed herself to be very vulnerable with this book. I just adore her more and my respect for her has simply grown. I have a better understanding now, of her life path and others who have shared it with her.

Canada on Nov 12, 2023

Djfoo68: This book is a great read and if you're a fan of Leah Remini then you will love her humour and intelligence throughout the book. She spills the tea on this cult.

United Kingdom on Oct 27, 2023

Peggy Texeira: I had no real understanding of Scientology before reading this book. Although I always wondered why famous stars like Tom Cruise or Travolta spent their time there. Because it was so secretive, I never could trust it from my perspective. But what this book tells me is it is a cult, and Tom Cruise is a 2 year old tyrant! I always liked Leah for her outspoken mouth and her sarcastic humor! She is funny! I appreciate more than ever that the environment into which you are born can have major consequences to the long outcome of one's life! I believe in some of those tenets that scientology taught that Leah spoke about that helped her. I learned those same things through a philosophy and theology degree. They are real skills you can learn and help yourself become a better person. But I learned through an openess of diversity of thought, Leah learned them with a codependent religion spouting now give me your loyalty and money! Trying to negotiate those complexity traps of thought and the emotional ties is one of the most difficult paths for any human to transverse in life! And Leah did it with her heart intact and the relationships that she herself created and nutured with that same...

United States on Sep 30, 2023

cat: A few years ago I watched Leah's TV show about scientology and what it does to SPs I was hooked! So when I saw she also wrote a book I knew I had to read it.
Although I was familiar with her story from watching the TV show it was still an excellent read. I think a lot of people will enjoy it from the perspective of understanding why someone would be so invested in this religion.
I found the Tom Cruise part both bizarre and unsurprising.
The book was well written and an easy read despite the topic!

United Kingdom on Aug 08, 2023

Midgebear: On finishing this unflinching memoir, the first thing I thought was that Leah Remini would go back in a heartbeat if they adhered to L Ron Hubbard's philosophy and that if it wasn't for the blatant corruption shown in the hierarchy that she would never have left. Her pain at leaving seeps off the page but I still left the pages with the feeling that although she now espouses psychoanalysis and therapy as being societally helpful that she is, in some way, only paying lipservice to the ideal and that the indoctrination throughout her life still holds deep within her. Of course, it is now some years since this book was written and she may have made progress on truly detaching herself from the church but when it was written she clearly still felt a deep love for it's teachings and is still striving to achieve that next OT level in her own heart.

There is always a shock, on some level, when you find out that someone is a scientologist and this book shows exactly why those of us on the outside almost fear these people. I've always looked at people like Tom Cruise and John Travolta and thought to myself "well, they are quite clearly fruit bats in the first place so it doesn't...

United Kingdom on Feb 15, 2019

Abigail: No wonder Leah Remini's book is a blockbuster. It is extremely well written. More than that, she provides in detail a chilling account of the steps deployed to ensnare good and trusting people--and families--how they can be seduced into a dark cult of exploitation and isolation from the world. Leah Remini provides an heartfelt and honest task of describing how, in a needy moment, her mother believed that this spiritual path of Scientology was a positive and enlightening step for her daughters. Once inside, there is little chance to walk away. There is no part of an individual's life that is not excavated, plundered, and used against that person. In addition, as Remini describes in detail, there is no way that Scientology does not suck dry every possilble cent and asset from its victims. Start small with the cost of "teaching supplies" being about $35, and then get each person in financial quicksand and debt up to their ears for life in quicksand. Make them go in debt. Make them sell their 401Ks and cash out pensions. Make them sell their homes. All assets to the Church where the largesse of the fortune quietly disappears under the auspices of the Chairman of the Board, David...

United States on Dec 21, 2016

Amazon Customer: Scientology isn’t a religion or even a cult. It’s a CIA backed criminal money laundering organization with a legitimate front. Around the 1950s and even earlier shadow government organizations started carrying out lots of studies on the psychology of controlling people and society, profiling personality types, and research into the individual brain and body frequencies of individuals. With a view to individual and collective control. Through the Scientology "church" Leah describes how they kept reports on the activities of EVERY single member of the organisation since their childhood. Everything from information about marriages, affairs, family members, transgressions such as “having a boy heavy pet your breasts” (Leah when she was 16- which eventually resulted in her being taken out to sea in a boat and thrown into the water as punishment) with the members awareness and “consent”. They measured their emotional frequencies on an e-metre as they divulged feelings about various things for “auditing” purposes. She talked about how they were encouraged to report on one another if someone was doing something wrong. Bullying and harassing people who don’t believe in...

United States on Jul 26, 2016