[3.5 stars]

I picked up this book with very little prior knowledge of Waco. I was born in ‘01 to centrist, Catholic parents who never cared all that much for guns, so anything to do with all those Evangelical, anti-government watershed events post Vietnam to before I was born are unknown territory to me (hence, I am seeking out book because it is low-key embarrassing to not know what my much older coworkers are talking about, haha). I think that this book gave a very thorough timeline and dissection of both the ATF+FBI’s side and Mount Carmel’s (and specifically David Koresh’s) side. Though dry at times, it was a very complete look at essentially every action taken by both sides that we are aware of. Cook also brings up a decent amount on the groups of protestors and tourists watching the scene play out and how the media portrayed Koresh and his followers - though I personally wanted a bit more on how the wider American public thought of the event (though he does discuss a few Gallup Polls and the Attorney General’s approval rating in the aftermath, which I appreciated). However, I found this book greatly lacking the promise of how Waco led to the modern militia groups of today.

The first quarter of the book acts as a biography of David Koresh and a timeline of his chapter of Branch Davidians including their main beliefs and prior leaders and prophets. A very standard rundown that is necessary for the rest of the book. The attack itself begins at about the 25% point and lasts through the 80% mark. It works perfectly for what it is as both a narrative of what happened at the initial shootout, the fifty days where they refused to leave, and the final fire and as a very complete examination of all known actions taken on both sides. Cook points out specific moments that will be crucial facts brought up during later trials or media attention as well as what information was known to the public immediately, what became known soon after, and what was not released until years down the line. Though Cook tries to break up the monotony of the fifty days spent in a standoff with what information he could, it ultimately is just fifty days of the FBI and Koresh’s group talking on the phone about Revelations and occasionally trading released children for some supplies. Dry, but still interesting. I imagine that Cook did all he could in this section that, unfortunately, is a substantial part of the book.

Cook is good at describing the action that took place. It was extremely easy to follow and never felt sensationalized. He tracks multiple locations in the compound with ease and always makes sure to point out the moment that injuries or deaths happen (instead of just listing them off after the action is over).

The subtitle of the book claims to talk in depth about “the birth of America’s modern militias” but, as I mentioned earlier, Cook doesn’t go into much depth. About the last hour of the 8 hour and 19 minute audiobook focuses on the impact of Waco both immediately and still ringing in the modern day. A lot of this time is spent on McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing (though still very surface level - no mention of the Turner Diaries at all, for example). Other more significant focuses are on Alex Jones' obsession with Waco and how it launched the popularity of Infowars as well as the various other sources that have promoted conspiracies about Waco. As the book winds down, Cook takes the time to quote a few of the survivors of the event on how they feel about the conspiracy theories surrounding them, which I appreciated and felt was a great addition. I do feel that this area was lacking considering its inclusion in the subtitle of the book. It’s too long to be considered an epilogue and it’s too short to achieve what the book’s title promises. Even then, obvious things to point out, like the Oathkeepers (which are mentioned briefly once) are not discussed in depth despite them being the obvious modern connection to the 20th century’s militia movement.

Despite the numerous comments pointing out Cook’s connection of the 20th century’s militia groups to January 6th, it is an extremely brief mention near the end of the book (maybe just a paragraph or two?). I know that J6 is a topic who’s inclusion will probably always pull lots of attention, but it is genuinely not a focus of the book at all, however much some of these reviews want you to believe.

There were a few things that I felt were weirdly left unmentioned until a later point. The listening devices snuck with supplies into Mount Carmel were mentioned from the start, but Cook leaves it until long after the fact to mention the reports of recordings of members speaking to each other about purposefully dumping fuel and discussing setting the building on fire, for example. Most of the other bits of information that came out later were given at the appropriate time in the book, but this - and a few others - were frustratingly left out until the end. This was probably an attempt to squeeze out some last second excitement from the reader, but I found holding this information back worthless.

Cook hardly spends any time explaining American Evangelical’s apocalyptic beliefs or anything to do with the Book of Revelations. I found it a bit odd that he doesn’t even give a broad precursor explanation early on (he later specifies a bit when it comes to Seventh Day Adventists, which is who the Branch Davidians broke out from). The Seven Seals are mentioned numerous times before they are finally defined in any way. I just recently finished a different book that goes into more depth about this topic but if I hadn’t I’d be very lost (having grown up Roman Catholic with very little emphasis on Revelation or Armageddon as a whole). I can’t imagine being from somewhere outside of the US and jumping into this book without ever even interacting with any Evangelical Americans. I know that an in-depth look at US Evangelicalism and apocalypticism wasn’t a promise of the book, but I felt like a more concrete “this is what these people believe” could have been set out and said earlier.

You will definitely get a complete, nearly day-by-day analysis of what led to and what happened at Waco from the initial shootout to the final fire with this book. You will definitely not get an examination of how Waco led to the militia movements of the 90s and their modern day variants. As long as you’re looking for a story about what happened at Waco with a bit of bonus facts at the end of the book, this one will work just fine.

[2.5 stars]

I felt like this book completely fell apart at the two-thirds point.

The big scandal wasn't revealed until about the 80% mark and the lead up to it didn't really start until past the 65% point. So, even if it was a bit obvious what was going on from very early on (though the racism accusation did throw a wrench in my idea of what happened) if you don't like to be kept waiting, this isn't for you. It wasn't even keeping me in a good suspense as I assumed from the start what the scandal would be (on the non-product end; I actually found how the product played into it very clever with how it had been set up across the whole novel).

Okay, the actual review: the entire book is a memoir written by Max, the founder of the cult NYC-based makeup brand Reveal interspersed with a few scenes in the modern day (2015) that serve as the nine day countdown to the board of executives meeting that will determine if Max is to be fired or not following the scandal. Max is an unreliable narrator as she recalls the events that caused the scandal, especially when it comes to the lead up to the scandal and the other person involved. The thing is, since Max doesn't come to the revelation about what she did until the epilogue, everything she said prior is called into question and we as the reader end up having no idea what actually transpired in specifics. Everything she describes is called into doubt but not in a satisfying way.

I think this book just pissed me off. For an entire book about a lesbian and what it's uniquely like being a lesbian CEO and founder in the beauty industry the book uses the word “lesbian” a single time in a bad “lipstick lesbian” joke. Sure, lots of women do call themselves “gay women” as Max does throughout the novel, maybe the author does herself as well I have no idea (I have no idea what the author's sexuality is and I don't mean to assume). Does Max not use lesbian because of her complete disconnect from any other LGBT people outside of one night stands? Amanda's critique of her ignorance of drag culture seems to point to that, but it's never examined otherwise or in any depth beyond this single comment. Does the author refuse to use the word “lesbian” outside of a joke because she sees it as a dirty word? It's never clear. This is a smaller example of a bigger issue of the novel that repetitively pissed me off as we passed the 60% mark. There are things that Max says and believes that I agree with wholeheartedly and things that she says that are obviously supposed to be something that makes the reader dislike her. With how the latter parts are written, I felt like the former were very targeted and antagonistic towards the reader if they agreed with it. Like the author has her personal beliefs and wants to make the reader feel stupid and evil if they agree with Max on anything (at least in the parts later on in her life).

I don’t think I explained my issue well, hold on. Every genuine bit of cultural criticism felt like parody. Max argues that young women can’t possibly wear full coverage foundation and heavy contouring for themselves and that they must be doing it to appear attractive to men, fair. The (decade and a half younger) woman she is arguing with argues against that, fair, but then she starts bringing up that the heavy foundation and contouring originated in drag culture and implies that Max is homophobic - or at least very disconnected from LGBT culture - to dislike it. Max then exclaims that she didn’t know that but surely she could dislike it without it meaning that she's homophobic. Do you see what I mean when I say it feels like parody (or like a sitcom writer doing a conversation with a generic Millennial/Gen Z versus Gen X to make fun of cancel culture or whatever)? Then, the whole issue just circles back around because of Max being an unreliable narrator of her own story so then did the other woman actually say those things or not?

Despite all of that, I really enjoyed large parts of this novel. There are a lot of avenues explored in this novel beyond just the “workaholic CEO downfall, but as a lesbian” storyline. We spend the first several chapters of this book in Max’s childhood and high school years living in New Jersey. We explore both her budding love of makeup and art, her early entrepreneurial skills, and what it was like to grow up as a lesbian in a small town in the 90s. Despite the lack of the term lesbian anywhere to be seen, we do get a very heartfelt and real feeling exploration of the fear Max felt as she hid her love of women from her parents and her friends. On top of this, Max’s feelings towards her mother are very interesting to read. Her mother is a non-working housewife with a husband who is controlling over the finances (never considered to be abusive but just like other men of his time). She follows all the beauty trends which would make you think she’d encourage Max’s plans for the future, but her own self-consciousness of not working and her desire for Max to just get married and settle down get in the way. I just really enjoyed these early years of her childhood as she came into herself. Then, we move to her going to NYU and starting her business, first as a makeup artist for rich women and then making her own products.

Max starts to become like her mother as she gets older. She is smart and constantly innovating in her childhood and through her early 20s, but by the time she hits her late thirties she is reduced to “old man yells at cloud”. She is impossible to budge when it comes to her own values of what makeup should be for women and what her brand’s values are versus the changing trends of makeup. I found how the author managed to have Max start to showcase more and more of what she had critiqued of her own mother’s life while still having Max live a completely opposite life from her mother was very skillful. It’s so subtle at points that I didn’t make the connection at first.

Sheer didn’t work for me as a whole but the parts that worked worked extremely well. I didn’t find a place to mention it earlier but we get very descriptive scenes of Max applying makeup to other women product by product and, as someone who always enjoys watching makeup application videos, I found myself enjoying those moments so much. I just truly feel that it completely fell apart as we came up to the “big reveal” of what the scandal was. Also, any book that ends in the epilogue with the main character saying directly to the reader “I became the very monster this ugly society insisted I already was" won’t work for me. Have some faith in your own writing or your readers without spelling it out like that. I think that plenty of people will like this book and maybe I just expected more out of it than it was willing to give me. I do want to emphasize that the parts I like I reallllllyyyy liked, which is why the flopping of the last third really hurt.

[4.5 stars]

This book is entirely made up of transcripts of interviews done after the fact (just the responses, not a back and forth of questioning) with family friends, friends of Zorah from school, neighbors, people who encountered the Sharafs on August 31, news reports, and other sources (both repeating and one-offs). It moves forward chronologically from the time that the Sharafs first immigrated to the US (primarily focusing on the father here before shifting to Zorah, the second eldest child) while, at the same time, a timeline of their Labor Day weekend road trip to Niagara Falls intersperses and slowly reveals itself.

So stressful. Devastating. Some moments, especially near the end from the aunt, are horrible to get through. I don’t have kids but I cannot imagine getting through some of these sections if I had a child. The author is skilled at using perspective and other people’s words to make the normal seem abnormal or foreign. The long winded descriptions from Zorah’s friends about how strict and unfair her parents were to the cut to her aunt saying “yeah, they grounded their daughter for lying about her grades. Any other American parent would do the same.” is a moment of this. It only gets more intense as the story progresses and news journalists get involved.

Though the final outcome is pretty rock-solid as to what ultimately went down (unless you, like, have an inherent distrust of defense attorneys… or hate all Muslims/immigrants) the book does achieve the “ping-pong”-ing back and forth that the description promises. In my opinion, it is not as extreme as that description and some other reviews might make it out to be but I felt like it did a good job of taking advantage of what information the reader is given up to certain points and taking advantage of some internal biases that a person might have.

Just a few things that irked me somewhat. I felt that the subsections that the book was divided into were worthless. Sometimes they indicated a specific short time-frame but other times they did not. Not necessarily distracting to me, but an unnecessary and confusing addition. There were also one or two things that I assumed would be brought up again at later points that seemed important early on but were never even touched on again. How Raymat got the 20k to purchase the cleaning business in the end after having been stuck begging for a loan was something that I assumed would come back as an additional error against him. Something about sketchy money deals or what have you. Ultimately, not really important and instead just a detail that my brain got stuck on, but it happened a few different times and irked me a bit.

I feel like I am at my worst in review writing when it is a book that I greatly enjoyed. I suppose this is a coming of age story about a teenage girl who immigrated to America as a child and struggled with her personal identity and freedom in comparison to her (mostly white) American friends, though one where we never hear her - or any - of the immediate family’s own point of view. It is an incredible book.

[3.5 stars]

A really little 62-page short story, The Grownup unfortunately has just a bit too much trying to happen for such a short book.

Honestly, it's really only the third-act/climax/reveal that holds that issue for me. This is a short haunted-house story following a prostitute turned psychic aura-reader whose newest client, a rich housewife with a very troubled teenage stepson, recently bought and renovated an old manor. Our main character has a very stark and well-developed voice despite how short the book is. From the very first few pages I was fully enveloped by her and I am impressed at Flynn’s ability to establish her so quickly (though I shouldn’t be surprised considering how strong even the side characters in Gone Girl were). This goes for Susan (the client) and Miles (her stepson) as well. Flynn does an excellent job establishing them as characters quickly (though Miles feels much more generic and like a stock character than either of the women).

So, early setup where the main character establishes her life and career up to meeting Susan with a well-written internal voice and funny short anecdotes and observations. A middle that works well to both introduce Susan and creates a pretty decent haunted house scene. All well and good. It is just in the big reveals where the page limit really hurts the book. Back-to-back twists within just a few pages that contradict one another are hard to pull off ever, but especially here where there is no time to let things settle or for any reflection to occur. I was just like: “oh, okay, this is what we’re going with then” without much emotion.

I honestly didn’t hate the ending itself. The last few paragraphs are fine for what the story ended up being. I can see how many people are calling it a “non-ending” or too unfinished, but I really don’t mind it. I think it's a good finisher that leaves a creepy taste on your tongue where you really don’t know how things would unfurl from then on out for our characters.

This book is very short and definitely not a waste of time if you know you are a fan of Flynn’s writing, but I wouldn’t recommend it as your introduction to Flynn (even if the short length is tempting compared to Gone Girl). On the upper end of horror short stories that I’ve read in recent memory, but nothing special.