THE PLOT: ‘False Idols’ by Karla Marie Sweet is a thriller set in a wellness community in Los Angeles. When Sadie joins an exclusive wellness class, she’s sceptical at first. But the attention of its magnetic leader, Lillith, is completely addictive. As Sadie gets drawn deeper, no-one in her life understands that Deep Flow isn’t a cult, it’s a community. But as threats to Lillith mount up, Sadie must risk everything to prove her loyalty.

SUMMARY: This book was a disappointment. I love cult stories and thought the L.A. wellness setting was an exciting premise for this novel. However, it simply didn’t live up to my expectations. It felt like the book never fully explored the set-up of the cult or dove into the intricacies of the community. The main character didn’t make sense – her inner monologue was deeply untrusting but her actions felt completely incongruous with her thought-processes. This just made her seem stupid and the whole plot feel implausible. Although I enjoyed some bits, such as the relationship with her husband and friend, Mumtaz, I don’t feel like I could recommend this novel.

GOOD BITS: I finished this book a few weeks before I sat down to write this review and I’m struggling to remember what I liked about it… I do think it was entertaining and I wanted to keep reading because I kept waiting for more drama. I liked the dynamic between Sadie and her husband and the role her frenemy Mumtaz played in the story. I wasn’t a huge fan of the flashbacks and wondered if a stronger link to dance between the past and present would’ve added more causality and motivation. However, I felt the scenes with the bird and vet and in the marketing company were kind of funny.

NOT SO GOOD BITS: My main criticism is that this book never delivers on the promise of the premise. Although our main character has a lot of vulnerabilities that would make her susceptible to a dodgy community, the flagrant racism and sexism that this cult represents is completely at odds with her personality. As a result, her actions don’t make sense. This means the story just feels fake and is hard to connect to. Also, the character can never go far enough into the cult that she’s completely absorbed in it and the reader never gets the satisfaction of seeing that world and those power dynamics fully brought to life on the page. There was also a lot of withholding backstory for no reason, other than to try and create curiosity, that felt odd in the first-person POV.

OVERALL: I’d recommend this book to fans of ‘People Person’ by Candice Carty-Williams and ‘The List’ by Yomi Adegoke. Although the official comparison titles are Emma Cline and Celeste Ng, I feel the tone, writing style and plot escalations are much closer to my recommendations.

Thank you to Headline / Mountain Leopard Press for my #gifted copy in exchange for an honest review. ‘False Idols’ will be published on 14^th August 2025 and is available to purchase (with a discount) on my bookshop.org page.