5.0

The True Happiness Company: A Memoir

By Veena Dinavahi

Format:Hardcover

In this wrenching, darkly funny memoir, a young Indian American woman’s quest for mental health is derailed by a charismatic alternative therapist who pulls her into his Mormon self-help cult.It is hard for Veena Dinavahi to live while her classmates keep dying. The high-achieving daughter of loving Indian immigrants, she lives in a white American suburb like any other—except for its unusually high suicide rate. Veena tries everything to cure her own depression, but nothing works. Then, on one late-night Google search, her mom finds Bob Lyon—a sixty-year-old man in the backwoods of Georgia who says he can make Veena want to live again. He calls himself “The True Happiness Company” and, as their relationship progresses . . . “Daddy.”As Veena is sucked into his strangely close-knit community, Bob’s “suggestions” start to feel less and less optional. Before she knows it, she’s a college dropout, a married mother of three, and a Mormon convert who has gotten way too good at dismissing her gut feeling that something is wrong. But when Bob finally pushes her too far, Veena knows she has to cut ties with him. Driven to understand her journey, she re-enrolls in college, studies psychology, and begins to understand that true happiness cannot be one-size-fits-all.Told with unflinching clarity and shot through with incisive wit, The True Happiness Company is a singular tale of learning to trust your intuition in a world determined to annihilate it.

Biography & Memoir
320 pagesHardcover
First published 2025-05-20

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Popular Reviews(1)

5.0(1 ratings)
MerlinReviewed by Merlin

Always hard to rate a memoir but especially for the endnote and the considerate storytelling, this one absolutely deserves 5 ⭐️ It’s no secret that I am obsessed with cults and everything related to that topic. I read ‘Cultish’ a few years ago in which the author talks about the language of manipulators and cult-leaders that gets people to join and/or stay in a cult - even those who would describe themselves as unsusceptible to these kinds of environments. In ‘The True Happiness Company’, Veena Dinavahi makes reference to ‘Cultish’ and explains how even she as a well-informed, educated young woman with a supportive family was able to succumb to the influence of a 60 year old, white-savior type cult leader for almost eight years. Very insightful and honest. Would recommend!

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