HOLLYWOOD PARK is a memoir by Mikel Jollett, best known for his work is frontman of the band Airborne Toxic Event. The memoir charts his early childhood and late night escape with his mother and older brother from the cult Synanon. While the departure from the cult is a turning point in his life, it does not lead to an easy life after. He chronicles his difficult to say the least relationship with his mother, which is a lot of unpack, and Mikel continues to struggle with, even as he works through this in therapy. Trauma often leads to more trauma. He also talks extensively of his relationship with his older brother Tony, who struggled with the family's new normal right away. Family history of abuse and substance use rear their ugly heads. Jollett spends more and more time with his father and a women who helped rear him backing the cult in Southern California, and over time, he dedicates himself to long distance running and academics and lands a scholarship at Stanford. With this success, Jollett still struggles with finding happiness and he continues to sabotage romantic relationships in his life. The theme of music is prevalent throughout the book, and ties many of his life stages together. He discovers love for music, especially the Cure and this ultimately leads to a job in music journalism, and ultimately to leading a band. A moving memoir of understanding one's world and relationships.

Thanks to Celadon Books and NetGalley for providing me this advanced copy for review.

Hollywood Park is a well written and interesting memoir following Mikels birth into a cult and then being escaping with his mother and older brother. Once on the outside he still has struggles and bad circumstances. His bother is angry and his mother is depressed and not fully able to provide for them. It’s heartbreaking but beautiful to see how love can triumph. Thank you Celadon and Mikel for the ARC. I would definitely recommend this book.

This book was a brutally honest portrait of this man's life upbringing in a very dysfunctional family
What is so beautiful about the book is the raw honesty he displays in this book
I'm impressed and admire him for that
Resilience in life is what gets people through hard times
Some have it and some don't
This man evidently did as he made it through and grew.from it.

👦BOOK REVIEW👦

Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett
On Sale: May 26, 2020

-DESCRIPTION-
Mikel Jollett's memoir. It all starts as his mother is fleeing with Mikel and his brother, Tony, from the famed cult, Synanon. His families struggles with addiction, mental illness, abandonment and how F.A.M.I.L.Y can all be so intertwined.

-THOUGHTS-
So I half read/half listened to this book. The audiobook was amazing because it was narrated by Mikel. As the book was wrapping up, I was mowing my lawn listening to the last hour of the book and the tears were streaming. Mikel doesn't pull any punches. He's honest. The book is wrapped up so well. It's a beautiful memoir.

-RATING-
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5/5
I highly recommend this book!

-SIMILAR RECOMMENDED READS-
Glass Castle
The Sound of Gravel
Brain on Fire

This is a beautifully-written memoir that is unflinchingly honest and painful. Mikel grew up with an incredibly selfish mother and a series of her abusive boyfriends and husbands. He and his older brother had a contentious relationship - how could they not, coming from such a sad start on life. It's impossible to like their mother - - and impossible NOT to like their father and his wife Bonnie. Though he's an ex-con and ex-addict, he and Bonnie end up providing the stability Mikel and Paul need.

It's amazing that Mikel survived his life and even more surprising that he came out of all this and thrived. I'm not familiar with his band but it seems he carved a successful life for himself with his own wife and child.

I can see why this book is receiving accolades - it deserves them.

received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review

I really wasn’t expecting such a nuanced exploration of psychological abuse inside this rock star/cult survivor memoir. Really pulled me through and you really come to love these perfectly imperfect people. Bleak yet hopeful. Absolute five.

This was AMAZING! Reading everything that Mikel has been through and how he came out for the better was just so inspiring! Thank you so much to NetGalley and Celadon Books for the ARC

What an incredibly beautiful flowing poetic memoir by the creator of the band Airborne Toxic Event. His story which begins telling what it's like being raised in a C-U-L-T ,where you don't have a parent or normal human touch or emotions in one of the nations most dangeous cults. After his mother rescues him (or does she?), she subjects him to numerous forms of abuse which leads to abuse of his own. The writing wraps around you and draws you in like a warm blanket. Very highly recommended.

“I didn’t care that he was broken. Everyone I love is. Or was. That’s how we recognize each other.”⁣
⁣
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 ⁣
⁣
Thank you @celadonbooks for this Memoir. This is the first memoir I have ever read. I simultaneously listened to it on @libro.fm as well, and after hearing Mikel’s voice, how at times I felt like a small boy was reading this story of his broken life to me, I just felt his story deep in my soul. ⁣
⁣
He seemed to go through, but get through any and every possible awful thing thrown at person, starting as a small child. Getting ripped away from his parents in a cult, to be raised by random people, and watch other children be beaten and have their heads shaved to instill fear. To finally escape, with his real mother, to realize she suffered from tremendous mental health disease and could not quite be a mother. To have to be on the run, out of fear of being found with no resources, living in poverty, and later losing friends to drugs, and almost losing his brother to drugs as well. ⁣
⁣
But he is here today, he has grown from all of this pain and torment, and he is living a better life than he was every given previously. This was written so well. It was so dark at times, but Mikel seemed to always find his way. #memoir #bookstagram #hollywoodpark #celadonbooks

Wow. This is an amazing story. Raw, honest, heartbreaking, & real. Very powerful.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you Netgalley and Celadon books for a free galley and ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. I originally requested this book because I was intrigued by the fact that the author, Mikel Jollett, was raised in one of America's most infamous cults. I was slightly disappointed in the onset of the book to find that while this had a heavy impact on his life, very little detail of his time there is included in the book (rightfully so as he was very young when they left the cult). However, I was quickly hooked back in by Jollett's raw and poignant story of poverty, mental illness, emotional abuse, and addiction. It's obvious from his poetic prose that Jollett is a unique and intelligent individual. I enjoyed how his voice gradually matures from the young boy who has left the odd comfort of the cult to the rebellious pre-teen/teen who doesn't quite know how and where he fits and on to the adult who comes to terms with himself and the damage done by the abuse and addiction of his family members. I am not much for memoirs, but was pleasantly surprised by this story and would highly recommend to others.

This is not so much a “memoir” as it is a semi-chronological collection of essays. The writing is fantastic: beautiful, catchy, poetic, mesmerizing and approachable all at once. This is book is so good you just HAVE TO Google the author multiple times throughout your read. I wanted to know more and more about his life AS I was reading about his life.

“Hollywood Park” is a book that brings you along with Mickell Jollett as he experiences childhood, teen years and adulthood.

Told in multiple parts, one part for each segment of his life, the book speaks in a third person memoir perspective, and the author uses the voice of his respective age for each segment. So, when he’s 5 years old, the writing is similar to how a five year old would tell a story (“and then and then and then”). This is what I loved most about this book, how it’s written. Always a good thing, right?

Based on the description, I expected to learn more about the cult in which Mikel and his brother were raised. I am cult-obsessed. I love reading and learning about cults and escapes from cults. The book begins with their escape from the cult, though, and the author was understandably too young to really recount the actual living experience, so there wasn’t much in the book about it. The cult, though, definitely informed a lot of who he became and who he endeavored not to become. It's an incredible story.

It was hard to read about Mickel and his brother. What a dysfunctional sibling relationship. Who beats up and bullies their own brother? My heart broke for young Mikel. I can’t even imagine this experience.

Coming from two parents with addictions myself, I strongly related to Mikel’s upbringing. It’s refreshing to see that other people have problems, big problems, and they’re not afraid to let it all out there for the world to see. Mikel is one of those people, and I thank him for writing this incredible story.

I fell in love with this heartbreaking and heartwarming book.

Thanks to Celadon Books and NetGalley for providing an e-copy for review.

Hollywood Park is the captivating memoir of Mikel Jollett, who spent his early years in a cult and is now the front man of Airborne Toxic Event. He has a unique writing style that made each chapter feel almost cinematic, unlike many memoirs that get more straight to the point and don't feel quite as personal. Jollett's descriptions of the mental and physical illnesses within his family and how they effected his life are raw and emotional. Definitely not an easy read but it's interesting the whole way through!

Mikel Jollett was born into Synanon, a drug rehab program turned cult. When he was five, his grandparents rescued him, along with his mother and older brother. HOLLYWOOD PARK is an account of Jollett's post-Synanon life, told from his perspective as a child growing up in a troubled, fractured family.

If you are drawn to memoirs like EDUCATED or THE GLASS CASTLE, get your hands on HOLLYWOOD PARK immediately. I could not put it down and tore through it in a weekend. You need not be familiar with Jollett or his current career as frontman of Airborne Toxic Event in order to appreciate his story.

This is a story of a life lived under siege, of a child looking for love and answers and finding no support. The early chapters, with Jollett writing in the voice of a small child, are particularly heartbreaking given that we can see how his relatives are failing him and how the few adults who see his cries for help are pushed away, though the boy does not understand why he feels lost. As Jollett grows up and begins to understand his own trauma, discover community in music, and begin to figure out how to break the cycle for the next generation, I was moved to tears.

Content warnings for drug and alcohol abuse, emotional and physical abuse, animal abuse, suicide, and probably other stuff, too.

This book is beautiful and poetic, but I found the synopsis to be misleading. Rather than a sordid tale of life growing up in a cult, it is a coming of age story, told through the eyes of two brothers who respond to their parents addictions and faults very differently. There is a bit of music included but mostly this is a memoir about learning to love people in spite of their faults, and learning to how as a person while learning from the mistakes you see growing up. There isn't actually very much about the cult at all, although you can certainly feel it's scars throughout the book. I would absolutely recommend this, but I would suggest that the publisher be a bit more forthcoming about the contents of the book, and not just rely on the cult aspect, because I think that will leave many readers disappointed.

This is a true story of man, Miket Jollett who experienced a traumatic upbringing in a Cult.

As a psychology major, I've always been interested in the influence of cults. However, I've never quite been able to figure out why there is so much abuse in cults. Maybe it is because the leader feels all-powerful, and that he/she can do anything they want to.

This was an incredibly powerful and ultimately uplifting story. While this story does chronicle Jollett's trauma, it also leads to his amazing rise from the ashes.

A MUST READ!

“Yes, that’s right, I’m not from the fucking suburbs. No my dad was not a fucking lawyer. No we were not tucked in and read a story at bedtime. We had nightmares and demons and it taught us to run. These are scars, all of them. Scars. And they are not going away. No, I don’t feel okay about it.”

A harrowing memoir from the creator of the band, The Airborne Toxic Event. Mikel Jollett was born into an insane cult straight from a scene out of Handmaid’s Tale, except this is HIS REAL LIFE. He escapes the cult with his mother and older brother where he goes on to live a life filled with abuse, poverty, addiction and abandonment.

As a fan of his band, I loved the chance to read about the inspiration of particular songs. That being said, I’d like to point out that you do not need to be familiar with the band or Mikel. This is about way more than that.

The complexity of his relationship with his mother was intriguing and heartbreaking. The dynamic it created between him and his brother, easily understood. His relationship with his father is what truly makes this story beautiful.

If you read this in public, someone will 100% see you ugly cry. Mikel Jollett is pure poetry.

𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘧𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘶𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘺𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘯, 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳, 𝘢 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘪𝘨 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺, 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘭𝘭.

In his painfully moving memoir Hollywood Park, the reader is plunged into Mikel Jollett’s eccentric childhood growing up in a California drug rehab- turned commune that morphed into the infamously dangerous cult called the Church of Synanon. For as long as his young mind can recall, his parents have solely been visitors in his life- a child closed off from society, nurtured by young women who oversee the youngest children of Synanon rather than by his own mom and dad. It comes as a brutal shock, followed by long standing confusion when his mother comes for him and his older brother Tony, who he doesn’t really know that well either as children are separated by age. Like escaped prisoners, they flee the compound into the alien world that their mother and father had willingly turned their backs on. He is meant to trust this woman, his real mother, but nothing makes sense! Why does he have to leave his friends behind and the sweet woman who has been the only maternal source he has come to love? Worse, why are they leaving his dad behind and who is the old man waiting in the running car?

So opens an emotional memoir where the mysteries of the adult world and the innocence of childhood collide. How much harder is it to understand life, other people, when you don’t quite comprehend where you’ve been? What you are? When you look upon the rest of the world with wild eyes, like an alien landed on earth for the first time? When your mother uses words you don’t understand about your Dad, like “drug addict”? Mikel’s brother is a mass of energy so different from himself, so angry all the time. Suddenly, he feels like he has no one, despite being in such close proximity to his actual blood family, he misses the children at Synanon. His mother is sad all the time, and goes places inside of herself that neither he, nor his brother Tony can reach. His grandparents keep saying that unfamiliar word “cult” like it’s a bad thing whose meaning he can’t comprehend. He overhears their accusatory raised voices, declaring that he and Tony were in an orphanage, whatever that means. No one explains anything!

It only gets more confusing when his mother finds work in Oregon, where he and his brother stick out among the other children, and bullies pay special attention to them. Here their mother teaches them how to care for themselves never without reminding him that she saved them from that bad place. In between bouts of falling apart and expecting them to fend for themselves, she bemoans her troubles as a single mom and the unfairness of it all. Too, there are men in his mother’s life- stand in fathers who are just as lost as the people who needed saving in Synanon. His real father is brighter than the sun when he pops up but never an easy man to emulate and certainly not a constant presence. Unable to describe how he himself feels with the sudden force of his mother in his life, never taught how to navigate the ‘real’ world which feels so much harsher, colder than the one he knew at Synanon full of songs, dance, attention and children to play with, he doesn’t understand his own emotional states. Now he is weighted down with a debt he owes her for saving he and Tony. This depression thing, whatever it is, consumes her and it’s his job to be the little man, to obey whatever character building skills she wants her children to have. No one protects him from monsters, real or imagined, not even his big brother who seems to hate him and deeply resent their mother. Their time at Synanon left them with wildly different experiences, making brotherhood impossible.

He grows up in a dysfunctional household, with a mother whose deep depressions eclipse her children’s very real struggles and a father too tough and footloose to be of much guidance. Overcome by anxiety and fear after leaving Synanon, and reeling over their father’s betrayals their mother doesn’t have room for optimism nor tender mothering. Clinging to the idea of self-sufficiency more often than not leads to psychological torment for her sons. Before long it is Mikel who is behaving like the adult, or worse, like an AA sponsor offering the comforting phrase “let go and let God.” His teen years don’t get any easier, especially the complicated relationship between he and Tony who is more often lost in anything that numbs the mind and body. Neither make it into adulthood untouched by the seeds of their parents idealistic past that began in Synanon.

Mikel makes his dizzying way into adulthood but the trauma of the past is never far behind. This memoir encompasses more than growing up in a cult, as Mikel was only a little boy when they escaped. It reveals how it infected their lives long after they left and fractured every bond in his family from grandparents to his own sibling. We learn why his parents fell under Synanon’s spell to begin with. It’s not all sad endings, though there are quite a few. Mikel Jollett finds a place for himself in this unfamiliar territory we call life, but what a trek!

Publication Date: May 26, 2020

Celadon Books

I absolutely love a juicy memoir, and this one reads more like an impossible-to-believe novel than a memoir. Impossible to believe, impossible to put down - I absolutely loved it.

Mikel Jollett was born into one of the most infamous cults of America - Synanon. Subjected to a childhood of poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Jollet slowly builds a life that leads him to University, and finding his voice as a musician and writer.

I don’t usually read memoirs by men & wasn’t sure what to expect.

HOWEVER. I love my true crime & seeing the mention of Synanon, I was intrigued.

I was 𝗯𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆 with this memoir. There is so much to unpack and I’m dying to hear everyone’s thoughts when they get a chance to read this. I read and listened on audio, meaning my husband got to listen to a fair chunk when I was working and he kept asking questions to be filled in on what he missed.

Coming from a background working in a mandated rehab and domestic violence centre, I was seeing red flags everywhere- but despite everything, Jollett ultimately shares a story with fierce love and loyalty. I really wanted to give young Jollett the biggest hugs and teared up a few times.
It’s so easy to look at people and situations from the outside or in hindsight, and judge- but hearing from Jollett perspective many will realize that when you are raised in a dysfunctional or abusive household, you don’t realize what is normal, what is wrong or right for adults to do.

There are many latchkey kid escapades that made me laugh out loud as well, which helped between the more tense moments.

By the end, this was also motivating to read. Jollett did not escape the effects of trauma and addictions present from an early age, but he hasn’t let them dictate the course of his life, and I found that inspiring.

Highly highly HIGHLY recommend.