This one should have been a knockout for me. The premise is rich and layered: grief, cults, identity, legacy. And Nicole Cuffy’s writing is undeniably elegant and thoughtful. There are stretches that feel like literary gold, especially when exploring the allure of belief and how trauma morphs into ideology.

But I’ll be honest: while I was intrigued by the dual timeline and the philosophical undercurrents, I never fully connected emotionally. Faruq’s descent into “the nameless” was compelling in theory, but the pacing dragged at points, and the flashbacks to Vietnam sometimes felt like a different book entirely. It was more cerebral than visceral for me, and I wanted to feel his unraveling more than I did.

Three totally different narratives are combined for a unique, if somewhat disjointed, experience. The primary narrative was genuinely engaging, and I do love a epistolary section-- the flashback to Vietnam was evocative, though it felt somewhat out of the universe of the rest of the novel. Would recommend for most people though.

Faruq Zaidi is a young journalist who investigates a cult called "the nameless." He embeds himself at their base in the California redwoods. The leader Odo is a Vietnam War veteran who received his 18 Utterances years ago while fighting for the U.S. The leader may be hiding something sinister, though. Can Faruq uncover the truth as he confronts his past? Or will he succumb to the nameless spell?
The novel is told in three threads - present in California, past in Vietnam and past in Texas where the nameless got into a fight with a fundamentalist evangelical church. That part of the book was easy to understand. The author does a great job at differentiating between timelines.
But that's the only praise I can give this book. I kept expecting the three threads to intertwine and make sense. They never did. That's the part of the book that I really don't appreciate. I'm all for realism, but I also want to understand the point of a book. And this one seems to have no point.
I finished this book in hopes of discovering a satisfactory ending, which never happened.

Very, very bloated - I wanted to enjoy this, but there are a lot of details and backstories that bring the pace to a crawl.

I was really looking forward to reading this book but it ended up being just okay.

In three main narratives, O Sinners! tells the story of a cult called The Nameless—its leader, its followers, and its enemies. For the most part, we follow Faruq Zaidi, a journalist and disaffected Muslim, as he enters the cult compound to write an exposé on its famed leader, Odo. As you may anticipate, the longer Faruq spends in the cult, the more he sympathizes with its adherents, particularly when it comes to their stoicism in grief. As Faruq works to process the passing of his father, he comes to understand what his own life's work is meant to be.

The cult in this book was so generic as to be forgettable. It was like a vague culmination of every cult you've ever heard of, minus any exciting evasions of the law—charismatic leader, devoted followers, free-love compound in the West. The other two narratives don't add much to the plot either. We follow a band of Black infantrymen drafted into the Vietnam War and then a documentary screenplay outlining the cult's run-in with a group of evangelicals in Texas. If these perspectives had neatly tied together in the end, or if there were a punchier finale than "we all have to deal with death", then it might have been worth the slog. But ultimately, I didn't think there was much to feel or learn from this and don't necessarily recommend it.

I find the way that people fall into cult mentalities so interesting. I read this book very quickly, because I was so intrigued by the plot. I enjoyed the back and forth in the story of the narrator's family, the Viet Nam War, and the compound. Many thoughtful questions were raised in the book. Unfortunately, the book ended to no answers to any of the mysteries or the questions that were posed. I read it, but it is among the most disappointing I have ever read. I could not recommend this title to anyone.

I could not stop reading this book! The plot was so compelling and the characters were so mysterious! It was suspenseful and thou9ht provoking. Ultimately, it's one of those books where not that much happens, but everything happens, ya know?

Nicole Cuffy’s O Sinners! explores themes of faith, race, family, and history—topics that never fail to draw me into a novel. The story follows Faruq, a Muslim-American journalist who is still mourning the recent death of his father when he embarks on a new assignment: a story about The Nameless, a cultish community in the Northern California redwoods that rejects mainstream society and its “distortions” and seeks to fill the world with “beauty” and “joy,” most popularly in the form of trendy, hashtag-laden Instagram posts. The Nameless’s leader is Odo, a shadowy but charismatic figure whose time as a young soldier during the Vietnam War has left him critical of the American imperial project and imbued with the kind of pithy “utterances” that his followers take as wisdom. Cutting back and forth in time and perspective—from Faruq, to Odo’s years in Vietnam, to the script for a documentary film about The Nameless’s legal battle against a fundamentalist Christian church in Texas—O Sinners! ultimately asks the question: What’s the difference between a cult and a religion?
…
I was hooked by the novel’s central question and by the author’s refusal to offer easy answers to it. In Cuffy’s hands, The Nameless aren’t transparently evil; they’re not financially exploitative like Scientology, nor apocalyptic like Heaven’s Gate, nor bigotedly violent like the Westboro Baptist Church. I kept waiting for a dramatic revelation about Odo or The Nameless, one that would squarely and roundly condemn them as a dangerous, shadowy, evil cult—a revelation that would’ve confirmed my preconceived ideas about this group and its leader. Cuffy’s much too sophisticated for that. She weaves together various threads—The Namless’s utopianism, the angry evangelical vigor of the Texas megachurch, Faruq’s own lapsed Muslim faith, and his memories of his father’s determined devotion—to show the messiness and complexity of all religious conviction, the exchanges and compromises that all people make in their quest to find some ultimate meaning in life. While not everything in this book worked for me, and while I found the pacing of the story unnecessarily slow, O Sinners! was nevertheless an unexpected treat in my 2025 reading life thus far.

Faruq Zaidi, a Pakistani-American journalist mourning the recent loss of his father, a devout Muslim. He is given an assignment for the journal he works for. It is to write an investigative feature about a cult called the “nameless” which quickly turns personal. The world of “the nameless is a California-based cult led by Odo, a Vietnam War veteran turned spiritual leader. The Nameless live by the 18 Utterances, doctrines both mystical and seductive. He goes deeper into the movement, staying first with the San Francisco devotees Clover and Aeschylus and eventually enters the cult’s Forbidden City in the redwoods, the line between observer and participant begins to blur. Will he become a member of the cult?

The author has written about Odo’s past in Vietnamese. He also includes Nero from a documentary which the cult gives a chilling, meta-narrative commentary. These two threads are parallel to Faruq’s narrative. The themes of the book include identity, faith and the cost of belonging. The book is fiction yet at the same time as I read it “felt” like nonfiction. I didn’t expect this book to be about faith and doubt.

I don't know if I ultimately understood exactly what Cuffy was trying to say in this book, but I did find most of it fascinating. The questions of belief and the line between religion and cult, fanaticism and devotion, were interesting and parsed out well.

But the characters, despite our spending so much time with them, never felt fully realized to me. Odo is a blank page, and even with the flashbacks to his time in Vietnam, it never felt like we got to know anything about him. He answers questions with questions, platitudes with platitudes, to the point that he often seemed to be speaking nonsense; where was the charisma that his followers saw in him?

I never fully connected to this book. There was little warmth here, which would have helped make these characters feel more real, more natural. Instead it felt like they began life as a creative writing prompt in a well-to-do graduate program.. I much preferred Cuffy's last novel because there was connection there, emotion and feeling; that was lacking in her follow-up.

I was looking forward to reading this book because be all accounts it should have been right up my alley, but it was such a slog. The disjointed nature of alternating timelines coupled with the script interstitial really made it difficult for me to connect with the story. I wish the book just focused on the cult and an examination of the allure of belief. That would have been a big improvement. Although I found even those sections kind of infuriating because Odo is such a off-putting sanctimonious blow-hard that says nothing interesting or meaningful and yet we’re supposed to believe that Faruq is seduced by his preternatural insightfulness. I just couldn’t buy into this. This one was not my favorite.

This book caught my attention immediately by the description after having no past knowledge of the book or author. I was drawn to the plot (we love a cult story) and was very pleased with the writing style and cadence of the book. I'll 100% seek out more by Nicole in the future.

O Sinners! is a compelling novel that delves deep into the complexities of faith, trauma, and personal identity. Nicole Cuffy weaves a rich narrative that explores the impact of cults and the struggles of reconciling past wounds, including haunting Vietnam War flashbacks, which add emotional depth to the story.

The characters feel real and flawed, and the exploration of difficult themes is handled with sensitivity and nuance. While the pacing occasionally slows, the overall story is gripping and thought-provoking, offering plenty to reflect on long after the last page.

This book is a strong choice for readers who appreciate stories that challenge perspectives and explore the darker corners of human experience with empathy.

Would’ve been 4 stars but it has instagram picture descriptions?????? so docked it a star.

Overall, the plot had a good grip on me, story telling was well paced, and character development was 10/10.

A thrilling reflective journey through America's past. A little overwrought at times, but stunning nonetheless.

This was an interesting read about a man struggling with his faith, the death of his father and his mother’s death several years ago. As a journalist he decides to learn more about a new movement that has become popular and created its critics. Some believe it is a cult.
While writing his story Fariq finds himself changing. Is he falling for the Nameless ideals or he becoming more introspective?
Told in three different voices, Odo as a soldier in Vietnam, a transcript of a documentary made about the homeless and current time. It was a slow read but kept my attention. However, the ending left me feeling a bit hollow. I really didn’t understand the ending, I may go back and reread it again, but ambiguous endings are not my favorite.

O Sinners! is a bold, thought-provoking novel that dives deep into grief, belief, and the pull of belonging. It follows Faruq, a journalist grieving the loss of his partner, as he infiltrates a mysterious cult—and slowly finds himself questioning everything he thought he knew.

The storytelling is layered and lyrical, weaving past and present in a way that feels both intimate and unsettling. Nicole Cuffy does an incredible job capturing the vulnerability that draws people to faith, even when it turns dangerous.

If you like literary fiction that challenges you and stays with you, this one is a powerful, unforgettable read.

It took me forever to get into this book, but it was worth the work. It is definitely a very slow paced and relatively quiet story. Dont expect a huge climactic scene. Also- Don’t be fooled by the incredible cover - this book is tough. O Sinners takes a somewhat journalistic look into a cult and into war - two very heavy topics. The layout is strange but it works for this particular story. At times it felt like I was reading two different books at once but ultimately mostly everything came together. A handful of scenes - such as descriptions of war - were almost *too* well-written in the fact that the author did such a good job of transporting me there.

This book sounds right up my alley: dual time lines, mixed media and a cult?! I was beyond excited to read it. I started this book and put it down 2 different times until finally I was able to read it to the end on the 3rd time but something just wasn’t clicking for me and I’m honestly not sure what it was.

This book wasn’t for me but it wasn’t bad either.

I had high hopes for this book, but unfortunately, it fell flat. There was little to no investment in the characters, making it hard to care about their journeys or outcomes. The Forbidden City was set up as a major element but ended up being disappointingly under-described and underused. The dual timelines felt unnecessary and added little to the present-day narrative. Overall, the story was far too lengthy for what it delivered and could have benefited from tighter editing and a more focused plot.