I came across Cult Classic on a BuzzFeed listicle of books to read. It sounded interesting enough to me that when I later found it on the BookOutlet website, I decided to add it to my order. I needed something light to read after Demon Copperhead, and the blurbs on the back over of Cult Classic describe it as “funny” and “romantic”, so I thought it would do the trick. After a slow start, I found Cult Classic to be an interesting read, but not the rom-com I was expecting. I did not find it very funny, more like mildly amusing.

Cult Classic is about a millennial woman living in New York who has a long list of ex-boyfriends that she keeps mementos of in a box that she hides in her closet. When the novel opens, Lola has been with her current boyfriend, who she calls Boots, for a couple of years and they are engaged to be married. But she is beginning to question her relationship with Boots when she suddenly starts bumping into her ex-boyfriends. Coincidence? No. It turns out her ex-boss has started a “cult” (that he insists is not a cult) that involves subliminal messaging and meditation to influence people’s lives (it’s definitely a cult), and he is using Lola as his guinea pig to help her decide what she wants to do about Boots by “influencing” her ex-boyfriends back into her life.

Cult Classic initially had me wondering why I was even bothering to read it. I was annoyed with it for being yet another story about woman with a loving and supportive partner and not knowing how good she has it. Lola’s interactions with the ex-boyfriends seem purposeless to me because it is obvious they were not great boyfriends. The cult, as absurd as it is, makes the novel more interesting because it injected some mystery into the story. What influence would these ex-boyfriends have on Lola’s decision with what to do about relationship with Boots? What is in the mysterious meditation room that Lola is not allowed inside of? The cult’s premise of subliminal messaging also had me pondering its potential negative real-world applications if, you know, this were a work of non-fiction (unlike that creepy and psychotic Microsoft Bing ChatGPT, which unfortunately exists in the real world).

Cult Classic is a quirky little novel that will not be everyone’s cup of tea. I did not get what I was expecting out of it, but it did have me ruminating over how I tend to obsess over certain things from my past, and how this is not helpful to my present mental health. We all should be careful with what memories we decide to keep in the box hidden in the back of our closets.