Rating: 
Summary: One of the most captivating based on fact books I have read
Review: This book was one of the most compelling books I have seen in a long time. Deborah Layton completely immerses the reader into a dangerous world of emmotion and fear. This book is sure to stay with you in your heart for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting, enlightening and impossible to put down
Review: WOW! It took Layton a great deal of courage to come forward with this eloquent, honest and humbling account of her years with the crazed Jim Jones. What I had believed to be a bunch of suicidal nuts in the jungle has been redefined for me by the authors enlightening tale. As much as I love Tom Clancey, this book took the prize in the 'suspense and thrillers' genre. I hope she plans to write another book about her adventures on the trading floor to her decision to tell her daughter the truth. A great deal of change had to have happened during that time and I as her reader would like to know more.
Rating:
Summary: Enlightening, shocking and painfully exciting to read
Review: I cannot explain how moved I was while reading Ms. Layton's beautifully written memoir of life inside a prison world. I am astonished and relieved that someone could live through such pain and escape with their sanity then, twenty years later, re-enter such a fightening place and recapture all of it so vividly. I hope Ms. Layton's young daughter will be proud when she grows old enough to understand just how courageous her mother was to tell this frightening, ominous and yet heartening tale. What a wonderful gift of enlightenment Ms Layton's readers receive in her rivting retelling of her youthful, innocent and terrifying experiences inside Jim Jones'strange world. I finished the book in two days with goosebumps covering my arms and back. Truly, Ms. Layton remains one very brave woman.
Rating:
Summary: Enthralling & touching. A must-read for parents and teens.
Review: I picked up this book just to peruse it. However, after standing in the bookstore for over an hour, completely riveted, I purchased and finished it in two days. Although I was skeptical at first that another telling of the Jonestown tale could be of interest, I found it surprisingly entertaining, enlightening, and poignant. Like many others, I believed that the people in Jonestown must have been fools or worse. Layton's honest and eloquent account of her years under the influence of this brilliant deceiver, however, show how any one of us could have been seduced. I am thankful to Ms. Layton for having the courage to write this painfully revealing story. As a father, I feel wiser and will make certain that I teach my children to think for themselves.
Rating:
Summary: A memoir of life behind another type of Iron Curtain...
Review: ...that is compelling and poignant as it is exceptionally honest. Layton conveys her story with succinct accuracy and memory of her feelings and thoughts as she experienced years of submission to malevolent cult leader Jim Jones "Father", as many in the People's Temple called him. She not only describes the wiles and deceptions of Jones with horrifying clarity, but she also describes, with frank self-criticism, the tainted relationships she forged with some of the members in the cult (some of whom she betrayed regrefully, in order to escape). Her painful account of her forsaking her mother, Lisa, in the dashed hopes that she would later have saved her (Lisa died days before the mass suicide occurred in mid-November '78) is fresh as a new stab wound, undoubtedly for Layton as it is for her readers on the page. The acute emotion Layton draws from her experiences is, as a whole, readily felt and not easily forgotten.
Rating:
Summary: This horrific tale helps explain a 20 year mystery.
Review: Deborah Layton's book has given me the first real understanding about what people really felt and thought in Jonestown. They were scared to death. In fact, death looked like the best option for many after the cruel and diabolical machinations of their insane leader, Jim Jones. For 20 years, I have anguished over what really happened and Deborah in her complete honesty has given me the insight and understanding of what motivated young socially conscious men and women to grasp this cause. In the end, most of those same idealistic young people were prisoners with no escape. In my mind, this will always be a mass murder not suicide. Thank you Deborah for your braveness in warning us 20 years ago and now again for your courage in sharing your most personal thoughts.
Rating: 
Summary: Recent Reviews
Review: From: THE LIBRARY JOURNAL by Sandra K. Lendheimer excerpt Vividly written and powerfully told, this book shows convincingly how a group of people, seduced by promises of an "Eden" on earth, will blindly follow a charismatic leader. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR ALL COLLECTIONS From: ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY by Rhonda Johnson December 4, 1998 excerpt Layton, financial secretary to the Peoples Temple and a victim of sexual abuse by the Rev. Jim Jones, reminds us in this candid memoir that Jones' followers were not social misfits but vulnerable Americans searching for answers. Her cautionary tale of life with the manipulative, powerful, "Father" also recalls the privileged California environment that made the author, her mother, and her brother susceptible... this is a fascinating account of a debacle that continues to ressonate.
Rating: 
Summary: Easy and interesting reading.Fast paced.
Review: Everybody who wants to know why people join cults and how to prevent future Jonestowns and Wacos and Rwandas and Sabra and Shatilas and Holocausts and Bosnias and Pol Pots and etc should read this book: Accepted self-hate in our own lives leads us to go looking for Love for ourselves in all the wrong places and from all the wrong people except from ourselves and in ourselves: it is God who teaches us how to love ourselves and how to give love to ourselves: by loving us as Himself! So for instance, those who hate Jim Jones will tend to end up repeating exactly what they condemn. That is exactly what JJ himself did when he learned to hate himself and so to hate others: There are none so forgetful as those who hate to remember and so *will* not to remember. They won't so they can't. Jim Jones forgot himself. The George Santayna quote:'Those who *can* not remember the past are condemned to repeat it' is the very quote that is in the background of Leo Ryan the night before his death, with the Jim Jones' premeditated lessening of 'can' to 'do.'! The followers of JJ were trying to get love from a man who not only had a little love for himself but who also had lots of hate for himself: so he himself could not help but only love others a little and hate them a lot. See xviii, 71 and 260. As a Guyanese who visited Port Kaituma and its environs, I can only deeply sympathize with all the Americans who followed Jim Jones to Guyana: Pure 90% hate[their inner atmospherics] and the outer ambience of heavy rain, mud, heat and all the things and animals on p.172 and more made a green hell out of a paradise that needed Love to make it the living Promised Land. As a Guyanese I knew that the Guyanese Govt at that time wanted occupation of that area as a buffer vs Venezueala's claims, but the author adds to my knowledge when she wrote that Jom Jones also suggested that very idea as a reason why the govt should let him in. See p.127. So both sides conspired to put Jonestown in the worse place possible for people, especially Americans,to live. After reading this book, I want to also apologize for any of the ways that we Guyanese may have contibuted to the misery of the visitors to the land of El Dorado. I know that we were not to blame, but as people from the Country of Hospitality we want to take any responsibilty that is ours for the inhospitable conditions which made tjhat area a living hell and lent to the final tragedy. I was also very sorry to hear of the fate of fellow-Guyanese Bunny Mann. Please also know that the Guyanese pilots who fled the airport after the assault at the airstrip were terrified at the danger: 99% of the Guyanese population have never even held a gun: at least 99% of Guyanese of my generation. This is in ref to Charles Krause's experience after being shot. The net result of the flight of the pilots was that Charles was the first American journalist on the scene of the suicide site. I am sure that more than made up for the injury, Charles. The author does great word pictures on most of the chaacters. I also wish that the author had indexed the book. Anyway, it is a great read: read it straight for 2 days! Wish I could talk to the author.
Rating:
Summary: Recent Reviews
Review: CHICAGO TRIBUNE's BOOK REVIEW November 22, 1998 Cover Story by Bettina Drew -An excerpt- "Seductive Poison" is a perceptive, well-written and moving memoir of life in the Peoples Temple by Deborah Layton, a high-ranking Temple member who managed to escape Guyana before the mass deaths. Layton has obviously spent many years trying to make sense of her demeaning, frightening and traumatizing years with Jones, and, wisely avoiding the larger story of Jones and the Temple, she explores instead the complex psychology of her own experience... Layton conveys, through vivid scenes and natural-sounding dialogue, the closed communal world Jones created. She shows how Jones exercised confusing emotional,sexual and physical manipulation and abuse--including breaking the sexual bonds of married people--and how the mixture of love, fear and sense of purpose that he created kept her there for almost seven years. Also a suspenseful tale of escape that reads like a satisfying thriller. Layton's account is clearly the most important personal testimony to emrge from the Jonestown tragedy... (An excerpt) Copyright 1998 Chicago Tribune Company
Rating:
Summary: A disturbing and fascinating portrait of madness.
Review: This book focuses on how Deborah Layton became ensnared in the strange and twisted world that Jim Jones created for his followers. She skillfully describes how easily she, an intelligent but troubled young woman, became Jones' willing pawn. Her portrait of him is disturbing and frightening. The ending is suspenseful as she struggles to escape, both physically and mentally, from her captivity. She allows you to understand what she experienced without asking for pity. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to others.
| 
