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.

I was very excited to read this book. The story sounded so interesting. Ultimately it fell flat for me. It was hard to get through and I didn’t find the characters compelling. Faruq’s story could have been so insightful, but I feel like I didn’t get to know him as well as I would have liked. The documentary and Vietnam flashbacks were confusing and broke up the narrative too much. It felt repetitive while we were with the nameless too.

This was one of those stories that slowly sinks into your soul and leaves a mark. There are some subtle mixed media vibes with the interjection of documentary screenplay slipped between the chapters and made the story feel less like fiction and more like a twisted piece of non-fiction. Faruq Zaidi is a journalist from New York that is having a hard time processing the death of his devoutly Muslim father. Faruq has plans to take time off and embed himself in a cult known as “the nameless” deep in the California redwoods. Odo is the enigmatic leader of the nameless, a Vietnam war veteran, and a true believer in what he calls the 18 utterances. Faruq is drawn deeper into the cult’s inner workings, remains cut off from society and extends his stay all with the hope of unraveling the mysteries of the nameless but finds that he is the one that is unraveling. He is forced to come to terms with all that he has been running from, while trying not to get sucked into the group’s magic. The story is told from three points of view- the present-day life of Faruq, Vietnam “flashbacks” of Odo’s time as an infantryman and in the above-mentioned documentary screenplay that depicts the clash of the Nameless with a Texas fundamentalist church. I personally loved the Vietnam flashbacks the most and wish more of the story was centered on that, but then this wouldn’t be the deep book that it is. This is a tale of grief and a tale of confusion. This is a story of love and a story of faith. I think that anyone who picks up this book will be forced more than once to stop and think about the purpose of life and their place in the world. The setting of this book perfectly matches the mood of each point of view- The comfort of the redwoods, the self-discovery that comes with being in another country and the harsh prairie existence where it seems like nothing is your friend. Nicole Cuffy delivers this slightly horrific story with beautiful prose and thoughtful introspection. This book just feels like it will be one of the top literary fiction books this year.

This just had a lot going on. I couldn’t follow, i don’t know if it was because of the subject material or the story telling, but it just wasn’t for me.

O Sinners! is unexpectedly a bildungsroman novel of Faruq's self-discovery. It is a bit misleading to mention the cult in the description as I know very little about the cult itself and less about its followers. The leader, Odo, is interesting enough, but too much time is spent on his time in Vietnam with too little payout. The big moments are skimmed over, leaving us trudging through the bush with the soldiers more often than learning relevant information. I wanted to know more about the cult and who Odo really was. There is much deflection and distortion instead. Faruq's story is the most interesting, and I would have loved to read the book he really wanted to write, at the very least an excerpt at the end.
TW: there are a LOT of racial slurs in this novel. Brace yourself before reading the Vietnam flashbacks.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House, One World for this ARC!

Thank you to One World for the copy! A lot of moving parts in this one, and not all entirely relevant or cataclysmic to the story. O Sinners! delves into a religious—or from the followers' perspectives, non-religious (yet still upholding concepts of god and dogma, etc.)—cult called the Nameless. At the center is the mystical and enigmatic Odo, whose backstory is told in Vietnam War flashbacks in between added context from documentary transcripts. And since that's somehow not enough, there's also our actual protagonist, Faruq, a journalist investigating the Nameless while struggling to reconcile with the recent death of his father.

With all of the narrative shifts, and even Instagram descriptions thrown into the mix, it often felt like there was a lot going on, but there were moments where I'd look up from the book and think how little the story's actually progressed. I think about 75% of the way through, I started to wonder where all of this was really going.

Although spirituality as a concept and practice is explored all throughout, I still felt like there was something missing as a whole. There's acts of defiance against religion, disbelief, and surrendering, yet none of it felt entwined with the other. They were all just pieces to the plot rather than genuine elements of a crafted story. The ending ultimately feels unearned and falls flat due to that lack of interconnectedness, especially with the Vietnam War flashbacks.

Those chapters were also some of the least appealing parts of the book. I don't want to negate the historical accuracy of the dehumanizing levels of racism towards the Vietnamese people but damn that was a lot of slur usage lol

2.5 rounded down!

An interesting read I didn’t really know what I was getting into. There is 3 different parts to this with so much going on. I felt like the war narrative was an interesting addition. Lots of confusing parts where I really did not know what was going on.

Unfortunately this really didn't work for me. O Sinners! seems caught between two aims -- the hope of being commercially successful and a lot of fun and the dream of being meaningful and wise. As so often seems to happen, it fails utterly to balance these two goals and winds up a big soggy mess that is too confusing and boring for the commercial reader and too stupid and shallow for the literary one. I've seen a lot of this sort of fish-nor-fowl novel in the past few years and it's frustrating because it seems so clearly to be a function of the state of the publishing industry and, more importantly, a waste of time and good ideas. I don't think Nicole Cuffy is a bad writer, but this book does her no credit.

I really tried to get into this because I liked the premise, but it was just too difficult. This wasn't for me but I don't want to say it was bad.

This book was not for me. I found the writing to be dense, confusing, and hard to follow. Because of this, the story fell short and after 100 pages, I decided to no longer continue.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House- One World for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. I was so excited to read this because I love books about cults! However, the book did not live up to my expectations. I really didn't like the way the book was structured (it was very confusing and I just couldn't get into the book as a result). I didn't enjoy the fake documentary part or the Instagram posts... I was expecting so much more from this.

So this book piqued my interest because anything cult-related/adjacent... I LOVE. This book has an interesting format. It circulates between Faruq's current POV, Odo in the Vietnam War, and the transcript of the documentary about the nameless. This book made me realize that I don't love reading about active war scenes. I think it's because I don't have the background knowledge and vocabulary about military. The story had a lot of potential... I think that there could've been more done with Faruq and his distortions. I think the story fell flat. It was beautifully written, but it seemed to come to an abrupt stop.


Thank you to NetGalley and One World for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

O Sinners!
by Nicole Cuffy
A dark look at the need for people to find acceptance. The Vietnam war has significant affect on the soldiers. The acceptance and persecution they received on returning home made healing even more difficult. This book shows the repercussions of the narrow look of the government on the men and women they send to war. This book shows that this negative atmosphere makes bad situations.

I was expecting this one to be a bit more horror as Goodreads categorized it but it was not so much! I am fascinated by cults but maybe I am more interested in real ones/non fiction than fiction! This was well written and suspenseful but one I am not sure about