Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)

Dinner for Vampires combines two subgenres of memoir: the celebrity memoir and the cult memoir. Bethany Joy Lenz is best known for her role as the neighbor Haley James Scott on the WB/CW teen drama One Tree Hill, which ran from 2003-2012. While her memoir describes her experiences on the show with her costars and criticizes some aspects of the production and actions taken by the production team, it doesn’t fit the model for a traditional “tell-all” memoir about her experiences in the limelight or reveal shocking details and secrets about the cast or crew. Instead, Joy focuses on her own experiences and personal growth outside of the show. In this way, it shares common ground with other celebrity memoirs like Open Book by Jessica Simpson and Storyteller by Dave Grohl. The marketing and cover design of Dinner for Vampires uses a similar early-90s motif and color scheme to the bestselling celebrity memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, the child star of iCarly. 

The memoir, like Joy’s life at the time, is split between her time filming on location in Wilmington and her time in a cult. It documents her decision to leave the cult after One Tree Hill ended, following the structure of other cult memoirs like The Program by Toni Natalie and Talking to Strangers by Marianne Boucher.