Scan barcode
kdotsart's review against another edition
4.0
This was a powerful story. The only thing I didn't like is that she had so many opportunities and didn't take them. It was infuriating! But that may be because I was so invested in her.
There are so many secrets kept in this "village". I have nothing to compare this to personally, but I imagine that it is fairly close to a real cult religion.
There are so many secrets kept in this "village". I have nothing to compare this to personally, but I imagine that it is fairly close to a real cult religion.
lorireads's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
0.5
loribree83's review against another edition
4.0
Loved this book! Full review October 24 with TLC Book Tours.
reinventedreader's review against another edition
4.0
This was an interesting book, there were some great characters, the plot was interesting, and I was kept guessing as to what was happening a lot of the time. I enjoyed the book, but it was a bit different, and there were times towards the beginning where I wasn't sure I was liking it. And the plot was pretty infuriating.
Now for the characters...
Hanna is of course the lead character. She is strong and determined, but has so much love for her mother and her sisters that it holds her back. She exhibits rebellion at times, but goes along timidly at others. I found myself getting frustrated with her reactions at times.
I honestly did not understand Cara's {Hanna's mother} motivations, and that made it hard for me to truly connect with her. Emily {Hanna's sister} seems to be Hanna's greatest ally, but suffers from the brainwashing inherent in the community and does not think for herself.
The rest of the characters, with one exception, are pretty horrible. The men are awful, especially Jotham, Edwin, Brother Paul, and Paul the Second. And the women are either as awful as the men or incredibly timid. I realize it was the nature of the community, but I really don't understand their motivations. At least the women's anyway, the men's motivations were more understandable, for them it was all about power and control. The exception to this is the oldest of Hanna's brothers, who is kind, brave, and loyal to Hanna.
The other main character, Daniel, is loyal, caring, and hasn't been completely brainwashed like the rest of the town. He certainly has his flaws, but he was infinitely more likeable that the others! I found the relationship between them to be believable and honest. Though at times I felt Daniel was naive about the consequences of their actions.
Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this book through Net Galley and the publisher {Harlequin & Park Row} in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Now for the characters...
Hanna is of course the lead character. She is strong and determined, but has so much love for her mother and her sisters that it holds her back. She exhibits rebellion at times, but goes along timidly at others. I found myself getting frustrated with her reactions at times.
I honestly did not understand Cara's {Hanna's mother} motivations, and that made it hard for me to truly connect with her. Emily {Hanna's sister} seems to be Hanna's greatest ally, but suffers from the brainwashing inherent in the community and does not think for herself.
The rest of the characters, with one exception, are pretty horrible. The men are awful, especially Jotham, Edwin, Brother Paul, and Paul the Second. And the women are either as awful as the men or incredibly timid. I realize it was the nature of the community, but I really don't understand their motivations. At least the women's anyway, the men's motivations were more understandable, for them it was all about power and control. The exception to this is the oldest of Hanna's brothers, who is kind, brave, and loyal to Hanna.
The other main character, Daniel, is loyal, caring, and hasn't been completely brainwashed like the rest of the town. He certainly has his flaws, but he was infinitely more likeable that the others! I found the relationship between them to be believable and honest. Though at times I felt Daniel was naive about the consequences of their actions.
Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this book through Net Galley and the publisher {Harlequin & Park Row} in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
marziesreads's review against another edition
3.0
I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
3.5 Stars
This is an odd and yet very readable book. In fact, I'd have read it in a straight shot, if life hadn't interrupted. The story is that of a young woman, coming of legal age, in a rural polygynous community called Clearhaven. I found some aspects of the community, which is large enough to have a big daily market, to be rather sketchily drawn. The tremendous economic disparity within the community, and how that works as a justifiable disparity, within the structure of their faith bothered me. In this community, all the older sons are expelled, only the youngest kept and groomed to replace an aging father upon his death, while all daughters are married off to the older men in Clearhaven. In this structure, there are few men competing for all the women of this town. (No mention of inbreeding was made but needless to say, I had a lot of questions about genetics in this enclave.) Women must remain obedient and be guided by their fathers, husbands, adult sons. Frankly, I was amazed that these men were willing to wait until the young women were eighteen in order to force them into polygamy.
Hanna, our protagonist, is soon turning eighteen in her dirt-poor but surprisingly literate family. (Female literacy is especially something I would question in the community since an educated woman is more likely to rebel against the constraints presented.) She receives a new suitably modest dress (one of only three she possesses) for her 18th birthday, but the dress that's ominously awaiting her is the wedding dress (naturally recycled from that of her most recent sister-mother, Jessamina) when she marries Edwin, a man three times her age, becoming his fifth wife. Needless to say, this unusual 18-year-old girl (more on that later) is not down with this plan.
Some aspects of this story so perfectly capture the silenced, obedient aspect of victims of abuse and domestic violence. Encapsulated here we see the circumstances of domestic violence that can leave those with little experience working with DV/child abuse survivors' questioning "why didn't they just leave?" thus failing to understand how constricted one's possibilities appear to be when this life of abuse is all you have ever known. As we come to learn, Hanna hasn't had much violence visited on her personally because of her special status, which is part of a long reveal, in her family. Instead, she sees her beloved sister Emily, her beloved mother Kara, punished and physically abused by her father, often taking blows in her stead, in a sort of whipping -boy relationship. Thus, Hanna is tormented by both her coming fate, as the fifth wife of an old man with a predilection we won't get into here, and by her fear that leaving would be shirking her perceived responsibility to shield her mother, sisters and brothers, from her father's drunken wrath.
Early on in the book, Hanna re-encounters Daniel, the youngest son of a community benefactor, who one can infer is slightly younger than Hanna is, but who is far more worldly, since his parents have taken him and his two older brothers, ages eighteen and nineteen, to "The City" in order to acclimatize the older two boys to their forthcoming expulsion from Clearhaven. Daniel has seen and lived in the outside world for a while and marvels a bit at its wonders, including the monogamous marriage idea. Daniel is ambivalent about his future role in Clearhaven which, when revealed, leaves you ever so briefly questioning what choice he will make about the direction of his life. It's a foregone conclusion that Daniel will be smitten (just like every other man with eyes, don't get me started...) with Hanna, and Hanna is... if not smitten, exactly, quickly warmed to the idea of Daniel as a way out of her situation. Some reviewers have called this "instalove" but that wasn't my take at all. They were two kids with a shared experience, normal attraction, and a heaping share of infatuation. Why wouldn't an 18-year-old girl be drawn to a same age boy versus a kinky 60-something-year-old man? Why wouldn't any teenage boy be drawn to Hanna, a pretty teenage girl?
So now we come to my problem with this story. As briefly mentioned above, Hanna is special. A thinly built out aspect of magical realism is woven like a golden thread into the plot. While I won't get into the specific fairy tale aspect of her nature, since I don't want to spoil it for the reader, I am troubled by some aspects of the story. In more than a few instances Hanna is placed in sexually menacing situations. Her entire path out of her being menaced, and out of her community, is conveniently managed by magical realism. Now while I love a good fairy tale, I'm not sure that I think a story with such a gritty plotline should give us our heroine escaping her problems by means of sudden magical intervention. Meades has set this story in a fairly detailed real and present day world, has given us a heroine who is facing real and very ugly threats to her wellbeing. Magic suddenly saves her? This troubles me. Yes, it's a fantasy and make no mistake, I have no quarrel with the caliber of Meades writing which is excellent (and especially impressive given his afterword comments on the terrible TBI he suffered several years back). In this story we have a heroine who is rescued by 1) magic and 2) a boy. Given all Hanna's purported "specialness" I find this so... disappointing. I originally thought it might have been an editorial suggestion but after reading Meades comments about the origin and history of this story, which has been 12 years in the making, I feel he has written exactly what he intended to write. I can respect that choice but still question whether giving Hanna greater agency, either over her actions entirely without magic, or with her use of magic from the very beginning of the story might have given us a better story with a heroine who lives up to her remarkable origins.
A few more comments may go up on the blog about this book post-publication. In summary, Meades is a good writer. I just wish he'd given us a Hanna who lived up to the promise of her fall.
3.5 Stars
This is an odd and yet very readable book. In fact, I'd have read it in a straight shot, if life hadn't interrupted. The story is that of a young woman, coming of legal age, in a rural polygynous community called Clearhaven. I found some aspects of the community, which is large enough to have a big daily market, to be rather sketchily drawn. The tremendous economic disparity within the community, and how that works as a justifiable disparity, within the structure of their faith bothered me. In this community, all the older sons are expelled, only the youngest kept and groomed to replace an aging father upon his death, while all daughters are married off to the older men in Clearhaven. In this structure, there are few men competing for all the women of this town. (No mention of inbreeding was made but needless to say, I had a lot of questions about genetics in this enclave.) Women must remain obedient and be guided by their fathers, husbands, adult sons. Frankly, I was amazed that these men were willing to wait until the young women were eighteen in order to force them into polygamy.
Hanna, our protagonist, is soon turning eighteen in her dirt-poor but surprisingly literate family. (Female literacy is especially something I would question in the community since an educated woman is more likely to rebel against the constraints presented.) She receives a new suitably modest dress (one of only three she possesses) for her 18th birthday, but the dress that's ominously awaiting her is the wedding dress (naturally recycled from that of her most recent sister-mother, Jessamina) when she marries Edwin, a man three times her age, becoming his fifth wife. Needless to say, this unusual 18-year-old girl (more on that later) is not down with this plan.
Some aspects of this story so perfectly capture the silenced, obedient aspect of victims of abuse and domestic violence. Encapsulated here we see the circumstances of domestic violence that can leave those with little experience working with DV/child abuse survivors' questioning "why didn't they just leave?" thus failing to understand how constricted one's possibilities appear to be when this life of abuse is all you have ever known. As we come to learn, Hanna hasn't had much violence visited on her personally because of her special status, which is part of a long reveal, in her family. Instead, she sees her beloved sister Emily, her beloved mother Kara, punished and physically abused by her father, often taking blows in her stead, in a sort of whipping -boy relationship. Thus, Hanna is tormented by both her coming fate, as the fifth wife of an old man with a predilection we won't get into here, and by her fear that leaving would be shirking her perceived responsibility to shield her mother, sisters and brothers, from her father's drunken wrath.
Early on in the book, Hanna re-encounters Daniel, the youngest son of a community benefactor, who one can infer is slightly younger than Hanna is, but who is far more worldly, since his parents have taken him and his two older brothers, ages eighteen and nineteen, to "The City" in order to acclimatize the older two boys to their forthcoming expulsion from Clearhaven. Daniel has seen and lived in the outside world for a while and marvels a bit at its wonders, including the monogamous marriage idea. Daniel is ambivalent about his future role in Clearhaven which, when revealed, leaves you ever so briefly questioning what choice he will make about the direction of his life. It's a foregone conclusion that Daniel will be smitten (just like every other man with eyes, don't get me started...) with Hanna, and Hanna is... if not smitten, exactly, quickly warmed to the idea of Daniel as a way out of her situation. Some reviewers have called this "instalove" but that wasn't my take at all. They were two kids with a shared experience, normal attraction, and a heaping share of infatuation. Why wouldn't an 18-year-old girl be drawn to a same age boy versus a kinky 60-something-year-old man? Why wouldn't any teenage boy be drawn to Hanna, a pretty teenage girl?
So now we come to my problem with this story. As briefly mentioned above, Hanna is special. A thinly built out aspect of magical realism is woven like a golden thread into the plot. While I won't get into the specific fairy tale aspect of her nature, since I don't want to spoil it for the reader, I am troubled by some aspects of the story. In more than a few instances Hanna is placed in sexually menacing situations. Her entire path out of her being menaced, and out of her community, is conveniently managed by magical realism. Now while I love a good fairy tale, I'm not sure that I think a story with such a gritty plotline should give us our heroine escaping her problems by means of sudden magical intervention. Meades has set this story in a fairly detailed real and present day world, has given us a heroine who is facing real and very ugly threats to her wellbeing. Magic suddenly saves her? This troubles me. Yes, it's a fantasy and make no mistake, I have no quarrel with the caliber of Meades writing which is excellent (and especially impressive given his afterword comments on the terrible TBI he suffered several years back). In this story we have a heroine who is rescued by 1) magic and 2) a boy. Given all Hanna's purported "specialness" I find this so... disappointing. I originally thought it might have been an editorial suggestion but after reading Meades comments about the origin and history of this story, which has been 12 years in the making, I feel he has written exactly what he intended to write. I can respect that choice but still question whether giving Hanna greater agency, either over her actions entirely without magic, or with her use of magic from the very beginning of the story might have given us a better story with a heroine who lives up to her remarkable origins.
A few more comments may go up on the blog about this book post-publication. In summary, Meades is a good writer. I just wish he'd given us a Hanna who lived up to the promise of her fall.
jerkyf's review against another edition
3.0
2 1/2
Hanna is turning 18, and she is to be married to one of the older men in her polygamous cult. Her abusive father has basically sold her to an old friend of his in exchange for a profitable business deal. The sister wives in her family and in the family to be are preparing her for her new life as a fifth wife to a man three times her age. Her mother, on the other hand, is trying to convince her to run away, because she's special. She wasn't born like everyone else. She literally fell from the sky, so she's meant for better things. She meets a boy in the cult, the rich boy, and breaks all kinds of rules with him.
Here's my problem. She's 18. She's been a part of this world her whole life. She knows no other way of life. Her mother doesn't tell her she's special until the week she's to be married. But she meets this boy secretly and is surprised when she's caught. She goes to town with the boy and is surprised when she's caught. She doesn't even bother to change into her regular clothes before she goes back home. I can't believe someone so sheltered would risk so much. Honestly, I find that less believable than the magic storm/floaty thing. The bigger problem, though, is the idea that she shouldn't be married to an old, controlling and abusive man with multiple wives, but only because she fell from the sky. It'd be fine if not for that, and it's fine for the women and children left in the cult. There's no lesson, no change except for herself and her closest people, and it comes across as a happy ending.
Hanna is turning 18, and she is to be married to one of the older men in her polygamous cult. Her abusive father has basically sold her to an old friend of his in exchange for a profitable business deal. The sister wives in her family and in the family to be are preparing her for her new life as a fifth wife to a man three times her age. Her mother, on the other hand, is trying to convince her to run away, because she's special. She wasn't born like everyone else. She literally fell from the sky, so she's meant for better things. She meets a boy in the cult, the rich boy, and breaks all kinds of rules with him.
Here's my problem. She's 18. She's been a part of this world her whole life. She knows no other way of life. Her mother doesn't tell her she's special until the week she's to be married. But she meets this boy secretly and is surprised when she's caught. She goes to town with the boy and is surprised when she's caught. She doesn't even bother to change into her regular clothes before she goes back home. I can't believe someone so sheltered would risk so much. Honestly, I find that less believable than the magic storm/floaty thing. The bigger problem, though, is the idea that she shouldn't be married to an old, controlling and abusive man with multiple wives, but only because she fell from the sky. It'd be fine if not for that, and it's fine for the women and children left in the cult. There's no lesson, no change except for herself and her closest people, and it comes across as a happy ending.
sinamile's review against another edition
DNF: 25%
ARC Review: Received for free via NetGalley for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
CW/TW: abuse, forced marriage, incest, cult, dissociation,
I don't know how to appriately explain it, but there a way in which the sister was described at the beginning that made me kind of feel iffy. Maybe I'm being sensitive, but.
Shit like this makes me so uncomfortable, lol. Like you take Christianity and warp it to fit your own laws and rules and make yourself controlling over others is yikes. May the good Lord never put me in a situation where I am mistreated by another because they think they are doing it for the glory of God.
But anywhoo, this isn't the type of book for me. I tried to get into it, but I can't do it, so....
ARC Review: Received for free via NetGalley for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
CW/TW: abuse, forced marriage, incest, cult, dissociation,
I don't know how to appriately explain it, but there a way in which the sister was described at the beginning that made me kind of feel iffy. Maybe I'm being sensitive, but.
Shit like this makes me so uncomfortable, lol. Like you take Christianity and warp it to fit your own laws and rules and make yourself controlling over others is yikes. May the good Lord never put me in a situation where I am mistreated by another because they think they are doing it for the glory of God.
But anywhoo, this isn't the type of book for me. I tried to get into it, but I can't do it, so....
mmmmgreen's review against another edition
3.0
Poor Hanna. She's been betrothed to be the 5th wife of a much older man. It's a quick read and I thought it had a few twists that made it unique. I have to say her father is awful and manipulative. I enjoyed reading it!
zanecarey's review against another edition
2.0
This book started off fresh and interesting, but the best way to summarize my experience is that it wore me down.
Hanna is a girl living in religious compound, where at the age of 18 Brother Paul arraigns all the women to be married. As Hanna approaches 18 she begins to realize the duties and future that await her as the fifth wife of a man called Edwin. A strong caring sister, she tries to hold her house together under threat of her father Jotham and disjointed rule of sister-moms. After an encounter with a boy named Daniel, she begins to question her life, her birth, and everything else.
As the book went on, I just felt like every situation was just a little forced. Plot twists felt more like plot holes than anything. I think I expected some real story of survival and escape and this book dressed up Hanna's struggle just a little too much for me. I had trouble getting into her mind and adventures, and her entire 'romance' just rubbed me wrong. But would I recommend reading it? Yes, it's an appealing story and a quick read. I appreciated Hanna's voice, one foot in adulthood and one foot in childhood. This book was overall, frustrating and enjoyable.
Hanna is a girl living in religious compound, where at the age of 18 Brother Paul arraigns all the women to be married. As Hanna approaches 18 she begins to realize the duties and future that await her as the fifth wife of a man called Edwin. A strong caring sister, she tries to hold her house together under threat of her father Jotham and disjointed rule of sister-moms. After an encounter with a boy named Daniel, she begins to question her life, her birth, and everything else.
As the book went on, I just felt like every situation was just a little forced. Plot twists felt more like plot holes than anything. I think I expected some real story of survival and escape and this book dressed up Hanna's struggle just a little too much for me. I had trouble getting into her mind and adventures, and her entire 'romance' just rubbed me wrong. But would I recommend reading it? Yes, it's an appealing story and a quick read. I appreciated Hanna's voice, one foot in adulthood and one foot in childhood. This book was overall, frustrating and enjoyable.
forrestefires's review
3.0
(Trigger Notes: This book includes domestic violence and insinuated sexual abuse.)