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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I thoroughly enjoyed this darkly off-kilter account of a young girl enmeshed in a small town cult. Bieker's ability to write unflinchingly about human nastiness, bodily motions, and environmental devastation reminded me a little bit of Donna Tartt and her The Little Friend, but with a more hopeful ending. I especially enjoyed how Bieker managed to convey the sense that the novel's events both in the recent past (think the 1980s) and the imminent future (cf. environmental devastation) as she slowly revealed that, really, it's all happening right now.
"We really should go," she said. "I mean, I just shot a man."
A unique and powerful story of mothers, daughters, female friendship, and blind desperate belief in a higher power. I couldn’t put it down, and when I had to, Lacey May and her plight kept creeping back into my thoughts.
This book wrecked me. Mostly in a good way. It is a difficult read but for me it was worth it. I would caution anyone with a history of trauma, however, as I think this would be quite triggering. Through the book’s painful moments, however, emerges a beautiful and complex coming-of-age story and a heroine to root for in a story that allows the reader to reconsider their previously held notions of faith, religion, womanhood, and family.
Child on child SA and Incest just yikesssssss
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest, Sexual assault
This well written book is good, but I am in a minority here and would not call it a masterpiece. It is also a tough read and young girls are left unprotected from the majority of adults in this book. The one adult who tries to protect Lacey is a "sinner" and operates a phone sex business.
I have a lot of mixed emotions after reading this book - they are complicated, much like the book themes.
I have a lot of mixed emotions after reading this book - they are complicated, much like the book themes.
This title and cover are absolute fire, but between this, and The Project by Courtney Summers, I can unabashedly say that cult stories should be reserved for nonfiction. The fictional accounts lack authenticity. Rarely is there enough about the leader or how vulnerability is exploited. I need more emotion, not just stage direction-like storytelling. The real life versions are always more fucked up, but sadly, more entertaining.
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
You know me, I love a good cult novel. And whoa boy, is Godshot, by Chelsea Bieker, a GOOD cult novel. But it's so much more, too. Taking place in a suburb of Fresno in California's drought-addled Central Valley in (I think?) about 2011, the story is about 14-year-old Lacey May, her mother Louise, and the bad-man preacher Vern who is hell bent on bringing rain, but only succeeds in destroying everyone's lives.
Louise, who has ambitions of stardom, abandons her daughter and takes up with a man who tells her he'll make her famous — you know, the tale as old as time. But so Lacey May is left to live with her grandmother, and is stuck in the thrall of the two-bit preacher, Vern. Things go very badly for her from there.
One of the main messages of the novel, which rings so incredibly true in this day and age, is how mediocre white men use whatever means necessary — religion, drugs and booze, promises of fame — to try to control women and keep them subservient. Indeed, is a cult-like religion really that different than the sex industry? They're both run by awful men who are addicted to their own fantasy of themselves and have mostly never drawn an honest breath in their lives. Lacey May imagines a meeting where these terrible men get together to compare notes: "Did they have a club where they traded these ideas with one another? I imagined a low-down shitty man meeting, all of them sitting in circle..." There are just way too many low-down shitty men out there, aren't there?
This is an immensely readable, quickly moving, "fiercely written" (as Entertainment Weekly said) coming-of-age-in-the-worst-possible-ways novel that's part John Steinbeck, part Mean Girls, and part Going Clear. I LOVED this book.
Louise, who has ambitions of stardom, abandons her daughter and takes up with a man who tells her he'll make her famous — you know, the tale as old as time. But so Lacey May is left to live with her grandmother, and is stuck in the thrall of the two-bit preacher, Vern. Things go very badly for her from there.
One of the main messages of the novel, which rings so incredibly true in this day and age, is how mediocre white men use whatever means necessary — religion, drugs and booze, promises of fame — to try to control women and keep them subservient. Indeed, is a cult-like religion really that different than the sex industry? They're both run by awful men who are addicted to their own fantasy of themselves and have mostly never drawn an honest breath in their lives. Lacey May imagines a meeting where these terrible men get together to compare notes: "Did they have a club where they traded these ideas with one another? I imagined a low-down shitty man meeting, all of them sitting in circle..." There are just way too many low-down shitty men out there, aren't there?
This is an immensely readable, quickly moving, "fiercely written" (as Entertainment Weekly said) coming-of-age-in-the-worst-possible-ways novel that's part John Steinbeck, part Mean Girls, and part Going Clear. I LOVED this book.