Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - The Polygamist's Daughter: A Memoir

I always have a hard time rating memoirs because I do not enjoy adding a rating or a score to someone's personal story and experiences. However, from strictly a reader-storytelling experience, I was engaged to the point of wanting more and I was eager to see how her life events played out.

In short, Anna grew up in poverty, constantly on the move, and rarely seeing her parents despite living with other family and friends. Her childhood is full of emotional abuse and neglect before she decides to take life into her own hands, seeking change.

The story itself is succinct and comes full circle as she is able to share her life today, as an adult and a mother.

Anna is brave and resilient.

Trigger warnings include: murder and adult-minor relationships.

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pam_'s review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

2.0

Captivating. I listened to this memoir as an audiobook and got through it very quickly.

The main reason I chose to give this a mediocre rating is the evangelical Christian message that is heavily preached in the last third of the book. The tone of the book shifts so dramatically that it feels like you’re reading a Christian testimonial (and not a memoir about surviving/escaping a cult). This meant that while I picked this book up expecting one thing, I ended up getting something completely different by the end of the story. The entirety of the book’s events are used to push an evangelical Christian message. At one point, the author literally writes that God became the father she never had.

Ultimately, this is a powerful and gripping memoir. However, it devolves into a heavy-handed Christian testimonial by the end of it. This tonal shift was surprising, unexpected and off-putting.

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mondovertigo's review

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.25

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themoonshinegirl's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

3.0

While I am absolutely heartbroken by and empathetic to the trauma that Anna LeBaron has gone through, this book read more like an attempt to proselytize to Mormons, polygamists and those still slightly more fundamentalist than the fundamentalist mega churches name dropped throughout the text. I can’t help but wonder if she would’ve gotten better mental health help sooner had she not been constantly in religious-based schooling and counseling. That being said, I do appreciate her advocacy for counseling - religious or secular - as necessary for healing trauma rather than just relying on spirituality.

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forrestalexander's review

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

3.75

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