A review by phoebereads
The Project by Courtney Summers

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

5.0

 This book absolutely floored me. I inhaled it in a single day. It's a brilliant and haunting book that cuts right into the power and pain that cults are centered around. Courtney Summers has the ability to write incredibly compelling characters and the girls who her stories are centered around are given the chance to be messy and hurt, but yet still find their inner power and strength. The girls of The Project are no different, and Lo and Bea's story is deeply compelling and traumatic and real. Where the book really shines is in how it pulls both the reader and Lo into this world of the Unity Project until we too begin to buy into them, or at least until we begin to truly understand why anyone would join such a group, including Bea. The horror and the abuse that underlie cults, like in real life, is saved for later until you've already been drawn in too far. The characters of the Unity Project too are all deeply complicated and again, a masterful portrayal of all the different people involved in allowing cults to continue and succeed. This is ultimately a book about pain and grief and the things we do to try to heal and feel whole, even when the paths that puts us on are deadly.
I really loved this book and I can't recommend it enough. Bravo to Courtney Summers.

**Thank you to the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review! 
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