This was my very first ARC (which I’m still very excited about 😂) and I’m happy to say I was totally captivated by it.

The Celestial Wife was a fictional story (inspired by true events) about a young girl, Daisy Shoemaker, who lives in a polygamous cult called Redemption in the 1960’s.

Daisy is 15 years old. She is eagerly awaiting her “Placement” when she will be told who she is to marry. She dreams of marrying a boy named Tobias, but soon finds out she is set to be another wife to a man who is much older than her.

Daisy, who has mostly followed the rules of her upbringing thus far starts to see the reality of her situation. She begins to question the Bishop’s intentions, she doesn’t want to live as a plural wife, she wants to be able to make her own decisions in her life.

So she decides to run.

This is where the story really hooked me in. Daisy runs away from Redemption and finds herself living amongst people she has been taught to fear, but her past isn’t ready to let her go just yet…

If you’re anything like me, this book will probably enlighten and infuriate you in equal parts. This is set to be released April 9, 2024 and I highly recommend checking it out.

Thank you so much @simonschusterca for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review!

Many thanks to Simon and Schuster Canada and NetGalley for the Digital ARC!

“The music swept me away, as if I had stepped through a portal into a different dimension.”

Daisy, or Daisy-Flower as her dear friend Saffron calls her, escapes a handmaids-tale-esque polygamist cult in BC, Canada to find her freedom. Based on very real cults from very real places in Canada, Leslie Howard expertly balances emotion and truth in this stunning book. As someone who grew up in religion, albeit a non-fundamentalist one, this book deeply resonated with me. The deconstruction, the search for your own identity and truth, and the way to a found family all made me breeze through the story. Though I occasionally felt a lack of emotional depth in the story, and felt parts of the writing to be rushed, I still connected with the main character and her journey.