Thank you to NetGalley and Page Street Publishing for the opportunity to read and review The Word by Mary G. Thompson. All opinions are my own.

Our main character Lisa was kidnapped by her father and grew up in a cult after her parents' divorce. She was taken when only seven years old. The story picks up when she is older, and we get many flashbacks between how she ended up in the current timeline of the story. Lisa has lived her life adhering to many rules and restrictions living the "Truth" of Citizens of The Word. Her father is strict, rigid, and abusive. Pretty soon in the story you learn that she is found and returned to her mother. Being home is not as easy as one might think. Lisa tetters back and forth (for nearly the entire book) between what she has been taught all her life and if those things are actually true and should she continue living that life. The plot thickens toward the end of the book with a twist some might not see coming. The Word will be available on May 21 of this year. Happy Reading!

This was raw and emotional. I felt so strongly for our young protagonist, Lisa... A journey like this is so daunting.

Lisa has been on the run with her religious zealot father after she runs away with him in the night. All she has ever known from him and about the world is THE WORD... The word of God bestowed upon her father tells her to be forever dutiful, to be quiet, to be subservient. When her mother's efforts to find Lisa pay off and her father ends up in cuffs, she is now supposed to leave everything she has known and go back to her sinful mother. She will play it all off like this is okay. She is determined to make it through each day so she can finally get back to her father and brother.

The hitch, Lisa knows that there was a lot more to what really went on during her childhood, but she is so scared to open her eyes and let that scary truth in, and that broke my heart. I am drawn to things that show the really harmful side of worship. What man does in the name of a higher power that consistently is known for forgiveness and peace. This was a little different because The Word focused more on a different way of looking at the holy power. I found that both unique, and utterly terrifying because of what kind of bizarre entitlement that gives people.

This was an intense read for me as I deconstruct what religion and faith means to me. I would recommend this to anyone else who is doing the same.

THOUGHTS

I appreciate so much of Mary G. Thompson's project here... but I just didn't get enough of it. This book feels conflicted in a lot of ways. It doesn't seem to know quite how seriously to take itself, where to go hard and where to pull back. Because it doesn't fully commit, it all comes off as rather bland, even if there's a rather nice twist at the end.


PROS
Social Conditioning: The social conditioning this poor girl has gone through is unbelievable... and unfortunately so believable. A lot of her internal thoughts, a lot of the rhetoric beat into her as a child, sounds extreme and yet isn't as far out there as most of us would like to believe.

Women Surviving: The cult that raised Lisa isn't exactly feminist. These women have it rough, but at the same time, they're resilient. They learn to exist under the rules meant to keep them down. They learn to smile and say one thing while thinking another, and while Lisa hates herself for being so "willful" all the time, this willfulness isn't just hers, and it adds an incredibly vital line of hope throughout this book.

Nuance: It can be really hard to see abuse creeping up on you when the abuse is something you just expect to happen. Lisa's mom didn't feel any problem with the cultish lifestyle that she and her daughter were being consumed by... until she realized her other choices had been taken from her. Lisa's mom is complicit in Lisa's own abuse, but she's a victim, too. And this book handles that nuance, that hard gray area, with such care.


CONS
One-Note: As much as I love the nuance in parts of this book, that nuance doesn't come through in all the places that it should. The religion raising Lisa, after all, is kind of one-note. It's just a haven of abuse, a space that relegates women to being uneducated homemakers fully dependent on their men. And while there are certainly religious groups like this, there are also reasons why those women would stay, why they would join up, why they would think or feel this is their calling. And that sort of nuance doesn't come through.

Temper Tantrum: Lisa's character... gets a bit confused at times. And not in the places the author intends. Lisa keeps going on and on about "putting up with her trial" after she gets taken from her father, but... her immediate reaction to returning to her mother's house is a childish temper tantrum. And that doesn't make sense with her character, with her internal dialogue, or with her upbringing. And it isn't really questioned or examined in the narrative either, so... what? Lisa's characterization sometimes feels unintentionally wonky.

Quick to Flip: I get that Lisa's really wrestling with everything here, and her inner life is supposed to be twisty and complex. But her inner life doesn't feel complex. It just feels contradictory--like you've got Lisa's voice juxtaposed to the "right" or "authorial" voice instead of two (or more) warring sides of Lisa. Lisa's subsequent change of heart doesn't make a whole ton of sense, since she's not internally complex. At least not in a believable way.


Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
6/10
Those who appreciated Jinger Duggar Vuolo's memoir Becoming Free Indeed might like dipping into this world of religious conditioning and women who dare to ask questions. Fans of Amelia Brunskill's Wolfpack will like this innocuous-on-the-surface new cult.

Engaging and immersive. A recommended purchase for YA and HS collections where cult titles are popular.

**Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for a fair and honest review**

The description of this book had me pressing the 'Request' button pretty quickly. Cults fascinate me; the idea that someone can charm and convince others into believing exactly what they want them to believe, power being used in terrible ways, etc.

In this story we meet, Lisa / Alyssa who, at the age of 7, is convinced by her Father to run away from her Mother (who has legal custody after their marriage ended) and to go with him. After all, their religious beliefs say that she belongs to him and her Mother is now "dead" after choosing to leave the marriage. They spend 9 years on the run before they are discovered and she is returned to her Mother.

How will she cope living in the outside world? Who is telling her the truth?