It's a very weird time to be reading this, considering current event in the USA. November is not an easy month either, so everything felt very bleak while reading this.

I can say I recognize the talent of the author, and that you can clearly see how fundamentalism grooms kids to become fucked up adults. You can see how that works in people in power's favor a lot. You can see how it has horrible impacts, both individually and collectivelly.

I often found myself trying recall what age I was and what was happening in my own life while Tia was having her first child, was using online message boards, etc. I'm French Canadian, so religion is different here, but I know if my parents just took a very small step in the direction they were already sort of engaged in, some of the stuff in that book could have been closer to my reality growing up. I guess that's why I have kind of a morbid curiosity about fundies and such.

But, somehow, when things settle back down and we go through the healing and empowering motion towards the end of the book, it lost steam a lot. It felt hollow at times, at least for me. Might be some pacing issue, might be other things completely, I cannot quite put my finger on it. The "eat, pray, love" stuff was really not my vibe. I did like that CBD v. C-PTSD was talked about, and what other method were tried. But the healing part until the end of the book sometimes felt directionless and, as a reader, I started to lose interest in what the book was still trying to say. Also, at times... it felt kinda very specifically white privilege-y, but I lack the proper words to articulate how exactly.

I guess, if you go into the book wanting a deep dive into religious trauma, it's not quite that. It's a little more a domestic violence story, with a religious trauma context, than a book about fundamentalism per se. So at times, I think I felt like I wanted more on the religious front. But as Tia starts to take a step back from that, she says she doesn't care as much, and it make sense it's not that big a focus later on. It's more of a "this happened, then that happened, oh well" kind of vibe instead of a deeper look into things as they develop nowadays.

I also feel there's some stuff that are very clearly unsaid towards the end. For a memoir, it's always a bit frustrating when you had a more "open book" vibe for most of the book until that point. Like how her family doesn't understand her not going to church anymore. It's talked about in a therapy session context, and how it makes her sad that they don't understand and judge her for it, but then we don't circle back. There's times where something is said, skimmed, than we never get a resolution. I understand the author doesn't have to say everything about everything, but I'd say "if you don't want to talk about that, skip it altogerther". Because at times, at this point in the book, there were too many things like that were I felt like she was hiding things intentionnally, and this is not the kind of feeling you want to bring up in your readers when you write a memoir imo.

All in all, very interesting, fascinating even, and I also think it was well written, but it didn't quite stick the landing at the end