I cannot explain why I seek out books with spiritual themes or books that deal with tough religious issues. My best guess is that I’m trying to work out my frustration at the type of hurtful religion I grew up with through literature. I haven’t found a book that deals with it in the way I need (Looking for Alaska is the winner so far). This book is getting there but doesn’t hit the mark. I gave in and bought this because the religious commune seemed familiar to me in the sense that I grew up in an area where a lot of these behaviors were simply seen as the norm. Not that my hometown was a whack job religious commune; I made it out without hatching an escape tempt.

At Mount Blessing, Agnes strives for sainthood while her best friend Honey wants to be free from all the restrictions the leader of the commune, Emmanuel, has set for his people. Agnes sees them as the chance to make her a better person, a more spiritual being, while Honey finds them ridiculous and restricting. When Agnes’s grandmother shows up for a surprise visit that causes serious problems within the family and a terrible accident throws everything into chaos, both Honey and Agnes find their friendship strained and their faith isn’t doing too hot, either. They leave the commune for the world beyond and not a moment too soon for me because I was 100% freaked out by that point.

Here’s the thing: I was predisposed to dislike Agnes. She is about as brainwashed as you can get and still have enough independent thought to move around on your own steam, even if that steam is being used in varied and exciting ways to kill herself in the slowest, most painful and also ignorant way possible. It is disturbing from the beginning and it didn’t get any easier as she clung to all the unhealthy habits she had adopted in order to reach the level of a saint. Wonderful job for a girl. Screw being as skinny Miley Cyrus! I have a better impossible goal in mind. It left my reading awkward. How do you get angry at a girl who does things because she’s been raised to think they’re acceptable and useful? All the fault is external—Emmanuel (yawn) and Agnes’s parents (characterization so weak you could see through them). The anger at her obliviousness is right there for you to reach out and grab so perhaps you can smack her with it, but I was just left feeling guilty for wanting to. Her adamant and constant proselytizing to Honey and her younger brother was so tiring.

I gambled on this story because it deals a favorite subject: sniping fanaticism. The message about religious extremism was heavy; I was afraid it would be too over the top and lose me because there’s having logical issues with faith and then there’s beating up on faith because you don’t like it—I did a lot of that in my younger days before I developed better cognitive abilities to realize I was being an asshole. Luckily, the story steps clear away from “religion is evil!” which is good.

I liked it despite the sign posts planted in the narrative telling the reader exactly what was going to happen. Suspense? Tension? This books has not heard of them! They are not B.F.F. The foreshadowing might as well have walked up and punched me in the face. I can overlook those things; they’re really hard to do well. My real issue with the book was the cop-out climax to the road trip.

Here’s the thing about shady moral issues: it’s cheating to drag out a moral issue and then skimp on the resolution to that moral issue with sleight of hand. I had this same problem with the end of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, which was a really good book up until the last two chapters where it became a hackneyed attempt at actually following through on the promise it spent an a few hundred pages building up to, magically transformed into a Lifetime Movie Event. Not that I have anything against Lifetime Movies per se, but so many of them smack of laziness. It’s all wish-fulfillment and it has a shiny bow that likes to get stuck to your brain. Tidy endings are fine as long as an author makes it feel natural and not just the quickest route out of writing something difficult. It feels fake and forced I can’t begin to imagine myself out of that. Perhaps that’s a talent I will develop later.

The other problem I had with this book was the same problem I had with Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature — the villains. Most of the time I think it’s a mistake to make a villain out of someone using faith as a weapon because it never ends well; it’s too hard to make them three-dimensional. Preacher villains were old oh, thirty years ago. Their time has passed. They’re done! Curtains. The end. Be seeing you, friend, and please do not dip into the collection plate on your way out the door. The villains here were boring, devices for a heavy-handed message about control and greed with no redemptive human traits. Some might say, “Renay, they were meant to be the bad guys! They’re distorting religion and controlling people for their own pleasure! Why are you so picky?” I’m picky because it’s not dynamic. So the leaders do awful things to kids and take money and partake in hypocritical behavior—all bad things. Where are the good things, the things that make people like Agnes’s parents believe in them? All those people are there for a reason. I drew a huge blank on that. They weren’t real beyond being the obligatory evil dudes and the impact was lost for me. Villains can be interesting and make the reader conflicted (hello, Final Fantasy XII), but not if the human element is missing. They can’t be cardboard. They have to be people with fears and dreams and reasons that we see and, “hey, free bling from ignorant, sheep-like people.” isn’t cutting it for me anymore. It’s become cliché.

Also, the butterfly thing was a little pasted on. Just a little.

I did like Honey and Agnes as friends. The friendship aspect was spot-on. It was just unpredictable enough, Honey just rude enough and Agnes just obtuse enough to make me wonder how their relationship was going to be resolved (although by the half-way mark I had it figured). This story benefited from the plot making the friendship deeper without it feeling too sentimental. No tissues here, but warm fuzzies are a possibility.

I liked it; I’m glad I read it. It’s not the book I needed personally and I spent way too much time writing revisionist fanfiction of it while reading (oops). Still! Still. Worth it.

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