Review Detail

I expected this book to be more about Riley finding romance with Julia and her kind of figuring out who she was by committing the sins (like a coming of age novel) than it was about taking the pastor down and trying to show what a bad person he was and how he used fear to hold people in his grasp. And that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just wasn’t what I went into this book thinking it was going to be.

The whole premise was interesting, a girl who was shunned by her church being forced to attend a church camp and then trying to use the seven deadly sins as a way to change people’s minds about the pastor. I liked that it felt very realistic in how the people were portrayed and how religion can be used as a weapon against others. It also was fascinating to see how easily the church could turn against its own when they did something they disagreed with or felt were “sins.”

Overall this book was really well done and very important for people to see how religion can affect people and can help kids who are raised in these kinds of environments see that it doesn’t always have to be just one way. It can also help queer kids raised in these ways understand that nothing is wrong with them.