I want to hear what answers could tempt sisters away from sisters, tempt lost boys in front of oncoming trains.
Synopsis:
Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died, Lo’s sister, Bea, joined The Unity Project, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt. Thanks to its extensive charitable work and community outreach, The Unity Project has won the hearts and minds of most in the Upstate New York region, but Lo knows there’s more to the group than meets the eye. She’s spent the last six years of her life trying–and failing–to prove it.
When a man shows up at the magazine Lo works for claiming The Unity Project killed his son, Lo sees the perfect opportunity to expose the group and reunite with Bea once and for all. When her investigation puts her in the direct path of its charismatic and mysterious leader, Lev Warren, he proposes a deal: if she can prove the worst of her suspicions about The Unity Project, she may expose them. If she can’t, she must finally leave them alone.
But as Lo delves deeper into The Project, the lives of its members, and spends more time with Lev, it upends everything she thought she knew about her sister, herself, cults, and the world around her–to the point she can no longer tell what’s real or true. Lo never thought she could afford to believe in Lev Warren . . . but now she doesn’t know if she can afford not to.
My Rating: 3.5/5 stars
My Review:
There are so many aspects I enjoyed about THE PROJECT: from its complicated sibling relationship, to how cults groom people who are lost, how people can rationalize their abuser’s behavior, and so much more.
Fair warning: this book is sloooowwwwww. If you don’t like slow books with atmospheric horror then you probably won’t like THE PROJECT.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review
While I enjoyed the writing style and liked how we saw Lo’s mental health begin to spiral to the point where she was perfect to groom for a cult, all in all no part of the plot surprised me. I guessed every single major plot point and probably 95% of the minor ones too. Do I just know too much about cults? Is that why nothing of the book shocked me?
Between the tone and setting I would classify this book as horror. It does a great job of gaslighting even the reader at times to the point where you want to question everything that’s happening. Psychological horror maybe?
This book definitely pushed the boundaries of that fine line between YA/NA. Many of themes have crossover appeal: you do have the soul searching aspect of YA but paired with the grittiness of of adult themes and problems. I would say the book was adult in content/theme and YA in spirit (so….NA overall).
This book has so many well written lines especially around Lo’s identity: What it’s like to have something horrible define you. What it’s like to have memory gaps. Who are you if you don’t remember, cant be remembered?
Also there is this one scene that is from Bea’s POV that I loved so much because everyone acts like pregnancy is supposed to be this wonderful things and no one talks about how bad it can feel to have your body no longer be your own:
There’s a grief she didn’t expect and hasn’t been able to articulate, doesn’t know how to put to words. She never got a chance to say good-bye to herself. She stares at her body, naked in the mirror, and she’s sorry she never made note of it before it belonged to anyone else. She can feel all the ways this child has claimed her even if not all of it is visible yet. She knows it’s there and that’s enough. She wants to go back in time and really see herself before its conception. The flatness of her stomach, the soft curve of her breasts, all of her only, gloriously, her own. Her breasts hurt all the time and she finds herself obsessing over their future function.
All in all I enjoyed the book. I loved the “dual” perspective/timeline. We follow Lo present day and Bea in the past joining The Project. I have no idea why the book is spliced into five parts though…if there were thematic changes between them I couldn’t tell 😅
I enjoyed the book but overall found it to be slow and predictable. The writing style and atmospheric horror made up for it though!
Recommend to people who like books with cults, atmospheric horror, psychological horror, dual trauma, and character driven works!
(Not going to lie I actually teared up on the very last page.)
Content Warnings and Trigger Warnings: suicide, recollections of parental abuse, mentions of car crush, parental death, grooming, cults, mentions of self-harm, allusions to sexual abuse by father, car accident, panic attack, memory gaps, branding, mereky consent stuff, eugenic-y thoughts by certain characters, gaslighting, physical abuse, violence
booksneedcaffeinetoo 