Monday, April 11, 2016

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes is a tension filled slightly whimsical nightmare. We meet Minnow with the words, "I am a blood-soaked girl." and she is literally and figuratively after escaping the cult in the woods then brutally beating another person. Mainly kicking them because her hands had been cut off. This crime is what lands her in juvie.
The story plays out from that point on and with periodic flashbacks. I simultaneously dreaded and couldn't wait to find out how Minnow lost her hands. It was as heart wrenching as I suspected it would be. The cult is everything bad you hear about cults and so I could understand her trouble with trusting and lashing out. It is just shy of 400 pages but reads like a much shorter book. An opportunity to meet with the person she beat presents and though I get why it played out like it did I hoped it would have changed by the end of the book. Maybe a sequel? The book works as a stand alone but there are enough questions that a sequel could work.

Amazon Description:
 The Kevinian cult has taken everything from seventeen-year-old Minnow: twelve years of her life, her family, her ability to trust. And when she rebelled, they took away her hands, too.

Now their Prophet has been murdered and their camp set aflame, and it's clear that Minnow knows something—but she's not talking. As she languishes in juvenile detention, she struggles to un-learn everything she has been taught to believe, adjusting to a life behind bars and recounting the events that led up to her incarceration. But when an FBI detective approaches her about making a deal, Minnow sees she can have the freedom she always dreamed of—if she’s willing to part with the terrible secrets of her past.

Gorgeously written, breathlessly page-turning and sprinkled with moments of unexpected humor, this harrowing debut is perfect for readers of Emily Murdoch's If You Find Me and Nova Ren Suma's The Walls Around Us, as well as for fans of Orange is the New Black.


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