“Adults are children with both more and less autonomy.”

The above quote was early in the book and stuck with me.

We meet our main character, Val, at a ranch owned by her father. It’s unclear why she’s there. There is a lot of mystery around her childhood and her father. Her father was the controlling type, but we discover something else as we delve deeper into the story.

I grew up where most of the book is set. I was an outsider looking at the LDS(Mormon) faith. I picked up on her innuendos that maybe others may not have seen.

But I’m getting sidetracked.

Val meets her friends Isaac, Marcus, and Javi early in the story. They inform her she was once a part of a TV show.

She leaves the only life she’s known to discover what she may have lost. There is a stream throughout the book about losing things and about trauma. It’s on how they talk about the show and won’t say Mister Magic’s name. This thread runs throughout the book.

This book has a lot to say about faith, religion, cults, and trauma. It may have been me reading into it, but I found the descriptions of how religion wants their kids to be a certain way. How they will do anything to make sure their kids behave, don’t talk back, and don’t use profanity. It felt like the life I watched friends grow up with while I stood outside the LDS faith.

I don’t like to give a book report or go chapter by chapter. I’ve done that. It doesn’t feel right to me as a reviewer. I’d rather put my personal touch on reviews. Which is why I stated the above.

The author knows her way around the subject without bludgeoning the reader.

Sometimes I read a sentence or paragraph and was like, yep, I remember that. The way people talk about how when a woman isn’t married by a certain age, there might be something wrong with her. My wife dealt with that. I watched family members marry early only to divorce later. It’s prevalent in Utah culture to marry out of high school, especially for women. If you don’t, something is wrong with you, or so they say.

The idea of a secret. Of something being held back from one another, a certain trauma coalesces at the end of the book. We never remember our childhood perfectly. There are bumps.

In the end, we want what’s best for our own kids. The hope that our kids have better childhoods than our own. That we give them something better than we had. That’s the hope of every decent parent.

I hope you enjoyed this review. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. I’ll be posting this on my substack as well. Happy reading.