YA suspense novelist Courtney Summers returns after her 2018 hit, Sadie, with a new novel about sisters and the lengths they will go to protect one another.
Lo's older sister Bea has disappeared from her life to join a cult ... or rather The "Unity Project" (no one in The Unity Project will actually call it a cult.) The Unity Project views themselves as a Christian organization designed to help the world's unfortunate and downtrodden, but Lo suspects there is more to The Unity Project than what meets the eye. Just what is the motive behind their charitable acts? What's their leader Lev Warren's real story? And most importantly, where is Bea and why hasn't she contacted Lo?
Lo takes advantage of her position at a magazine to infiltrate The Unity Project and write an exclusive story on what goes on behind the cult's doors. Will Lo discover what she is expecting to find? Or will her eyes be opened to a far greater truth about The Project and its intentions?
I had high expectations going into The Project and hoped that the bad reviews I had read about the book were untrue. I enjoyed Summers' Sadie for its dark, sinister vibes, and appreciated Summers for writing a story that felt uniquely different from everything else on the YA market. Unfortunately, The Project does not live up to Sadie and fails to capture everything that made its predecessor so great.
The Project has a slow start, which may be its greatest downfall. Nothing much happens for the first half of this book. Page after page is filled with conversations between Lo and her coworkers, Unity Project Members, and herself, to no end. The narrative spirals through the same topics again and again without ever really going anywhere or revealing information that pulls readers into the story. This is the perfect set-up for making readers apathetic about the characters and plot, which may explain the growing number of readers who gave up on The Project before it gets better. And it does get better, by the way, but it does falls short of achieving greatness.
The best parts of this book are the flashbacks to Bea's life in The Unity Project. I wish that this novel had told her actual story firsthand, as opposed to revealing Bea's truth through Lo's eyes. And speaking of Lo, I honestly couldn't stand her character, and was rather turned off by the abrupt and nonsensical changes in her personality as the book progresses. There are some plot twists in The Project that happen too quickly without much build-up or development. Readers are blind-sided, but not in a good way. It's just not believable, which makes The Project feel unpolished and incomplete.
In all, The Project is a mixed bag. If you are a fan of Courtney Summers, you should give this book a try; but if you have never read one of her novels, do yourself a favor and pick up Sadie first.
Availability: Book; eBook in cloudLibrary
Rating: *** Stars (I liked it)
Reviewer: Brooke, Public Relations Librarian
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GENRE: Canadian Fiction; Psychological Suspense THEME: Coping with Death (The characters in these stories are coping with grief and loss after the passing of someone close to them.) STORYLINE: Nonlinear TONE: Suspenseful WRITING STYLE: Compelling
SUBJECTS: Cults; Grief; Journalism; Loss; Parents; Sisters; Women Investigative Journalists
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