April 4, 2016
Debut author Wass fashions a haunting family portrait centered on the power of belief. After a lifetime of hearing that the Cresswell family constitutes the “only pure people left on earth,” 16-year-old Castley begins to suspect that her controlling and abusive father is not a prophet of God. With a dilapidated house, a neglectful mother, and food running out, Castley and her five siblings contend with their parents’ rigid rules along with a combination of fascination and invisibility in town and at school. When her father pronounces that “soon God will be calling us home,” Castley seeks an escape. Befriending a fellow drama student and reaching out to a relative she hardly knows, Castley finds that those promising help are terrified as well. Wass deftly manages the distinct voices and personalities of the many Cresswells. The dark heart of the story, suggestive of incest and sibling torture, will move many readers to question, as Castley does, whether liberation from their “father’s vision” is truly possible. Ages 14–up. Agency: Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency.
April 15, 2016
A girl struggles to break the cultlike bonds tying her and her siblings to their tyrannical, religious father.Castella Creswell, a white teen called Castley, and her five siblings have always been ruled by the word of God as taught by their father. He makes them study not only the Bible, but his own book of revelations. They live in the woods and have been taught that they are the only pure people left and will be married to one another in a heavenly ceremony. But at 17, Castley has begun to question her father's rule and wonders if her siblings do too. Though punished to the point of abuse, her brothers and sisters defend their father and the visions of fire and brimstone that guide him--even when he tells them that they'll all soon be called home to God. And the only way to be called home to God is to die. Castley's forays into normal high school life are both delicious in their rebellion and heartbreaking in their revelations. As the siblings reckon with their faith in their father, they clash within and with one another, and it's a breathtaking, gut-wrenching coming-of-age saga from all sides. Readers will be swept into the Creswells' claustrophobic world and ache for them long after it's set aflame.A harrowing, pulpy page-turner along the compulsive lines of Flowers in the Attic. (Fiction. 14-18)
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May 1, 2016
Gr 9 Up-Castley (Castella) Cresswell is a triplet and one of six children born to a self-styled prophet of the Lord, who is content to rule his family's insular and fundamentalist religious "cult" from a dilapidated home in the woods of upstate New York. Father has written his own confounding book of revelations and beliefs that the children must study along with the Bible in a home where food can be in short supply when selling refurbished junk doesn't bring in enough money. A mostly silent and disabled mother, whose legs never healed when God was the chosen doctor, looks on while the three boys and three girls, whom their father has matched up together to be holy spouses in heaven, attempt to get by in the town high school, where they are typically treated like freaks. Two of Castella's brothers endure physical privations and spiritual punishment due to their interest in girls outside of the family, while Castella flirts with the lures of the outside world after being partnered up with George, a talkative freshman in drama class who wants to draw her out. This claustrophobic novel has little to recommend it to teens: no relatable plot, few convincing or compelling characters, and lots of bizarre lifestyle depictions make the impending crisis of the Cresswell family little more than a head-scratching curiosity. Readers may be unclear whether the book's goals include establishing quirkiness or eliciting sympathy for the children of a dangerous religious fanatic.
Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 1, 2016
Sixteen-year-old Castley and her five siblings live in a dilapidated house in the woods under their father's strict eye. They've always believed they are the last pure people on Earth and that God speaks through their father. But when Castley befriends her drama partner at school, her eyes are opened to normal life. Wass delivers one emotional blow after another without veering into melodrama.
(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
July 1, 2016
Sixteen-year-old narrator Castley and her five brothers and sisters live in a dilapidated house in the woods under the strict eye of their father. The Cresswell children have always believed that they are the last pure people on Earth, that God speaks through their father, that their shapeless clothes and days of abuse will ensure them a place in heaven. But when Castley befriends her drama partner at school, her eyes are opened to the mortal temptations of normal life. Two of her brothers, volatile Mortimer and angelic Caspar, experiment with freedom in their own ways, and tensions rise dangerously as the siblings start to question the stories with which they were raised. Then their father announces that the time has come for the whole family to move on to the afterlife. Wass's novel delivers one emotional blow after another without veering into melodrama. The bond shared by the Cresswell children, though disturbing at times, makes even the most outrageous events feel genuine. Castley is unusual in her rebellion: while swearing, smoking, and pushing against the restrictions at home, she still fears for her soul and struggles with the difference between real faith and her father's corrupt teachings. Wass's descriptions of Caspar and their father's most dramatic, divine moments emphasize how attractive and powerful a person can be when illuminated by belief, and Castley's narration never falters in this harrowing portrait of a family undergoing desperate change. sarah berman
(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)