Review by Booklist Review
For a teenager so often surrounded by people, Corinne feels incredibly alone. Kids at school give her a wide berth, and her new church seems made up entirely of people criticizing her clothes, her hair, her weight, and her faith. Enoch, a quiet boy Corinne's age, becomes something of a friend over the elaborate board games they play after their families' Saturday night Bible studies. But when Enoch confesses to a romantic indiscretion with Corinne, she's cast out of their church and shunned by everyone she loves. Fifteen years later, after building a pleasant if often-lonely life, Corinne still feels drawn to Enoch. They reconnect and are forced to understand why the consequences of an adult relationship feel just as fraught as what happened in their teens. Morrow, a pseudonym, mines evangelical fervor and young adult fragility for Corinne's adult journey of self-discovery. Exploring sexual, emotional, and religious barriers in relationships and blending vital discoveries of faith, family, and self, Morrow's novel cuts deep as it echoes the work of Jeanette Winterson and Elizabeth Acevedo.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Thrown out of the fundamentalist church she had attended since childhood and estranged from her family, Corinne has created a new life for herself but still misses what she has left behind. Particularly Enoch Miller. Will she now risk her settled life for a man who can never be hers? From Morrow, the pseudonym for a best-selling author; with a 125,000-copy first printing.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Two fundamentalist Christians endure ostracism in the name of true love. This is a refreshingly unconventional love story between people who are not conventionally attractive. Corinne Callahan wears "plus-sizes" and "always looked bad." Enoch Miller is described as "massive," "a slab," built like a door crammed into an ill-fitting suit. The horizons of these two teens are circumscribed by their evangelical church in Kansas, where women are expected to be modest but where not being pretty is more offensive than immodesty. Although women outnumber men, the men have the dominant roles as deacons and elders. Unmarried young men and women must be chaperoned at all times. The congregation, it seems, has already chosen a fiancee for Enoch, Shannon Frank, whose beauty Corinne envies. In 1992, Enoch and Corinne, both 18, transgress, and he confesses. Being "cast out" of the church enables Corinne to go to college, get out of Kansas, and achieve ad-biz stardom in Boston. Enoch, who repented, did not attend college (which the sect discourages), instead becoming an electrician. The narrative jumps ahead 13 years as her mother's health challenges draw Corinne back home to the provisional embrace of her family. After Shannon, coming out as a lesbian, divorces Enoch, his now precarious position in the church gets even worse when word of his and Corinne's renewed relationship leaks. Unlike Corinne, entrenched in her apostasy, doggedly devout Enoch continues to attend services even while being shunned. Occasionally one wonders why, in a mobile society, these capable young adults, now 32, choose a restrictive community reminiscent of 17th-century Salem, albeit with a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup. In one of many pungent observations, Corinne muses, "I don't just have a scarlet letter; I have, like, a whole scarlet letterman's jacket." After a propulsive start, the story suffers from a lack of conflict, unrelieved by the couple's minutely described premarital sex life, which grows a bit tedious with repetition. An arch but nonconfrontational look at an enclave of American Christianity. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
