Review: Amity and Sorry by Peggy Riley

What to say about Amity and Sorrow??  I am having the worst time trying to write my summary (I've tried and deleted a few times already....it's just one of those days!) so I am going to copy and the paste the one from Barnes and Noble's website:
A mother and her daughters drive for days without sleep until they crash their car in rural Oklahoma. The mother, Amaranth, is desperate to get away from someone she's convinced will follow them wherever they go—her husband. The girls, Amity and Sorrow, can't imagine what the world holds outside their father's polygamous compound. Rescue comes in the unlikely form of Bradley, a farmer grieving the loss of his wife. At first unwelcoming to these strange, prayerful women, Bradley's abiding tolerance gets the best of him, and they become a new kind of family.

 

Amity and Sorrow was not the type of book I thought I'd like. I've never been very interested in cults. Then I read two amazing reviews of the book and decided to give it a shot. I was blown away. Amaranth, Amity, and Sorrow are so easy to relate to, which is interesting considering the two daughters have never known life outside of their homestead, with 50 mothers, 1 father, and multiple half siblings. It was gutwrenching to feel how much Amaranth blamed herself for all that had happened. She was so caught up trying to believe in the good of her adopted family that she didn't realize, or didn't acknowledge, that very bad things were happening in front of her.

Her children were my favorite characters to read about. Amity is just young enough to be able to take hold of her new life, of new ideas. Sorrow, on the other hand, has been taken advantage of and really thinks that the way of her father and his religion is the only way to life.

I enjoyed every second of this book, from Amaranth and her children slowly trying to become "normal" at Bradley's farm, to the flashbacks about the cult, and how Amaranth and her sister wives truly believed in what they were doing, and how a belief that seemed so pure and happy could slowly turn into something you don't recognize. I am going to be recommending this book a lot.

Title: Amity and Sorrow
Author: Peggy Riley
Date of Publication: April 2013
Number of Pages: 320
Genre: Fiction
Source: Netgalley