Book Review: Amity & Sorrow by Peggy Riley

**I received a free digital copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

I kind of forgot to read this one. I pulled it up on my Kindle and decided to give it a go. And then I couldn't put it down.

Amity and Sorrow are sisters born into a polygamous cult. Their mother, Amaranth is the first wife. By which she means the only one to marry him on paper.

When the police come and her husband tries to burn down the temple, she grabs her girls and runs. Not stopping until she crashes in Oklahoma.

The book goes between Amity and Amaranth's point of view. Amaranth spends half her time going over the story of Before...the cult, her childhood. How she ended up there, one of 50 wives. But as it becomes clear what happened right under her nose, she knows she has to do what she can to atone. Can she save her daughters?

It's dark, it's sad, there is little laughter anywhere in this tale. But it is captivating, and it moves so quickly...mostly because the tension never lets up. It's amazing!

Book Review: The Cult of Light and Lies

by:

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Synopsis:
Warning – adultery

One night, and one stupid mistake, turned the life of suburban housewife and mother, Tilley Jenkins, into a prison of paranoia and fear. Dancing and drinking on a rare girl’s night out, feeling young and sexy, she flirts with a man she met briefly. Before she knows it, she’s had too much to drink and no way home.

She wakes in the morning and finds herself in bed with him, the first man she’s slept with, besides her husband, in twenty-five years. Her guilt spirals her down the pathway of depression and alcoholism, while her spirited and popular daughter rebels and falls into the hands of neighbors involved in a powerful and outlandish cult. Tilley gets the shock of her life, when she encounters the cult members and their strange beliefs as she fights to regain the trust and love of her daughter, and regain her own self-esteem in the process.

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What can I say? This book and I didn't click. The main character, Tilley is an alcoholic whose life is literally crumbling around her. She's killing herself with the alcohol and doesn't seem to care enough to get help. Even though her family knows she drinks and she knows they know. She doesn't make a habit of it, but she does cocaine in the beginning when she is out with friends and that's when she wakes up with the stranger. I don't like Tilley, her eldest daughter, her husband or her friends. In fact, the only characters I come close to liking are her youngest daughters and that's mostly pity.

Now the dislike of all characters present would be okay if that was how they were meant to be portrayed. I can't figure that out. Tilley and her husband have these arguments where I can't even figure out where they stand on the issue. Like this one time Tilley blows off Mica (their teenage daughter) as if her problems aren't phazing her. In the next paragraph she starts raving about how out of control she is. And it leaves me unable to tell if Tilley is a complete lunatic or the writing is that bad.

The story is in the 3rd person, but only from Tilley's point of view. That is what limits my ability to discern what is really going on around her. It's all her perception and she's drunk most of the time. I think it would have been an easier read if the author had told the story from other characters as well, especially the other crazy people that are in this story.

It's a weird and thrilling tale, but I couldn't get around the issues I already listed.