The Book of Essie

This was a great book! I have to give applause to Meghan MacLean Weir on her first novel, this story was so gripping and I love that I was so invested in Essie's life. This story played out just as I wanted and in the end the Essie and Roarke get their due justice.

Like Autoboyography, my impression of The Book of Essie is shaped by my cultural background. Also, anyone who knows me well knows that I am morbidly fascinated by the Duggar family, so I had to pick this up.

This is a story about power and control. It's a story about yanking yourself free, one that includes the risk and loss that come with speaking out. It's about the harm people cause by doing nothing, by refusing to intervene when vulnerable people are being targeted.

Weir also looks at the performative aspects of organized religion. People go through motions and worry about appearances. People learn quickly what is expected and accepted, and proceed accordingly. Fear and manipulation fuel actions. This is only exaggerated by the presence of a film crew.

I read a nonfiction book about The Bachelor franchise earlier this year (another morbid fascination, we don't have to get into it), and it made me think about how those filming and those filmed hold power over one another.

Lines are blurred between what's real and fake, what matters and doesn't, who has the final say in how something is portrayed. In The Book of Essie, you see this same tug-of-war. There's the back-and-forth between characters and cameras, but there's also the back-and-forth between the different characters being filmed, as each attempt to spin footage in their favor. Everyone has an agenda.

We're also asked to consider how women wield power in patriarchal environments. How does Libby's mother empower men like Ames? How does Essie's mother empower men like Caleb? Why do women passionately support figures and institutions that hurt them and their children? What do women lose in trying to assert themselves in spaces designed to keep them subservient? Or really, what do they gain?

More technically, I have two main qualms. First, I think adding Libby's perspective clouded some of the points Weir was trying to make. I'd have wrapped my head around the “extracting yourself brings both joy and pain” concept easily enough without a character named Liberty Bell.

Secondly, sometimes in trying to make points about abuse, the narrative would halt almost as though the author was speaking directly to her readers. I didn't object to the overtly political tone, but the delivery felt awkward, like Weir circled back to lay some barefaced personal convictions over top her story and its characters. It felt like I was being spoonfed.

It has its flaws, but it had me at evangelical reality television.

The premise of this book was interesting and the story was well executed. I couldn't put it down due to my curiosity as to how Essie would resolve her situation. The ending was abrupt but satisfying.

This was so good. Yes it's a “mesasge book”, but it's such a good story and so well told. Everyone should read it.

Really, really good, though in my opinion it ended a bit too abruptly after all the fantastic build-up. I'd still 100% recommend it, though.

It's so hard to decide where to start with this book. First: it's amazing. Second: Content Warning. For a number of reasons. Rape. Incest. Gay Conversion Therapy. Suicide. Nothing extremely graphic; the most graphic concerns the conversion therapy, which is where the suicide occurs. That section was hard to read. A lot of sections were hard to read. But the book was SO GOOD. It's about Essie and Roarke's escape from all that, so ultimately it focuses on the future, and it's a hopeful, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind of book. But daaaaang these topics.

I loved so many of the characters here. Essie and Roarke, Roarke's best friend Blake, Liberty, the reporter, her boyfriend and her camerawoman. They're all amazing. Essie's determination, Roarke's courage, Blake's understanding - every character has something to offer in this book. The way Liberty's history entwines with Essie's, so she knows where she's coming from and can offer advice from experience, and how Liberty flashes back to her childhood so the reader understands her conflicts - it's all just so amazing.

I identify pretty closely with a lot of this book myself; I was raised very conservative Christian, though at least not in a crazy cult like Liberty was. But the way Liberty talks about her boyfriend challenging her beliefs and waking her up from them hit very close to home. It was weird to see it on the page.

“I had been home as well, a painful few months during which I began to see my parents, our family, and our church as Mike might see them, as anyone who was not us would see them. I still loved my parents, very much, but I was also deeply ashamed. I began to wonder what would have happened if I'd seen it earlier....I decided that I would not go home again.”

I was cheering for Essie as she broke free of her bigoted family. Every step of the way. And Roarke - oh, Roarke, who my heart broke for, who stepped up to the plate and loved Essie in his own way, and gave Essie what she needed. It helped that Essie offered him precisely what he needed too, but I didn't expect how their relationship evolved.

I loved this book, start to finish. This is definitely one of my favorites of 2018.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.