Godshot by Chelsea Bieker
3.5/5.
“There must be something to this mother-daughter thing. Some kind of binding spell.”
Maybe I just wasn’t in the right headspace for it, but around the halfway point of this book I found myself flipping through the pages and wondering when things were going to get better.
Lacey May Herd is fourteen years old growing up in Peaches, California in the middle of a debilitating drought. She lives with her mother, a flighty and alcoholic ex-beauty queen who is still awaiting her Prince Charming to come sweep her off her feet, and is part of GOTS, a cult-like religious group centering on Vern, a man claiming to be a prophet who can bring much-needed rain to California’s central valley. When Lacey’s mother is excommunicated from the church, and Lacey herself learns of Vern’s twisted plan to bring rain to their community, she begins to question her family, her faith, and herself.
I went into Godshot expecting the story to reach some dark places - the main storyline does follow a religious cult, after all - but I was unprepared for just how bleak the story would get and how long it would stay that way. While Bieker does an exceptional job of developing Lacey May’s voice, believable as a fourteen-year-old and yet still wise and prescient, the pacing made this a slow and somewhat grueling read. The plot felt like an unending and unrelenting slog. Just when you think things cannot possibly get any worse for Lacey May...they always do. While the ending offers some hope, for me it was too little too late.
The highlight of the story, for me, was the attention given to the various mother-daughter relationships, and Bieker’s interrogation of how complicated they can be. Lacey May has several mother figures in her life, yet when her mother is excommunicated she feels the loss like a physical blow, and spends much of her time trying to find a way to bring her back. Much of the character development that Lacey May undergoes throughout the story is tied to her understanding of motherhood, all it entails, and all it does not. It’s an exquisite look at female relationships, and had this been a more prominent or more deeply realized storyline this would have been at least a four star read for me. It felt like the exploration of these relationships was shortchanged in the interest of furthering the more salacious cult storyline.
Overall, this was a well-written (if slightly overwritten) story with some incredible highlights. Unfortunately, those high points get lost in the unending darkness of the rest of the story. 3 stars for the cult storyline, which was well plotted but too gothic for my taste, and 4 stars for the mother/daughter storyline, so we’ll call it a 3.5.
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