The Project

Unfortunately anything I read from Summers will always be compared to Sadie, which was excellent, and this didn't quite measure up. I'd also say this isn't technically YA, as the main character is 19, her sister is 25, everyone else is an adult. Perhaps New Adult, though that designation doesn't seem to be taking off. This book is about cults & religion & their intersection and finding a sense of belonging with a (less than compelling) through line about sibling bonds, but I didn't feel like this story had anything new or fresh to say about any of these topics. Like in Sadie, the story is told in 2 timelines - Bea's sections, which are used to give background to Lo's main story, are told in 3rd person about a year before Lo's sections, which are in first person and present day. The sections for each sister are labled by time, but the transitions within the sections were really jarring with no textual separation, though hopefully that is a fault just in the eARC (read thanks to Netgalley!) text and won't be true in the print edition. I think the main problem was this story hinges on your ability as the reader to be really emotionally invested in Lo and Bea's story and it's outcome as they fall into and out of (maybe) The Unity Project, but I was never emotionally invested and never felt compelled to find out what was happening, because it all seemed inevitable or too convenient/unrealistic. I read through to the end to finish the eARC and not because I was invested in the story, and that's not how I want to feel about a Summers book. I'll will still booktalk this, because I'm very interested to hear teen reactions.