Zylynn lives is a cult and is taken away by someone who claims to be her father. Zylynn doesn't believe them and must get, back to the cult before she turns 13. Will Zylynn really want to go back after she unveils the truth about everything.  

“Curiosity is the greatest evil.” Citizens were given a set of rules to follow so choices would not have to be made. Reading was not an option, for reading promoted inquiry, an opportunity to expand their minds and Father Prophet Rules prohibited this.   Stay within the Light and your rewards will be great.

Zylynn finds herself in the Darkness with Louis and knows she has only 10 days to return to the Light.   She has heard stories of this Darkness and it chills her to out alone amongst it. It becomes her mission to return to her home in the Light. She feels that the less that she speaks the more she knows Father Prophet will be pleased with her. Louis claims to be father and inside this Darkness he says, she has a mother and siblings waiting for her but Father Prophet and Mother God have already claimed those titles for her. Zylynn’s world was sheltered and closed-off inside the Light; Father Prophet controlled his flock of followers. Zylynn was told about the Darkness, how it was full of Liars and how the Light could not save them from their anguish.   His followers knew that they must be inside the Light by their thirteenth birthday or they were doomed. Zylynn had ten days to find her way back to the Light before her birthday or she would forever be living in torture, forever living in terror, forever living in the Darkness with the Liars.

I was hooked immediately upon reading the first chapter of this novel. It wasn’t a horrendous or gruesome novel dealing with the cult; it dealt more with mind control. Zylnn was taken to Father Prophet’s compound at small age, she knows no other life. When she enters the Darkness, she doesn’t know how to interact in her new environment. Her whole life she has been governed by rules and now she has no direction and she feels lost and alone. I found myself screaming, “Give her some rules! Give her boundaries!” as she needs to feel safe and secure. I loved while she was emerging into her new environment and learning about it, her vocabulary words from the Light came into play. Inserting them into her new world, she attempted to comprehend what was occurring. As the days go by, she begins to enjoy some of “dangers” from the Darkness and I could feel the sway in Zylynn’s tone.   How can this be? All these years she was warned about the dangers and now living amongst them, she is finding some of them enjoyable and wondering if she could take some of them back with her to the Light. Zylynn thoughts turn to Jaycia, the girl who left the Light and didn’t turn before her 13^th birthday, will Zylynn be like her or will she get home to the Light and be safe before her birthday? What actually happened to Jaycia, for Zylynn misses her and loved her.   I thought this novel was a great read before but now as I turned the page, this novel throws Zylynn into an emotional twister.   Zylynn gets the answer to her question but it’s not the answer that she wanted to hear. Sometimes though, that is how it is.   I really wanted a different ending; I liked everything leading up to the conclusion but the ending itself, not so much.

When I heard about this book, and saw what it was about, I just knew I would read it. I have been interested in reading about cults, especially from the inside, or at least for the perspective of a character that is in one, or just got out one.

Forgiveness is a divine act.

Well don’t I feel a little foolish right now.

Much as I can get hypercritical and nitpicky in certain estrogen cycles, I am not averse to give credit where credit is due. This was a pleasant surprise. This was one of those rare reads that I almost wrote off as something that was way off the mark when, as it turned out, I was really just an impatient grasshopper. And I’m not above and beyond admitting to that. 

There are certain elements that I expect in realistic contemporary fiction, borne out of reading about them so often elsewhere that I am predisposed to denounce everything outside of those rigid standards. This started off with antiquated notions and hardly interesting conflicts that it felt like these people were making a mountain out of a mole hill.

But ‘realistic’ is such a fluid concept and when you think about it, this could also be someone’s present tense reality. And while it might feel a little like cheating, choosing a subpar take off point for Colette, there’s no denying the leaps and bounds her character gained in terms of development. It’s a remarkable, brave feat to write about LGBT coming-of-age stories but to carry that message in a reality as startling, if not more, as the standard YA contemporary fare is one that sets this apart from the rest.