I wish I'd taken more literature classes in college, or paid better attention to the ones I did take (all plays), so I would be a more skilled/attuned reader. I sensed that The Project has literary devices galore, but all I caught was a possible allusion to The Crucible and/or life in the Divided States of Trump. Two narratives, told in the third person by Bea Denham and in the first by Bea's six-years-younger sister Lo, alternate, going back and forth in time.

The girls were orphaned in a car accident when Bea was a teen and Lo (Gloria) a tween. Lo was in the car with their parents and still bears a scar on her face. Without any close relatives, Lo ended up with an elderly aunt (great aunt?), and Bea got sucked into a Christian community called the Unity Project. Now 19, Lo, who hasn't spoken to Bea in six years, thinks the project is a cult and wants to take it down. She works for a journalist known for breaking that kind of story, so she's primed to dig.

Lo is a tenacious and possibly ill-mannered person who is accused of "living in her accident," but she is also strong and resilient in the way of people who have nothing left to lose. Bea, on the other hand, has less of a sense of self or more of a selflessness and becomes a central figure in The Project. What happens as the sisters try to find each other is unexpected, believable, and tragic. They remind us that everyone is broken, but some people can be saved.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the DRC!