I read this for task #12 of Book Riot's Read Harder challenge 2020: a religious memoir. Technically it's a religious memoir from a religion other than yours (mine), but as I'm an atheist that's pretty much all of them, so I plumped for the first suitable book I found in the library... it really was a lucky dip. And an extremely interesting one! What I know of Mormonism is vanishingly little, and Laake's experience seems to indicate that's no great loss. Her memoir focuses on her time as a young wife, trying to conform to a religion that makes her increasingly unhappy, and the continuing tension between expectation and experience ultimately drives her to a mental breakdown. Yet the book is primarily a positive one* that shows Laake learning and growing and, in the end, welcoming the outside world, and there is an undercurrent of wry humour here that is both funny and very very sad. When the young Mormon couple visit a gynaecologist, for example, because Laake is having orgasms and they are both completely flummoxed about what is happening to her and what might be wrong... it's not funny at all and yet it is.

*Markedly less funny is that, after I read the book, I went to look up the author and found that she eventually died from suicide. Not gonna lie, that really undercuts the positive ending. It's still an extremely well-written and likeable memoir about the stranglehold religion can place on a life, however, so I'd say go ahead and read it anyway, and remember Laake for her successes and bravery instead.