By Hannah Kennedy
Enjoyable deconstruction and reconstruction story.
This story is one of grief, faith deconstruction, family and spirituality. Twins, Amy and Laura, lose their parents in a car accident and realize their relationship with each other has also become strained. While sorting through their grief, things come to a head between them. They are both judging each other, but also both envying the other, at least to some degree. They are both growing up, trying to make decisions about the future and to figure out what to do with the things they were raised to believe about God.
A lot of Christians are asking very necessary questions about the faith these days. For me, the two biggest beliefs of my deconstruction were/are ideas about hell and purity culture (extreme abstinence messages). While the main character, Amy, doesn’t go into detail about deconstructing and reconstructing hell and sex per se, there are references to both of those things and how blown out of proportion or ridiculous they can be within some belief systems. For example, the idea that only Christians go to heaven and that Catholics aren’t Christian enough and therefore go to hell. I loved how this was dealt with in this story and the fact that the author was willing to use “swear words” to express passion about the topic!
Amy reconstructs or picks up some key beliefs by the end of the book. She believe God exists. God is within and around her. God is love. I appreciated that she picked these beliefs back up, owning them for herself. Our core values as spiritual believers should be inclusion, not exclusion!
This book has great character development and descriptions of places. I especially loved the spiritual reference to Amy’s parents’ ghosts or spiritual footprints if you prefer. I have lost one parent and found it to be a very spiritually awakening experience. This story depicts something similar that truly resonated with me.