God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney

I listened to God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney as an audiobook (narrated by Catherine Tabor) because podcasts are in a bit of a drought these days. 

In this book, we meet the Nolan family. Father Luke, mother Ruthie, and two adult daughters, Abigail and Caroline. Abigail is planning her wedding and Caroline just has to get through the summer and then she can go away to college. But then a secret comes out about Luke, the pastor of a megachurch, and Abigail and Caroline spend the summer grappling with faith, future, and family. 

As a person who has never gone to church, I find the entire idea of my entire life surrounding the church to be quite foreign. So I thought this was an interesting look at how it could potentially work. I was also really invested in the relationship between the sisters, who were not very close at the book began, but by the end had developed a closer bond. 

I started this book very skeptically, but by the end I was really invested in the two sisters. I want to make it very clear that a lot of books about people searching for their faith leave me absolutely cold, but I thought that the questioning and puzzling it out in this book was well done for someone like me. I really liked how there were certain Bible passages that we heard about from the characters and what lessons they had taken from them. It really grounded the book for me.

I can't speak to how "real" this megachurch setting is, though. I read some reviews that suggested there were some things that were "off," particularly surrounding alcohol and clothing, but I didn't notice them. Then again, I live in Wisconsin where alcohol basically comes out of taps, so my perspective is probably very warped. 

Anyway, this is a good book. I'm not sure it will be one that is memorable, but it's worth a read if it sounds at all interesting to you. 4/5 stars

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Everybody! I learned something while reading this book. You can bookmark passages! I had been screenshotting timestamps I wanted to go back to and then manually going back to them to get my lines of note. You don't need to do that. You can just bookmark timestamps!

Lines of note:

"Hey, Caro," he said.

She bristled at the nickname, a term of familiarity he hadn't earned. (timestamp 28:44)

Argh. I have this same feeling about my own BIL, my sister's husband. We actually haven't spent all that much time together, but he calls me by my nickname because my mother and sister do. It's tough.

The women of the Nolan family were strong. And yet, because they were quiet, their silence had often been mistaken for weakness. (timestamp 8:23:26)

Because I'm reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I sort of perked at the idea of another Nolan family and the comparisons of the women in the two books.

And all these dreams had materialized, but now she wasn't sure if she wanted them at all. She'd assumed that by completely changing her life, she would end up in one she wanted. Everyone said that college was the time to find yourself, but no one ever talked about what would happen when you did. Who was she without all of this? (timestamp 9:05:30)

Oh, isn't this the truth? 

Hat mentions:

The worship pastor, a man in his mid-thirties with tattooed forearms showing beneath his rolled button-up, a brimmed hat perched high on his head...(timestamp 7:31:29)