Simple, and bland- so bland! It's not badly written, it's not... bad. It's just not worth it.

I have a thing for cults. I can't explain it. They're just so fun and interesting to me! Unfortunately, I rarely get to read fiction involving them in any way other than a short mention and a couple of people in hoods.
So I can't say this is the worst cult I've read. It's really the only.
But still, it sucks.

The book is about three teens who go on a roadtrip budget stuck in an empty cult town. The plot is incredibly simple and incredibly slow. Only a few things happen, but it drags for the entire book. The writing isn't awful, and the characters aren't full idiots, but it just draaaaaaags. Even with super short chapters. I blazed through this lackluster lame-ity real quick.

I wanted to take as much time as possible before delving into my cult complaints, but looks like there's really nothing to be said about this book.
The cult leader is some dude named Elijah, and he is crazy. Just crazy. And I mean just. There's no character work on him. He's flat and predictable, with no obvious motivation and no reason for him to be like this. Cult leaders should be fun and full of character- they are crazy, usually, but not in the boring killer way.

The cult itself is boring as hell. It's just a standard Christian offset, nothing special or interesting. I guess this is a passive thing, but it's still quite boring. They have an... okay backstory, maybe. But it's really not that well written. We don't even see any cult members the entire book. Even in the ONE scene where they appear, they are just a crowd in a church. No personality leads to a very fake and unresearched feeling. Elijah has no feeling of charisma or power to him and his leadership.

There's some emphasis midway about Dee having to adjust to cult life, and it's just a looming threat. Am I the only one who thinks that would have been a lot more interesting to read about? The plot is mostly just worries and threats otherwise, little powerful drama.
There's a lot of action in this book. And zero down time. The action isn't bad, but boring.

I GUESS Dee, Luke, and Mike are fine characters, with traits, but we lose most of that once the cult stuff starts happening.


The end: uncomfortable. Realistic? Maybe. But not at all satisfying.
More on the end: It should have ended in the hospital. Maybe an ambiguous ending could have MAYBE worked, playing the idea of it being not real (dumb, but this book is dumb). Bringing in the brothers was unneeded.

End point: Waste of time. Bad cult book.