Service and Sacrifice

Thrilling, deceptive, and suspenseful, Courtney Summers new young adult novel The Project will hook you into it’s grasp and not let you go.

Spanning multiple years and two different viewpoints, Courtney Summers drops readers into the story of the Denham sisters, Bea and Lo. Sisters who share their own secrets and their own language are devastatingly ripped apart by tragedy and kept apart by the cruelty of a false prophet, it’s a story about the power a person can have on the vulnerable.

I loved how the story was told by both Bea and Lo and starts with them together, their first meeting. We are then transported to 2011 and dropped immediately into the devastation. Travelling to the past though Bea and the present through Lo, we learn about The Unity Project, Lev Warren and the grip of hope and love, however misconceived it can be. Praying on the vulnerable, Lev Warren has created The Unity Project and cloaked it in service. Service to the community and to those who feel hopeless and helpless. Beneath the surpface is something far more dark and disturbing. In the present, Lo is desperate to connect with her sister, who has ceased all communication. The longing, confusion and anger seethes through the pages and readers are held in the grip of the sister’s losses. 

Courtney Summers takes the readers through twists and turns and we are never really sure where the story will end. I appreciated how she left a lot to the imagination, never fully spelling out certain elements of the story, leaving us to determine how far someone will go for love, or their twisted version of it. The reader is slowly brought through the years until near the end when Bea’s story and Lo’s story finally converges in the present. We get to understand the loss in Bea and the search for family and the anger in Lo.

The Project is a gripping young adult thriller that will leave readers with a new perspective on how easy it can be to influence people when they are at their most vulnerable.