10% First Impressions: The Cult of Eden by Bill Halpin
I'm trying to be a book social person on these internets, so that means joining a couple of sites. NetGalley, my current go to for early and publisher provided reads, but also GoodReads. While I did request and receive The Cult of Eden on and through NetGalley, at some point I went to GoodReads to check it out, likely to add it to my currently reading list. That's where the mistake began.
The Cult of Eden (TCE) by Bill Halpin, with 51 ratings on GoodReads, currently holds at a 4.48 star rating. With that in mind, when I finally decided to start reading I started with high expectations. Even knowing that the story involves a cult, skimming between the book description and advance praise blurbs I got extra hyped. Phrases like "religious horror," "Catholic lore," and "age-old struggle," stood out and were enough to tantalize in the first place, but now there's was a community backing to the hype? Color me ready. Unfortunately through a 10% read that fervor has quickly faded.
Published on September 27 this year, the entry point of TCE is the viewpoint of a sickly, indigenous boy in Amazonas, Brazil. Already I started questioning the degree of white savior narrative the book is going to furnish my life with. It being a Catholic religious thriller, I was tickled when I realized the book chapters are the style of books of the bible. [Book name] chapter: verse; for example, Will 1:1. A little sacrilegious perchance, but also a constant reminder that we're gonna be touching on religion.
I'm a born and bred New Yorker (and when I saw New Yorker it should be obvious I mean the city). A city girl to my roots! Thusly, having heard and said it all respectively, it really doesn't bother me when people berate the city. So far our two protagonists are husband and wife duo and young, new parents Will and Shannon. Will doesn't like the city, but Shannon won't stand for his slander because maybe it reflects negatively on her career choices! Umm, okay. Fine. However that works. That the city has good to it is a sentiment we're to understand Shannon routinely impresses upon her husband. He's from Lake Placid and I haven't read enough (assuming it's provided) to know about where she's from, but I'm going to take a strong stance and say they're both not from the Empire State. So you move to the city and you defend the city, but then you berate the homeless and impose your elitism on the city?! Bitch, what?
So the female protagonist both slut-shames and is ready to use her sexuality to advance her career. You mean to tell me that the female protagonist thinks the homeless should have gone to school to not be homeless? I hate her already. I have a itch in my brain that says that the story is going to go out of the way to make her the secular villain who's truly a callous, cold-hearted person while making Will, her husband, the good-natured, pious Catholic boy whose faith will save the day. We might even see a conversion at some point! I shudder.
The Catholic aspect was not super present in my mind as I read, but the mention of Lent did not at all go unnoticed. So maybe we're not going to have super thick laying of religious lore or maybe that comes later. This is apparently the first in a series, which makes sense. The book is no more than 336 pages and my 10% rounded read did not take me very far story wise. I don't know how I'm feeling about the book, I can't accurately articulate it, but that early excitement is long gone.
The Cult of Eden (TCE) by Bill Halpin, with 51 ratings on GoodReads, currently holds at a 4.48 star rating. With that in mind, when I finally decided to start reading I started with high expectations. Even knowing that the story involves a cult, skimming between the book description and advance praise blurbs I got extra hyped. Phrases like "religious horror," "Catholic lore," and "age-old struggle," stood out and were enough to tantalize in the first place, but now there's was a community backing to the hype? Color me ready. Unfortunately through a 10% read that fervor has quickly faded.
I'm a born and bred New Yorker (and when I saw New Yorker it should be obvious I mean the city). A city girl to my roots! Thusly, having heard and said it all respectively, it really doesn't bother me when people berate the city. So far our two protagonists are husband and wife duo and young, new parents Will and Shannon. Will doesn't like the city, but Shannon won't stand for his slander because maybe it reflects negatively on her career choices! Umm, okay. Fine. However that works. That the city has good to it is a sentiment we're to understand Shannon routinely impresses upon her husband. He's from Lake Placid and I haven't read enough (assuming it's provided) to know about where she's from, but I'm going to take a strong stance and say they're both not from the Empire State. So you move to the city and you defend the city, but then you berate the homeless and impose your elitism on the city?! Bitch, what?
So the female protagonist both slut-shames and is ready to use her sexuality to advance her career. You mean to tell me that the female protagonist thinks the homeless should have gone to school to not be homeless? I hate her already. I have a itch in my brain that says that the story is going to go out of the way to make her the secular villain who's truly a callous, cold-hearted person while making Will, her husband, the good-natured, pious Catholic boy whose faith will save the day. We might even see a conversion at some point! I shudder.
The Catholic aspect was not super present in my mind as I read, but the mention of Lent did not at all go unnoticed. So maybe we're not going to have super thick laying of religious lore or maybe that comes later. This is apparently the first in a series, which makes sense. The book is no more than 336 pages and my 10% rounded read did not take me very far story wise. I don't know how I'm feeling about the book, I can't accurately articulate it, but that early excitement is long gone.
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