Fascinating perspective and gives a real in-depth view into a world that that often sensationalized on both side. Great story, great writing and excited to handsell this title!

Unfollow is Megan Phelps-Roper's memoir, raised in the Westboro Baptist Church - the notorious anti-Semitic and homophobic sect. Megan was a devoted member of the church, who also helped managing their social media presence.
This memoir poses the questions: what does it mean to grow up in such an environment and then leave everything when you're 26 years old? What happens when you change your mind?
"Changing your mind", sometimes, means leaving your life and your family behind. "Changing your mind" also means not having a chance to come back.
I found this memoir insightful, a riveting picture of a closed religious environment I will probably never fully comprehend. Megan's memoir gave me the change to try to understand their point of view.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

Unfollow is a memoir following a woman's upbringing in the Westboro Baptist Church. As she grows, she begins to disocver she doesn't quite believe and follow the same ideology.

This woman, Megan was apparently the "primary voice" of the church's Twitter for years. Seemingly becoming a face for the hatred at times. [ my opinion ] However, it was her interactions on Twitter that truly helped her see that this path and church may not be right for her.

This book clearly won't be for everyone. However, it kept my interest... it was informative at times, and it just goes to show that everyone can change their life.

I ended up reading a library copy of this book, and I'm so glad I did. It's a powerful, memorable memoir about what made the author leave a harmful, hate-filled church, and about what might make other people open their minds to new and challenging ideas.

Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper is the story of a woman who was born into the Westboro Baptist Church (the one famous for picketing soldiers funerals and notorious for their "God Hates Fags" website) and her story unfolds as she grows to discover whether or not she believes their philosophy and theology on which it was founded. The church is referred to as a Baptist church but through the years, it begins to read more like a book detailing a cult community in which you're in, or you're out and can't speak to the members again.

Megan was the primary voice of the church via Twitter for years and it was her Twitter relationships that ultimately helped her to realize that maybe her family's church beliefs aren't exactly on point.

This is her story from righteous and all-in follower of Westboro Baptist Church to a person with a sense of purpose and determination whose focus is now to show how empathy overcomes hate, and to help be a catalyst of change for those whose mindset may be focused in the wrong direction. I have not watched her Ted Talk but I plan to do it today!

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a copy of Megan Phelps-Roper’s memoir, Unfollow: a Memoir of Loving and Leaving The Westboro Baptist Church, in exchange for an honest review.

Unfollow is a memoir of faith and forgiveness that details Megan Phelps-Roper’s decision to leave the controversial Westboro Baptist Church. The church was founded and headed by Megan’s grandfather, Fred Phelps and is famous for its aggressive protest campaigns.

If you live in the United States, it’s very unlikely that you haven’t heard about the Westboro Baptist Church. They are constantly in the news for their hate-filled attacks towards what they believe is sinful behavior, such as homosexuality, even going as far as to protest at funerals of those whom they believe are sinners. The church is considered by many to be a hate group and they certainly do not shy away from hateful speech in efforts to have their message heard. They relish the attention and media coverage, including leveraging it to their advantage by arguing with those who disagree with their tactics.

I found Phelps-Roper’s memoir to be eye-opening and honest. I knew about their protests, but I didn’t know anything about the members of the church or its structure. The Westboro Baptist Church is comprised almost entirely of members of the Phelps’ family. It’s a small group. It rarely has outsiders join and therefore, is a very insulated group. I wrongly assumed that they would behave more like other conservative fringe groups, but what Phelps-Roper revealed was surprising to me. For example, the kids attended a regular school and were very familiar with pop culture, such as current music and movies. Pop culture was not forbidden or sinful. Although they had a modesty dress-code, it was probably even more liberal than other churches and did not become more restrictive until Phelps-Roper was an adult and deciding to leave the church.

The Phelps family is highly educated and above all, law degrees are prized. Fred Phelps was a lawyer and he encouraged his children to follow in his path, including Phelps-Roper’s mother. The women in the church take a very active role, using their education to fight lawsuits and also fight for their protections under freedom of speech. I suppose that this shouldn’t be surprising, as the Westboro Baptist Church has operated a shocking campaign for many years and has been able to defend their right to do so. I think most people, myself included prior to this book, would be surprised to learn that they are a very educated group of people with strong women.

I was also surprised that in his early years, Fred Phelps was a strong defender of civil rights. This is such a contradiction, as Phelps is in many ways a villain, yet he was also a strong activist, using his legal background to help the black community.

Phelps-Roper’s memoir is about a girl raised in the faith of The Westboro Baptist Church. She spent her childhood and young adult years at protests and believing the faith of her family. She even took on a stronge leadership role when she became an adult, which included spearheading their social media campaign. Yet, she was always questioning and engaging with people who had different beliefs. It took many years, but over time she began to have a crisis of faith. This crisis occurred around the same time that her church was undergoing changes, including a rise in male leadership and a suppression of women. She grew up in a church where every church member’s voice was heard, but now hers was being minimized. She saw terrible things happening to her immediate family, when they were accused of breaking church rules. She also began to see the ways to interpret the Bible and had doubts about her church doctrine.

I had mixed emotions for Phelps-Roper, as she made her decision to leave the church. Leaving the church mean’t a total cut-off from her family and although she left at the same time as her younger sister, Grace, they were two young women who were very alone in the world. I feel like it is important to make clear that I don’t agree with any of their principals, nor their tactics. I think what the Westboro Baptist Church does is disgusting. As much as I want to defend their and anyone else’s right to freedom of speech, I feel their sentiments are hate speech. It’s reprehensible. That said, I can’t image the bravery that it takes to make the decision to leave both your faith and your family. in addition, Phelps-Roper is a public figure and she had to leave under the scrutiny of the public eye, especially of those whom she hurt through her previous actions.

The amazing thing is how her memoir shifts to forgiveness. Phelps-Roper found many friends from those whom she had protested against and considered sinners. She was welcomed with many hugs and much forgiveness. It seemed like the people she had harmed were actually more willing to offer her forgiveness, than she was towards herself. Phelps-Roper continues to make amends by publicly speaking about her childhood in the church and writing books, such as Unfollow.

Unfollow is an important memoir for the insight that it provides. It’s very easy to hate groups like the Westboro Baptist Church, but it isn’t easy to take a deeper look at them. I still consider their speech and tactics to be hateful, but I also have a broader understanding of what it would be like to grow-up in that world and what it truly means to both seek and give forgiveness.

The Westboro Baptist Church has been a staple of Topeka, Kansas—and the American religious landscape—for decades. The inflammatory rhetoric of its congregants, who spread condemnation and cheer on tragedy, has brought them both worldwide fame and notoriety. Megan Phelps-Roper, as a granddaughter of the church’s founder, grew up with this as her backdrop, where protesting homosexuality and soldiers’ funerals with vulgar signage were regular occurrences. With an upbringing steeped in extremism, Phelps-Roper evolved not only to accept these views, but to offer full-throated support as she disseminated hateful rhetoric as a digital content manager for the church. And then Twitter changed everything.

Megan Phelps-Roper doesn’t try to hide or rationalize many of the things she said and did as a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. There are no long-winded apologies begging for forgiveness from anyone who was ever targeted by her family’s protests. That simple gesture elevates her memoir. Rather than feeling like an uncomfortable apology tour, Phelps-Roper provides an insightful, painful examination of her stepping away from an organization devoted to self-righteous cruelty.

And she does this in the most surprising way of all: she finds the human side of a group often associated with inhumane treatment. After all, Westboro is a small church primarily comprised of members from one family—they’re her parents, siblings, cousins. From this familial connection she’s able to draw on happy times, from sleepovers with her grandmother to inside jokes with her sister. It makes the juxtaposition against the ever-present ‘God Hates Fags’ signs all the more horrific.

Yet this sense of community ultimately leads to Phelps-Roper’s removal. As small questions about doctrine become impossible to ignore, she finds herself confronted with a wave of debate on the social media accounts she was tasked with curating. She’s an eloquent author, and the inner turmoil she obviously felt while trying to reconcile her family’s beliefs with the wider world she explored digitally is palpable on the page.

Refreshingly blunt and seemingly honest, Phelps-Roper has managed an affecting look at fanaticism, family, and self-discovery.

If I may start at the end, I ultimately like and appreciate Unfollow; but I had two distinct reactions to the first and second halves of the book.

Megan Phelps-Roper is the granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church 's late founder and chief hate-monger Fred Phelps. The group rose to fame with their startlingly offensive signs, and penchant for picketing military funerals. They are internationally despised, and I have to admit I count myself among those who have detested them for decades. When I heard a family member had broken off and wrote a book, well, I slow down for a trainwreck just like everyone else.

The first half of the book uses a straightforward style to recount events for which the group is known (the picketing, the offensive website url, her “Gramps’s” hateful speech), and it strikes a strange note. I’m all for unbiased reporting, but there just some things you need to pick a side on. Gramps or not, it is disorienting to read an opinion that isn’t flabbergasted and disgusted by the WBC. By not condemning, the author seems to be condoning.

However, as the book continues, the author's reckoning with her past is a satisfying relief that eventually invites empathy. Questioning and distancing oneself from all she's ever known has to be a daily heartbreak. Still, Phelps-Roper is clearly very smart, and I had a hard time reconciling how someone so bright was so blinded by these beliefs. While assimilating into her new life, she's consistently shocked by the hateful incongruities her family spouted for decades.

This story is one of forgiveness, and redemption. The author is remorseful and eager for no one to have to walk the path she did. The book is hard to swallow, but Phelps-Roper is now the first to apologize, question, and listen to others with an open mind, and it would behoove the rest of us to grant her the same favor.

“God hates fags.” If you know one thing about Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, it’s that this slogan plastered their signs and was part of their armory of in-your-face chants at nationwide protests. Megan Phelps-Roper grew up in the Church, which was founded by her grandfather, Fred Phelps, and made up mostly of her extended family: Phelps had 13 children, and Phelps-Roper is one of 11. In 1989 Phelps learned that nearby Gage Park was a gay cruising spot and wrote in disgust to the mayor and other city officials. In a sense, he never got over it. The anti-homosexuality message would become Westboro’s trademark, at least until the church started its picketing of military funerals after the Iraq War – which, like 9/11, was interpreted as being God’s just punishment of American immorality.

By portraying it from the inside and recreating her shifting perspective from early childhood onwards, Phelps-Roper initially makes her extreme upbringing seem normal. After all, it’s the only thing she knew, and it never would have occurred to her that her family could be wrong. The Phelpses were fiercely intelligent and also ran a law firm, so it’s impossible to just dismiss them as redneck idiots. Frequent passages from the King James Bible appear in italics to echo the justifications the Church cited for its beliefs and actions.

Only gradually did doubts start to creep in for the author as various uncles and brothers left the church. Phelps-Roper was even the voice of Westboro on Twitter, but defending funeral protests became increasingly difficult for her. Two things brought her to a breaking point. First, in something of a coup, the Church appointed a new body of elders – all male, of course – who instituted ever more draconian rules, such as a dress code for women, and effectively removed her mother from leadership. (Ultimately, they would kick the dying Fred Phelps himself out of the church.) Secondly, the Church started to spread fake news via doctored photos. For example, they claimed to be protesting a royal wedding in London, when in fact Westboro members never go anywhere the First Amendment can’t protect them.

All along, Phelps-Roper had been corresponding with “C.G.,” an online acquaintance with whom she played Words with Friends. Chad gently encouraged her to ask why Westboro believed as it did, and to unpick rather than ignore any doctrines that didn’t make sense. “What if we’re wrong? What if this isn’t The Place led by God Himself? What if we’re just people?” she wondered. In November 2012, she and her sister Grace left the Church and the family home, where she’d lived until age 26, and retreated to a Deadwood, South Dakota Airbnb to hike, read and think about what they’d left behind and what came next. I’d had just about enough of Westboro and its infighting by that point in the book – the chapter about her leaving gets a little melodramatic – so, like the author, I was glad to move on to another setting, and this interlude ended up being my favorite section.

There’s much more I could say about this memoir, as the path out of fundamentalism is one I’ve taken, too, and the process of rebuilding a life outside it is ongoing for me, as it is for Phelps-Roper, who now lobbies for empathy across religious and political lines. The sense of a family divided is reminiscent of Tara Westover’s Educated, whose readership Unfollow is keen to secure. At points the book feels overlong (the chapters certainly are), but the good news for anyone who might feel reluctant to tackle it is that a film version is in the works, with a screenplay by Nick Hornby and Reese Witherspoon producing.

Note: Westboro was the subject of a Louis Theroux documentary in 2006, and in a nice full-circle moment, he’s now interviewing Phelps-Roper on some of her UK book tour spots. And, in another lovely aside, she married C.G.

If you've ever seen a news story about the Westboro Baptist Church and wondered why on Earth they would protest at the funeral of a fallen soldier, Megan Phelps-'Roper has the inside scoop. Even better, she details how she came to realize the deception and lies she had been fed from childhood and how she found the courage to leave everything behind. She explains how the cult uses the Bible to justify its hate-filled protests and strict rules for members, and how she gradually comes to understand how twisted the interpretations are. When she finally finds the courage to leave her family, the only world she's ever known, she finds love and understanding from those she protested against. She's a very compelling writer, never making excuses for the ugliness she promoted with her family and never blaming them for the physical and mental abuse she experienced. It's an excellent book that shows the power of forgiveness, redemption, and compassion.

Unfollow chronicles Megan Phelps' journey out of the Westboro Baptist Church, notorious for anti-gay protests and general awfulness. Megan shows it from the inside (her grandfather started the church) and I think anyone interested in cults or extremism will learn a lot about the tactics used to make people behave in ways that seem so unforgivable, and also to understand the keys to helping them work their way out.

As a person coming from a background of similar religious beliefs (if not the insular committee,) I sadly related to a lot of this, and some of her realizations resonated in ways I hadn't actually considered before. She likely has a long road ahead of her, still isolated from her family still in the church, and the almost 30 years of brainwashing that (trust me) surfaces in bizarre ways. Being raised in an extremist religion creates an internal running dialogue of doctrines and verses and teachings. Megan captures this experience in a way I've never been able to articulate. Her long mental journey out also comes with the realization that Westboro is not as unique as we want to believe it is, that extremism and hatred are on the rise, and I'm glad she is working to counter it from this point forward.

This is a powerful memoir.

I was a reporter in Missouri during Westboro’s heyday and I remember the news releases the church would send regularly. I couldn’t understand their hatred. Most of their threats to attend a funeral or a meeting or something to protest never happened, but they stirred up the community anyway, so I suppose it was mission accomplished for them.

Megan Phelps-Roper was raised in love by her family and a strict doctrine of “We’re right, everyone else is wrong” by her church. When she begins to questions her belief, she knows that to give up one (church), she loses the other — her beloved family.

In many ways, reading Unfollow was like Tara Westover’s Educated. To an outsider, it’s all “They’re terrible! Why did you stay?” We don’t see them as family. The strength Megan shows to not only leave everything she’s ever known, but to not shy away from past actions or place blame, but apologize and try to learn more, to do and be better, in admirable and inspiring.

No one needs to #savemegan. She’ll save herself.

I love memoirs by those who have left extremist / fundamentalist religious groups, and have been fascinated by the Westboro Baptist Church for years. I read Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church by Lauren Drain a few years ago, but Unfollow provides such a different perspective - though Lauren's father is mentioned in this book. This one lived up to my expectations - this is quite a story!

Megan does such a good job of talking about how she felt and the views she held as a child and teenager. Its not always easy for authors to place themselves back in that mindset that they held before they left, but that was a strength of this book. While I could have done with fewer Bible verses, it did help bolster that understanding of where she was coming from. Megan is honest about how she was 100% a fairly strict follower of her church and believed everything they told her, as opposed to some memoirs where they talk about their early doubts almost too much. The first 40% of the book may have slogged for me, but it was necessary for the story in the long run to really give you a sense of where she was coming from.

The story of how she left takes up the last 60% or so of the book, that really got to me. It took a long time, and it wasn't easy but Megan is honest about that. I am so glad to see that she's in a better place today, I was rooting for her throughout.

I definitely recommend this book if you've heard of the Westboro Baptist Church and are a little bit interested in them, if you like memoirs of people leaving religions, or just want a good memoir to read in general.

I was beginning to see that our first loyalty was not to the truth but to the church. That for us, the church was the truth, and disloyalty was the only sin unforgivable. This was the true Westboro legacy.

Megan Phelps-Roper is the granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps. The tiny but very loud street-preaching Topeka, Kansas church is considered a hate group, dubbed the “most hated family in America,” and are known for their boundless enthusiasm for picketing, including funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their gleeful celebration when tragedies like school shootings or terrorist attacks occur. That’s God’s punishment for wickedness, according to them.

They’re particularly obsessed with persecuting LGBT+ people, and Megan memorably makes clear just how fiery they get about this topic:

I could articulate the meanings of “scat,” “rimming,” and “golden showers” all before my eighth birthday, though I was loath to do so. To publicly accuse gays of these filthy behaviors would leave a girl open to challenge—“How do you know?”—and thus put her in the unenviable position of having to explain that it’s in a book called The Joys of Gay Sex … which, no, she had not read … but her grandfather had told her about it … during church … from the pulpit.

That grandfather, Fred Phelps, “Gramps” to his large family, was “armed with a law degree, righteous indignation, and unwavering antagonism” through his law career and the church’s founding. I didn’t know much about Westboro beyond basics — it just seems best not to give these types the attention they desperately want — so I was astonished to learn Phelps had been a vociferous advocate for civil rights, had even been honored by the NAACP for his work.

This cognitive dissonance was surprising but then again not, as Phelps-Roper herself acknowledges many such instances that church members, herself included, exercised constantly in order to adhere to their beliefs. On her lunch break, she even protests outside the high school she’s attending at that moment. (But what were they protesting there? Sometimes potentially significant details are missing.)

Curiously, members are highly educated with a penchant for law: her mother and many aunts and uncles are lawyers, and the family runs a law office. With so much education and ability, it’s hard to understand their decision to use their powers for evil instead of good.

Phelps-Roper left the church and her insular family in late 2012, and Unfollow is her memoir of her life there through her decision to leave, up until shortly after she’s started over with her sister Grace outside Westboro’s confines. She’s one of 11 (!) children (four of whom have now left Westboro) born to Shirley Phelps-Roper, Fred’s daughter, and Brent Roper, a rare outsider convert. Westboro members are an extremely small group, numbering only around 70 and primarily being members of Phelps’ family. They very occasionally get outside converts, but Megan had mostly resigned herself to never having a partner. Everything was about the church and its message, that its interpretation of the bible is the only correct one.

Megan was an avid Twitter user, serving as a spokesperson there trumpeting the church’s ideology and interacting with dissenters, of which there were obviously many. But she’s also educated, quick-thinking and witty, all things that made her an intriguing sparring partner for Twitter users, and even won her some strange friendships, of sorts, among those who tried to engage her in ideological discussions. In a twist emphasizing the basic goodness of people, even in the face of such extreme hate, some of these people would come to her aid when she left the church and help her get on her feet in the outside world.

With each new kindness, I understood with ever greater clarity the depths of my ignorance about the world.

Among these were her high school English teacher and David Abitbol, a Jewish blogger (Jews being another major Westboro target), and eventually Chad Fjelland, who not only engaged with Megan on Twitter but over Words with Friends, which led to deep discussions of her beliefs. It was one of the catalysts for her to begin questioning these beliefs, and she shows how fundamentally difficult this was, as questioning was totally verboten. In one heartbreaking scene, she walks on a college campus with her aunt Margie, who would’ve rather become a professor than a lawyer constantly fighting Westboro’s battles, and the two consider “the choices we would have made if we’d had any choice at all.”

In a “reader, I married him” ending, Fjelland eventually enters Megan’s life in a greater capacity and they’re now married. I didn’t expect to be as touched by this as I was, but she’s a fairly deft writer (with an impressive vocabulary) and she makes the depths of her experiences and feelings deeply felt.

The earlier parts of the book portray her life within Westboro and love for her family. It feels like an attempt to humanize them, and I see why she’d want to do that, but it comes at the cost of describing more about Westboro’s ideology and workings. Not that I want to read more of their hate-filled screeds, but I never grasped the jump from civil rights advocate to hater of everyone with the bible lines to prove it, and how exactly everyone could be convinced of the infallibility of it all. There’s some serious cult indoctrination that happened and which we never see.

A bit too much of the book contains the excerpts Westboro members used to underscore their protests and beliefs. Much of the content is Megan’s questioning of these against her previous defenses of the same, and that’s interesting to some extent, but I found it switched gears often when I still had curiosity around a topic. It’s best when she outlines bigger leaps in belief, like having to reconcile with the possibility they’re wrong:

I crossed a chasm in that split second, pursuing a thought my mind had never truly imagined and now could never take back. With stark clarity I understood that whether the church was wrong or right, I was a monster. If we were wrong, then I had spent every day of my life industriously sowing doom, discord, and rage to so many—not at the behest of God, but of my grandfather. I had wasted my life only to fill others’ with pain and misery.

She’s a clever writer who touches on many areas of curiosity, even if it did go in circles around her inner thoughts a bit. I’m sure she’s still making sense of all this herself. I had some curiosity left about the group’s functioniong and where the shunning aspect came from, but maybe these are less important topics, ultimately. It also ends rather abruptly, as I think seeing more of her transition into where her life is today would’ve been illuminating.

The impact of her story is immense, and it’s clear that she loves and misses her family terribly, and that’s uncomfortable to consider. I can only imagine how difficult it is for her, but she’s constructed a fascinating, if unnerving, narrative about the ability to change lifelong beliefs in the face of harshly conditioned fear of the “other”. She even includes a timely, unsettling warning about how the mindset in America is shifting towards this fundamental distrust of those who don’t think like us, and how it echoes the rhetoric Westboro preaches. She would know, and that’s a terrifying warning.

For fans of Educated, The Polygamist's Daughter, and other memoirs of individuals who grew up in extreme religious situations.

For me, this was one of the most highly anticipated books of the year. I heard Megan speak a couple years ago and thought her story was very interesting and that she had many great insights into how people end up thinking like she once did. And she really delves into those concepts in this memoir.

Megan’s account is perhaps one of the most important to come out from the WBC, because many people thought she was being groomed to take over the managing of church activities from her mother. So when she left, it was a bit of a shock - how could someone who seemed so dedicated change like that? It’s an incredibly interesting story.

She recounts in lurid detail how her family essentially became “that family” that we see on the news protesting with signs that would make anyone blush. She does a great job of explaining how her family was able to do such a good job of really ingraining Fred Phelps’ teachings that they didn’t even feel the need to isolate their children from the outside world, like many extreme religious groups do. All of this information is incredibly interesting for people (like me) who not only have an interest in fringe religions, but the Westbrook Baptist Church in particular.

I really appreciated how honest she was in regards to how she thought and how she acted on this - she doesn’t sugar coat her past actions and that really shows that she’s really thought about her past and is growing from the experience.

The one thing that I wish she did more was explore the relationships between her and the other members. I wish there were more personal anecdotes explaining what everyone’s role was and how she felt about each person. We know most of the players, so it felt lacking in that sense. I also understand that the emotions behind condemning your family are extremely complicated, but she doesn’t really go so far as to outright say, “these people are toxic and here’s how they just destroy people.” She seems to still be hanging on to those relationships and I think that’s hard to wrap my head around.

Overall, I really liked this book and think it’s one of the best religious-based memoirs to come out in awhile. It’s definitely at must-read for anyone who has an interest in extreme religion or the psychology of cults and fringe movements.

Megan Phelps-Roper was raised in a fairly normal house. With 13 siblings and as members of the Westboro Baptists church - her life, itself, wasn't entirely normal. Her grandfather being the founder of one of the most controversial churches in America. Homophobic, anti-Semitic and known for their picketline appearances at funerals, the church and members were 'preaching God's truth."

While Megan did escape the church, her family and her life, I found that I wanted to know more. More about how the church became such extremist. More about her current beliefs. More...about how they were allowed to read Stephen King and still 'preach' hate. I had more questions than answers, basically.

Still, this is the story of resilience and of hope, of redemption and of love. I feel like this is just the beginning for Megan, that she is continuing her search for hope and love. She's well on her way.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

I am not even sure HOW to review this book - there is just so much here. And much of it was NOT what I was expecting, though, to be honest, I don't really know just WHAT I WAS expecting. But it wasn't this. I wasn't expecting to relate to Megan. At all. Westboro is a crazytrain "church". Everyone knows that. But what I did not know is that amidst all the crazy-town stuff [the protests, the vulgar language, the hate] is a family [most of the congregation initially were related - children and grandchildren of Fred Phelps] that is just steeped in scripture. And not just any scripture, but the King James Version of scripture. The very scripture I was steeped in as a child and teen and adult [until I moved away and realized I would NOT go to hell for reading a translation]. And that they know it better than I can ever think to know it. And their interpretation of it is how they justify the hateful rhetoric that they spew. And I was shocked to see how often what I grew up with jibed with what they were teaching and being taught and if I am being honest, this totally and completely has messed me up. It is never simple and easy to realize that what you have been taught your whole life might actually border on hate [pro-life rallies come to mind] and seclusion and an unwillingness to accept new people into the "fold" for fear of "contaminating" what was already there. I have spent much of this book in tears and deep reflection. And will continue to do so as I work out what needs to be worked out in my own life. And for that alone, I thank Megan Phelps-Roper for being brave and writing this book. She is one of the bravest people I will never have the privilege to meet. I wish her well as she continues to navigate this road of forgiveness, healing, finding who she truly is, what she truly believes and walks that road without most of her family. I cannot even imagine.

This is a beautiful, brave, amazing and also, very hurtful book. She spares nothing in getting from where she came from to where she is at and that includes ALL of the hateful rhetoric that she regularly used to spew with great vengeance [in the name of God and love] - there WILL be moments that you will despair from the pure hate that is being written about. And there will be moments of despair as she and her sister decided to leave, when you realize that her family will vanish forever from her life. And just how heartbreaking that is. And that, no matter what she did, no one ever deserves that. She does not shy away from any of that, and when you are not in tears over the whole church issue, you will be in tears over the idea of losing your family forever.

This book will stay with me for a very long time, as I too work out the struggle I have with the Church as a whole [which I myself left 4 year ago and have just reentered very reluctantly] and just what I believe. If you are up for all the emotions that this will evoke, than this book is absolutely for you.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publishing for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A fascinating book that follows a young woman's journey from growing up in a cult to breaking free and awakening to the world outside. Megan Phelps-Roper grew up as a golden child within her family's infamous Westboro Baptist Church, protesting since childhood and gleefully snarking on Twitter to anyone and everyone. Until one day, her church turned on her own family and she realized, as she says in the book: "It was as if we were finally doing to ourselves what we had been doing to others - for over twenty years." It's a sad but often true fact of life that people don't have empathy for others until they experience something themselves, but at least Megan finally did, was finally able to put herself in the shoes of those her family and her church viciously attack (to this day). It took real courage for her to leave behind her family, her home and the only life she'd ever known; to unflinchingly examine the beliefs that had been drilled into her since birth, and to come to her own conclusions about what is true, what is right, what is honorable. Add to this the fact that Megan is a fantastic writer, and this book is a real winner.

This book accomplishes the remarkable feat of making the often-villainized Westboro Baptist congregation into people the reader can sympathize with, without diminishing the wrong that has been done by them. I highly recommend this to anyone coming out of fundamentalism or curious about how and why people stay in toxic situations.