What a fantastic, enthralling, and utterly heartbreaking story. I started this before bed (mistake) and then immediately picked it back up when I woke and didn't put it down again until I finished it.

Chelsea Bieker's writing gave me goosebumps at times... "I had no bruises on my body to show my motherloss, and so to anyone else, did it exist?" I could feel the oppression of the heat and the despair of Lacey May through her words. The way she painted all the characters was just done so, so well.

This is the type of book that is absolutely going to stick with you for awhile. I know it will with me.

5 huge stars

I’m absolutely one of those people who judges a book by its cover. I wish I wasn’t so superficial, but here we are. This is going to be one of those covers that either draws people in or repels them away. Something about the unapologetic use of glimmering, gold glitter and the evocation of God on the title is going to be too captivating for some to ignore. It almost feels gratuitous, but in a way you just have to be a part of.

While I’m sure Chelsea Bieker also loves glitter (according to her Instagram, she most definitely does), this cover also perfectly encapsulates the mindset surrounding a cult-like personality. You’re reeled in with the promise of riches or glamour, only to discover what’s being offered is just the same fool’s gold that’s been dug out of the craft store bargain bin. All this to say: don’t let this cover deceive you. It’s anything but the light or glitzy novel you might be expecting. This is a story about female power and breaking free of constricting community and family ties. It’s relentless and strong in a way that only a story about girls and women could be.

In Godshot, Chelsea Bieker shines her golden spotlight on parts of American society that the majority of us passively choose to ignore. Religious leaders that can act with impunity, domestic violence hidden behind closed doors, child abuse, child brides, devastating poverty and lack of proper education—these are all things we don’t hesitate to decry in so-called ‘3rd-world’ nations, but neglect to address at home. They’re woven into the fabric of our country, as American as apple pie, and yet just enough obscured from our day-to-day that we can convince ourselves that they don’t exist.

But they do. Characters like the tenacious Lacey May, her susceptible mother, Louise, and the rest of the inhabitants of the fictional town of Peaches, California represent real, living people. I haven’t read a lot of the books this one is being compared to, The Girls or White Oleander, but for ones I have, like The Handmaid’s Tale, I see it to a point. But I think the story here goes beyond the circumstances these female characters are thrust into. At the heart of this book are the ways the women close to us can lift us up out of hardship, and sometimes how they let us down. It’s complicated and can be difficult to navigate, but those relationships are almost always worth pursuing.

I’m excited to see more from Chelsea Bieker. And if I’m not mistaken, there was an Easter Egg for her upcoming book, Cowboys and Angels, hidden in Godshot. It sounds like something that would be right up Lacey May’s alley!

**TW: Sexual assault against minor(s); religious cults

It has been a long time since I reviewed a five star book but I had no hesitation rating this book as high I can. This book is horrifying but also just feels so true. The setting was immaculately described, the world building (although not a fantasy) perfect -- it feels like a dystopian but one that could happy tomorrow. I have no criticisms of this book and I cannot wait for more from this author. I believe she is coming out with a short story collection soon and I will read it as soon as I can!

I highly recommend this to fans of literary fiction! At times, I was reminded of both Claire Vaye Watkins and Christopher McCormick if only because of the central valley descriptions. This one is so good, you will devour it! Godshot comes out next week on April 7, 2020, you can purchase HERE, and I hope you consider reading this one!

That spring Pastor Vern decided we were due for a congregation-wide revival. We filled an abandoned bathtub behind the church with liters of Check Mate Cola and one by one he held us under just long enough for the lungs to burn, for fearful desperation to set in, and we came up gasping and sticky, his face the first face we saw, a God to us. Our tongues darted to catch the sugar drops falling from our brows. How we cheered as the sugar dried on our skin under the ruthless burn of the sun. There was no wasting water, and so the soda would do. It was such a small sacrifice, to use soda instead of water, that I almost mistook it for a thrill.

1. This cover is ....A+++++++++.

2. This book has been compared to White Oleander and...I see that. It is about women, girls, mothers, daughters...about the relationships and failures. It's also about body policing from religion, one's self, each other.

It's a book about loving someone who doesn't love you back, or that doesn't necessarily love you back. It's about power, love, religion, and overall, it's about life.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this powerful and emotional book.

This book was not for me. Had a really hard time getting into it. Wasn't what I was looking for for my book box subscription, unfortunately.

I just finished GODSHOT by Chelsea Bieker out 4/7/20. 4 stars!

Set outside of Fresno, California in the small town of Peaches, a young girl lives with her alcoholic mother who was saved by Vern’s church of GOTS. They have no access to water and are baptized by soda. He once pulled the rain from the sky and gave it to this desert town and they follow him aimlessly. When her mother leaves the church, Lacey May has to learn to navigate living in this cult religious community, entering womanhood, and the loss of her mother. This book took me on a roller coaster of emotions, and explored themes such as the mother/daughter dynamic, questioning the status quo, and overcoming adversity. It is a difficult read at times because of the horrible things she has to endure. However, the ending left me with Hope. As you may know by now, one of my indicators of a good book is when it leaves me with “all the feels”, and this was certainly
One of them.

It took me a while to finish; not because of the content but because in this strange time I am pulling double duty at the same time as a mom of two toddlers and working from home. I feel if I had more time to myself where I didn’t fall asleep so quickly I would have read this in at least a sitting. If you’re looking for a new book to read, this is up there. Highly recommend!

I was given and Advanced Reader Copy
For an honest review from NetGalley

Ig: agirlwho_reads_
Fb: A Girl Who Reads

I recently finished GODSHOT by Chelsea Bieker (out today -- one week early!) and all I can say is that the inside is just as dazzling as the mesmerizing cover.

The story follows fourteen-year-old Lacey May, a young girl living in Peaches, California (a community under the control of cult leader Pastor Vern), and whose alcoholic mother has suddenly abandoned her. Ultimately, this story is a beautiful exploration of mother-daughter relationships, and all the complexities involved in them. As the novel progressed, I loved watching Lacey come into her own and figure out who she is and what she wants in life, separate from her mother's wishes and that of her cult-like community. She starts off as a naive and gullible teenager, but ends as a determined and confident young woman. This book was on my list of most anticipated releases of 2020, and it 100% surpassed my expectations. If, like me, your preference in books lies in stories written BY women and ABOUT women, then definitely add this book to your TBR!

This book is phenomenally good, Bieker is a fantastic writer. Lacey lives in Peaches, an environmentally ravaged bowl of dry earth in the desert. Vern leads a church in Peaches, he promises to return the town to its former farming glory if the people will only follow his teachings. Vern is as flashy as he is fake as he is an abuser. He twirls across the stage in sparkling capes, gold glitter falling from the heavens. Outwardly he requires only that the people believe in him to make rain (and fertile earth) return to Peaches, on the side he is plotting horrific rituals with the young men of the town that will allegedly secure said return. Lacey must constantly toe the line between the brainwashing she, and those closest to her endure, and her newfound and growing realisation that Vern's glitz and promises belie something evil. Bieker perfectly sets out the destitution of the characters in the book, and resulting desperation to believe that something is better around the corner. In offset to the delusions of the populace of Peaches is Lacey's grim determination, her tenacity and grit. She will not give in to the cruelty Vern propagates. It is this battle of wills that will keep you reading to the very end.

The details of this book are wonderful (Cherry's taxidermy, soda baptisms, golden Holy Spirit guns, glitter sermons and capes and a dog bed, dried out and hollowed canal walkways, shorn and matching haircuts for chocolate, a leaning red house of phone whores, the list could go on) and paint a vivid picture throughout, you will feel as if you are in Peaches (and accordingly you will feel thirsty). Godshot is a beautifully feminist story, one where female characters are not one thing or the other but well rounded, fantastic and flawed.

I recommend you buy this book, you will not be able to put it down. Thank you to Catapult and NetGalley for a pre-publication copy of this book, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

TL;DR REVIEW:
Godshot has it all: beautiful writing, tons of emotions, a cult, and big round characters. I highly recommend.

For you if: You want a cult story, but make it literary fiction.

FULL REVIEW:
Big thanks to Catapult and NetGalley for providing me with a review copy of this book. It was originally supposed to be published on April 7, but the pub date got pushed up to March 31!

“People are one way, you think. You watch them every day and you think you know what they’re capable of. That’s how I felt about your mother. I felt I knew just what she would do in any situation. But that’s always wrong. You never really know what any one person will do, or has done.”


Godshot is Chelsea Bieker’s debut novel, and WHAT a debut. It’s about a 14-year-old girl named Lacey May who lives in Peaches, California — once a major producer of raisins, now a ghost town plagued by drought. Lacey and her mother left behind her mother’s string of no-good ex-boyfriends to join the local church, which is really a cult led by Pastor Vern. The members of the church saw him “bring rain” once before and now believe that he will save them all, if only they are obedient enough. But then Lacey’s mom takes off and Vern’s terrible plan for Lacey and the other young girls of the church (see trigger warnings below) comes to light, and Lacey can’t just blindly follow anymore.

The whole book is told from Lacey’s first person POV, and this is its great delight. Lacey’s voice is strong, and her growth unfolds before us in both action and words. Her powers of observation and reflection are astute. I felt like I was simultaneously crying for her and cheering for her the whole time. Bieker’s writing is just so powerful and resonant!

The story begins as a sort of slow burn, but as Lacey puts more and more of the pieces together it starts to swirl around, until it hits a fast-paced, page-turning conclusion. And here are some of the great things we get to explore along the way: womanhood, motherhood, patriarchy, power, abuse, love, friendship, coming of age, phone sex, witches, family, religion, hunger, pain, and beauty.

Ultimately, this is a book about the resilience of women and the force of their relationships — with one another and with themselves. It’s about the power of powerful men to direct women’s lives, and the power of powerful women pushing back. It’s about what you can live with and what you can’t. Who your born family is and who your chosen family is. How you grow into your own person out of the ashes of other people’s mistreatment.




TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Rape of a minor; Pregnancy or childbirth; Domestic abuse

Reading this, I kept thinking of a line from a poem by Kristin Change:
"Godhood is just like girlhood: a begging to be believed."

all of my gods are girls. I do not believe in deities, in organized religion, but any faith that lives in me is the hunger, terror, creativity, and vivacity of girls—ie, teenage girls will save the fucking world, will upend and remake it, create new ones. I think that girlhood is such a culturally feared, belittled, and mythologized space, and to genuinely engage with its expressions as one would with religion is a potentiality I've always been interested in.

Godshot does that. Godshot assesses the divine and unsettles its usual faces. The narrative glue, that of a religious sect, delineates a raw devotion/desire-place/collectivity that organizes girlhood in a very brutal and gorgeous way. Bieker pushes us towards the very uneasy idea that what most appears divine or godly usually isn't. by positioning a particular figure as divine, as holy, Bieker destabilizes the reader with a sense that they can certainly see what is coming, they've seen this story before, and completely derails whatever narrative we think we're getting. The language is often swelling with what Mary Karr calls "sacred carnality." the visceral, the bodily, is depicted as near-biblical; it's genius, because the everyday bodily functions and exchanges of girls' growing up, completely unremarkable, become remarkable, and come to mirror the ways in which we mythologize "female" bodies when we entrench them in shame, always encoded, never quite speaking of them outright or letting womxn even talk or know about their own selves. The novel sped and spiraled, sorts of wields a calibrated unruliness that very much represents the non-linear and meandering experience, I think, of growing up.

I was reminded of Claire Vaye Watkins' Gold Fame Citrus, a book I love, and of course Emma Cline's The Girls. Cult lit is one of my favorite genres; crazy white people doing crazy shit, usually crazy white men with a very real white-womxn complicity, is, shamefully, absorbing to me when it centers the girls. When it comes to young girls, children still, we infantilize them, deny them their rightful capacities for grossness (hell yeah) and often how we write about girls is, b/c of how many messages we've swallowed our whole lives, even when womxn write them, enmeshed in the male gaze. I love this book because it does no such thing. I love it because it is grotesque and clever, nauseating and vehement, ripe with rage, it is tender and bitter and unrelenting. it holds a lot, in other words, and I very much recommend it.

Peaches is a small California town, parched and dry, with not a drop of water in ages. That is the setting of Chelsea Bieker’s novel, Godshot. The townsfolk are desperate to reawaken their once thriving raisin business, but the town seems to be trapped in its own bubble of dryness. Somehow, other nearby towns have rain showers while the citizens of Peaches drink soda and eat only canned food, as the plumbing no longer spouts water and the grocery store has long given up on selling produce.
In their desperation, many join the congregation of Vern, who walks into a town one day, bringing rain with him. It never rains again, but his followers still hold out hope that they’ll see it again. And they might, since Vern has a plan.
I’m not a very sensitive person, But this book had some rough topics, too – incest, rape, violence, sex trafficking. Please be warned.
Vern’s plan involves the manipulation of the brainwashed teens in his church, including Lacey May, the protagonist. She and her family have been faithful members for year, until her mother leaves both the church and Lacey May behind. Lacey May is alone to figure out her own problems, and searches for her mother using clues she gathers at a phone sex operation. She is nothing but resilient, and deals with traumas that would make older, more resourced people break down.
This story is certainly unique. Looking beyond the triggering subject matter, Bieker paints a vivid, desperate picture that tugs at the heartstrings. It made me feel so strongly I had to read a romantic comedy to perk me back up. It was fascinating to see how isolated Peaches was to the rest of the country, let alone the rest of the state, as if it was some sort of desert island, despite being set in the present. The culture and tight-knit behaviors of the townspeople were bizarre and mildly disturbing. They have isolated themselves from those not part of their group, only crossing lines in an attempt to convert them. In return, the rest of the townspeople avoid them and hiss “cult” under their breath when they see a disciple of Vern in their vicinity.
I can honestly say this book was not something I’d typically choose. The advertised description of the book does not fully prepare the reader for what they’re about to be exposed to.

Decided to put this one aside for now, as I don't think I'm the right reader for this book. The main character is a 14-year-old girl who is abandoned by her alcoholic mother. They were all a part of a cult in California, and in addition to spiritual abuse, the cult abuses members sexually. The cult leader thinks he will be able to make the drought-filled area finally have rain, but I just am not interested enough to see what will happen to them all.

Thanks to NetGalley and Catapult for the free digital review copy.

Also, there were errors with formatting throughout this e-ARC. Distracting

Take a deep breath before you begin reading this dark, dazzling and deliciously entrancing novel, for it won’t be long before you’ll holding your breath in anticipation of what lies waiting in Peaches, California for you.

’To have an assignment, Pastor Vern said, you had to be a woman of blood. You had to be a man of deep voice and Adam’s apple. And you should never reveal your assignment to another soul, for assignments were a holy bargaining between you and your pastor and God Himself. To speak of them directly would be to mar God’s voice, turn the supernatural human, and ruin it. So not even my own mother could tell me what her assignment was that unseasonably warm winter, wouldn’t tell me months into it when spring lifted up more dry heat around us, and everything twisted and changed forever.’

’I imagined her floating above our beloved town of Peaches, dropping God glitter over us like an angel, summoning the rain to cure our droughted fields. I imagined all these things with a burn of jealousy, for I had not received my woman’s blessing yet, the rush of blood between my legs that would signify me as useful. I’d just turned fourteen but was still a board-chested child in the eyes of God and Pastor Vern, and so I prayed day and night for the blood to come to me in a river, to flood the bed I shared with my mother. Then I would be ready. I could have an assignment too.’

If you took the real story that made headline news in 2008 of Warren Jeffs and his YFZ Ranch and scaled it down in size, and then shared the story through the eyes of one of those young women, and you blended it with a dash of the young women in Emma Cline’s Girls, you’d come close to an idea of this, but throw in the unceasing drought, this community’s lack of water leading to baptism by immersion in cola, along with the community’s desperation building. Add young, vulnerable, Lacey May, whose mother has just been driven out of the Gifts of the Spirit Church as your narrator in this coming-of-age debut novel, and you’ve got Godshot.

Of course there’s more to this story, but you’ll want to experience this story yourself, a story with themes of extremist religions, socially constructed gender inequality, and a bit about the current and future state of the environment.

In a year so relatively new, I am amazed by how many extremely gifted debut authors’ works I’ve read. This is another one you won’t forget.



Pub Date: 17 Apr 2020


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Catapult

This was a different book than what I was expected. I was expecting more of a dystopian theme from the story, but the book read like the events were happening in present day, rather than in an alternate future. Lacey May is 14 and a resident of Peaches, a fictional town in California that is experiencing extreme drought. The preacher of their church had previously been able to cause rain to fall. This makes him a hero to the church attendees, called The Body. With water running out the citizens are desperate for rain and turn to the Preacher to make it happen. The Preacher does have an idea, Lacey May, and the other Bible Study girls are at the heart of it. There are many themes in this book, mothers and daughters, rape, assault, blind obedience to a man (in the Preacher’s wife case) to name a few. Lacey May finds friendship with her mother’s previous employer, who also employs Lacy May at times. I felt sorry for Lacey May, she is a precocious young girl, though at the same time she displayed a resilience to the things that happened to her, some of which were not pleasant. The ending was perfect. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

#Godshot by @chelseabieker is out in just a couple of weeks. I had the chance to review this one early and y’all, it is a doozy. It’s an incredibly interesting, tragic book about family, belief, and freedom. There is a LOT of graphic assault content, as a warning. It is ultimately a coming of age story about a young girl who has to find her place insider or outside of what she’s been taught her whole life. If you liked Educated, you might also like this book- it’s similarly heartbreaking and hopeful. I would recommend to people who CAN focus during this crisis: I am having a hard time, myself. Out on April 7!
.

One of the most powerful novels I've read in a while. It was slow to start, and I considered quitting a couple times because of the subject matter. Other readers told me to stick with it and I'm so glad I did. After about 30%, I was totally hooked.

This is a bleak, heavy story. It follows a 14 year old girl who lives in a desert town that is run by a fanatic religious leader. Abandoned by her mother, left with her inattentive grandmother, Lacey Mae clings to her faith to get through. Eventually that begins to shift for her and that's where things get intense.

Bieker's writing is vivid, that's part of what makes it difficult to read at times. Her characters are unique and well developed. The imagery of the desert life is phenomenal, same with the scenes involving the church congregation. I could almost feel sweat on forehead at times. It's about this religious cult, and about so much more. Faith and belief, what desperate people are willing to do for it. It's also about the mother-daughter relationship, and finding a family when your given one fails you.

I highly recommend this one for readers of literary fiction.

*note* I found the scenes involving firearms to be highly unrealistic and they distracted me from what was going on in the scene.

I was totally drawn in by the premise of Godshot: a girl growing up in a cult in drought-ravaged California.

Thus, I was surprised when the first third of the book felt like a bit of a slog - I'd read a few pages, fall asleep, and not think of it again until I did the same thing a couple nights later. Hoping to get into it, I committed myself to reading Godshot in slightly larger chunks (~5%); I wasn't to the point of DNFing. But while the plot did pick up by the halfway mark, I never really fell for this one. No gold glitter for me.

Godshot had a few lines that stuck out as powerful, but more spots where I felt like it was overwritten. There also were some lines that were just too over the top for me (though I recognize some love this sort of dramatic writing).

I'd recommend this one to those who like coming of age stories, are OK with a trauma-ridden plot, and have at least minimal interest in what happens in cults. The focus was less on how these people became taken up with the church of Vern, and more on living within it.

Thank you to Catapult and NetGalley for a free e-arc of this title for review.

Godshot is the story of 14-year-old Lacey May, a young girl growing up in Peaches, CA. Her town is in a severe drought, and Lacey and everyone she knows is in thrall to a charismatic preacher who says he can bring the rain back. When Lacey's mother runs off, she has to grapple with faith and community herself, and soon has to delve even further into motherhood and motherloss than any child should have to. The story is devastating, with occasional sparks of hope and love, asking deeply important questions and rooting on our heroine in even the darkest of times. Gorgeous.

GODSHOT is an epic tale of survival, a girl's coming of age, and motherhood. It is shocking and heartbreaking, and you will find it so hard to put down because you will be desperate to know what is going to happen to our strong-willed protagonist Lacey.

Set in a California town taken hostage by a psychotic religious cult leader named Vern (who promises rain and makes the young girls get pregnant in horrific and traumatizing ways), Lacey is abandoned by her mother to live with her truly crazy grandmother. As she both searches for her mother, and comes to terms with being a mother herself, we root, cry, and fight alongside Lacey as she tries to not only make a better life for herself, but literally fight for her life against religion, men, and her own family.

GODSHOT is no easy read, and I often had to take breaks from reading it (especially this week, of course). But I encourage you to read it and stick with it -- it is unlike anything I have read, and I know it will stay with me for a long time. Lacey is a protagonist for the ages.

I had been seeing this one all over Instagram, and I was intrigued by the premise from the beginning. I feel like I have been reading a lot of books about religion, faith, or lack there of, and how it shapes younger people. I was no expecting what this story was truly about - a religious cult that is deranged by lack of water in a drought-ridden county of California and willing to do anything and put their faith in anyone to bring the rain. Lacey is one hell of a protagonist, and I loved her deeply while reading this even if she did take a long time to see the light, as it were. Her relationship with her mother was something so painful to read that I could imagine it happening so clearly in my mind. How much she loved her mother shined throughout the entire novel, even to the end when she realizes that she needs to put her behind her in order to move forward. This book also enraged me because I couldn't stand the church and Vern and all of his disciples who would let heinous things happen behind their backs and turn a blind eye. I know that there are religious sects and cults in the real world where this happens all the time, so I think that it made it so real that it was hard to not be disgusted by it. But I think the best part of Godshot is Lacey's awakening, her coming into her own, and creating a family for herself out of all of the bad things that happened to her. She is such a bright light that it is hard to not be drawn to her, and even though it may not be the happiest ending, I think it was fitting for her because she finally got everything she had ever wanted in a family.