A fascinating novel about a girl bucking against her scary preacher father. A bit mystical, a bit feminist, and great characters.

Beautifully written, I was instantly hooked and could not put this down!

I loved that it started with a downfall and the affects that this had on the family, especially young Miriam.

While I didn't love the ending that left too much open, this was still fantastic.

This novel is intense and dark at times, and disturbing. It was beautifully written and I was highly intrigued by the subject matter, as it is not something I would experience in my every day life. It’s about a young girl grappling with her own faith, coming to terms with the truth about her father. It brought me to the world of revival tents and faith healing. I cared so much about Miriam and wanted nothing but the best to happen to her. Watching her go through so many horrible things and still keep going was inspiring. I will definitely read whatever Monica West writes next!

This book wasn’t the easiest subject to read but the revival circuit setting was interesting and the family dynamics felt real. I was a huge fan of the autonomy given to the younger characters and that the adults were treated with a mixture of grace and critique as appropriate for the complex actions and dynamics. Really good debut.

I love reading stories like this! I appreciate that this book pushes back against some of the horrible things that people experience in the church. I was basically raised in church and though I had the absolute privilege of being surrounded by loving people, I know that is not the case for everyone.

While my dad was nothing like hers, I found myself relating to the main character in her struggles between faith and doubt. The story was immersive and I wish we could have more. The ending gave me chills!

Thank you to Simon & Schuster, Monica West and Netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Revival Season is the coming-of-age story of Miriam, a fifteen year old girl, who is the oldest child of an African American Evangelical family living in southern Texas. Her father is a famous preacher and the family spends its summers on the revival circuit. They drive all over the South visiting small towns so her father can deliver his sermon and perform faith healings. One night, after witnessing her father commit a sudden act of violence, Miriam's world is shattered, which propels her on her own journey to truth and self-awareness.

I really enjoyed this book. The pace of the story may seem a bit slow at times, but I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. I found Miriam's life captivating. Though the novel takes place in the present day, the story feels as if it takes place fifty years ago. How Miriam, her mother, and her sister are treated by their father is infuriating and shocking. It's hard to believe that women have been treated this way or even worse, and many still are today. This beautifully written debut will unfortunately probably be dismissed by some simply because it deals with the topics of religion and faith.

However, as someone who was raised Catholic and went to parochial school, I didn't find the novel preachy or the amount of religion mentioned too much. I don't think this is a book so much about religion, as much as it is about a sheltered, young girl who lives in an abusive and religious household, finding her way in spite of the obstacles against her.

3 ½ stars rounded up to 4
Recommend for readers who enjoy: historical fiction, women's fiction, general fiction, literary fiction, coming-of-age stories, books set in the South, books with a hint of metaphysical, road trips

I loved this book. It's a close look at evangelical church culture and the role of women within. I'm always a fan of coming of age stories and this is no exception. I loved watching Miriam come into her own, as she figured out her gifts and responsibilities. It was heartbreaking to see her struggle with her relationship with her dad - he was her hero and watching him fall before her eyes and suffer at his hand was difficult. Relationships - with God, community and family, were so well done here.

While slightly uneven in execution, I was drawn in to this story of a family traveling across the South providing "healing" revivals. This topic fascinates me, as questions of fate are challenged by those who seek to harm. I'll look forward to reading more from this author.

I tend to love this kind of story, but I couldn't get into it at all. I tried twice. I enjoyed the main character's voice but it wasn't enough to pull me in. It could be that in the midst of a long pandemic, it's just not the kind of comforting story I feel myself needing.

A powerful book about the power of family, religion, and becoming ones own person, Revival Season is a book to remember. Beautifully written and timely, Monica West is at her best here.

This novel was extremely well written and extremely original and was a great pleasure to read. Miriam and her family travel throughout the country every summer to provide healing services at revivals. She is extremely enmeshed and led by her faith until she realizes that her father is not who he seems to be and her life is not what she thinks it is. She finds that she is torn between using her gift, honoring her religion, and being submissive and subservient to the men in her life. I found Miriam to be a well written and well rounded character. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley, I believe that this is definitely a new author to watch.

This has such an interesting premise and it started off really strong but it took a direction that I didn’t really love and the last half I felt myself skimming through. However I do love the religious themes in this book and will definitely check out more from this author.

I probably should not have requested this one... Yikes. Everything that I hate in the owrld today is in this book. I will not say more but def not my type

This book was very lackluster. I'm not a religious person and this book talks about religion a lot. I felt like I misunderstood what this book was about. The synopsis was misleading. It's a pass for me.

I think I'm attracted to books about preachers because my beloved Dad was one, but the one in this book is about as opposite as one can get. Even though we are all human and have our own sins, it does bother me that so often religious leaders can be so un-Christian like. This book is filled with family dysfunction, hypocrisy, and secrets. The preacher is prideful and can't admit he has an abuse problem which causes his daughter to question her strong faith. Even though the father believed in patriarchal rule and that women were subordinate, I loved that his daughter was finding that she had gifts bestowed upon her and was learning how to lean into that. This book is well-written, but it is hard to read due to the darkness of the subject matter, and often made me angry at what was going on. That being said, though, the book really brought me in to connect with it. I found it to be a cautionary tale not to blindly, faithfully follow a religious leader, but rather put your faith in God.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy to review.

REVIVAL SEASON, by Monica West, shines a focused spotlight on a Texan Baptist family, whose father is renowned for his ability to heal and save Souls, especially during the summer as they canvas the South hopping from revival to revival. But what happens and how does he change when it seems his healing powers have left him and others start to see his weakness? How does he explain not being able to heal his own daughter who was born with Cerebral Palsy or save a son born stillborn? The reader walks through West’s debut novel through the eyes of the eldest daughter, who not only shares the brunt of her father’s misplaced fury along with her mother, but also discovers newfound abilities of her own. In a world where children, especially girls, are to be ‘seen not heard’, how will she navigate her new discovery and the realization that her father is fallible? When her eyes are opened anew to a world that is not what she was taught to believe or as it seemed, what choices will she make? West’s new release has a strong unflinching point of view while uncovering harsh realities without shying away. She submerges the reader into hot humid summers in the South, under circus looking revival tents humming with fire and brimstone sermons amidst throngs of anxious parishioners. With an ending that leaves the next turn to your own hypothesis, West raises questions and stirs debate to her very last words. Touted by Barnes & Noble as a discover pick and author Kiley Reid for a book club pick, this new debut from West is attracting and garnering widespread attention, while residing in its own unique place.
#RevivalSeason #monicawest Simon & Schuster

Revival Season is not the kind of story I can read completely objectively. My faith is a huge part of my identity. I’m a Christian, and I’ve attended Baptist churches my entire life. When something is so integral to who you are, it’s difficult to remove yourself from a story that centers so profoundly around that trait or belief. And that was one of my biggest problems with this book. There were so many religious red flags that I wanted to take the whole fictional family to counseling. This was a twisted, maimed version of my faith staring back at me from the page, a funhouse reflection of what I believe. While I finished the book, all I wanted to do was look away.

A particular subset of Christian leaders I’ve always had a ton of issues with is the faith healers. While I fully believe that God is still performing miracles every day, including those so profound that there’s no other explanation, I’ve seen too many exposés on said faith healers lying to congregants and staging their healings in order to gain larger followings or more financial contributions. I don’t trust them as a group, though I’ve never met a self-professed faith healer in person. So it was interesting to see the life of a faith healer from the inside. The story is set in 2017, but it feels more historical than that. I kept thinking about the 70s as I read for some reason. There was something about the lifestyle this man was forcing upon his family that just screamed “abusive situation waiting to happen” to me, while also shooting me back into the past.

I can’t imagine how hard it would be to live with knowing the truth about something while everyone you love believes a lie, and not being able to tell them the truth because you know they would never believe you. Well, I can, but I’m thankful to not be in that situation. But that’s where Miriam, our perspective character, finds herself. She’s the eldest child in this family, and she sees something one night during revival season that leads her to question everything she’s ever known about God and faith and her father. The rest of the story is her wrestling with that knowledge and those questions.

If you’re a Christian, it’s so desperately important to never tie your faith to another person, whether that person is a family member or a preacher or someone famous who professes to follow Christ. The only beings who should be involved in your personal belief are you and God. The same can be said for any religion or belief system. The people in your life will fail you. They’ll make mistakes because they’re human. And if your faith is somehow tied to them, it will break when they do.

I don’t generally do trigger warnings, but there’s a fairly graphic scene depicting self-harm in this book of which I think some more sensitive readers need to be made aware. There’s also a good bit of child and spousal abuse, though most of it happens off-screen, at least in the front half of the story. Between those issues and the depiction of religion, this book was hard for me to read, and I don’t consider myself a particularly sensitive reader in most cases. The unhappiness in this family was palpable from the beginning of the novel and only worsened from there. Something about it felt relentlessly bleak to me.

For a story so supposedly centered on God, there was actually very little of Him in these pages. While the characters proclaimed faith in God, it felt more like their faith was in either themselves or another person. If any of them prayed for a sign, they would interpret whatever happened as an affirmation. The entire approach to faith and having a relationship with God as portrayed in this book rubbed me the wrong way and made me deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps that’s because I’ve seen this type of religious fervor firsthand in my life, and have seen the damage it can wreak. I think it’s always hard to look at the twisting of your own faith. However, I also think this was a very deliberate, purposeful choice by the author. Because God was indeed present in the pages, and his scarcity made his presence all the more powerful to our perspective character when she did feel Him. Or was it simply the power of her own belief that she felt? That question is one of the things that made the story interesting.

I both hated and respected the ambiguous, open-ended ending. Where the story went after that final sentence is anyone’s guess, which will surely keep it at the front of readerly minds far after they finish the book. But I couldn’t decide if it was a brave decision or a weak one. But that’s often how I feel when reading such endings, and is one of the main reasons I have such a love/hate relationship with literary fiction.

>I’m glad to have read Revival Season. And I’m even more glad that I’ve finally finished reading it. It made me think deeply, and my husband and mom both heard way more about it than I’m sure they wanted to. And it made me feel, though the emotions it evoked the strongest were anger and sadness. This is a book that, while I appreciated it, I didn’t enjoy it, and I won’t be reading it again. That being said, the writing was excellent, and I would definitely be interested in reading more of West’s work.

Stunning. I adore this book so much. Monica West is an author that will absolutely be a force to be reckoned with going forward.

West's writing is flawless. While a lot is left open for interpretation, we get just enough from each of the characters to understand all the different kinds of tension going on in this novel.

Miriam, our protagonist, is smart and inquisitive. It was amazing to read along as she discovered more about herself, her stuck mother, and her haunted father. I am particularly grateful for West's graceful portrayal of Hannah (Miriam's sister)- no spoilers here but it is made clear that Hannah is not a character to pity.

There's a review out there that said this book is "in conversation" with TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM by Yaa Gyasi, and I love that juxtaposition. I 100% truly cannot wait to see what West does next.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy!

I read this a while ago and I’m still trying to sort out my feelings on this book. I felt all the feelings, it was an emotional roller coaster in the hardest way. I absolutely adored the writing and I will read anything this author comes out with, but dang, this was a hard one.