Thank you to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for the eARC of Two-Step Devil by Jamie Quatro. Quatro created a powerful story with the Prophet and his visions at the centre. I was reminded of Flannery O'Connor in particular. The last third kind of lost me but I see where Quatro was going with it.

Two-step devil, essentially, is the story of a crazy, super right winged, religious, old man who believes himself a prophet. Although he distrusts the government, he must bring his visions to the president ‘because he has a trusting face.’ Too sick to see his plans through, he rescues/kidnaps a trafficked young girl whom he believes is his ‘big fish’ who will help him finish the job.

At first I found the overall religiousness off-putting. However, as the story progressed and the characters were better developed this was no longer the case as the religious rhetoric really only belonged to the prophet and a few minor characters.

This story was a wild ride, and there's so much to unpack. I finished this book over a week ago and I'm still digesting, and likely will be for a while to come. Although, I will say it's definitely worth the read.

This was an intensely moving and beautiful novel. The characters are incredibly well written and although they are complex, flawed and vulnerable the author ensures that we admire them rather than pity them. This is one of the best novels I have read this year and one that I'll be recommending to everyone.

i don’t know how to capture this book into words. it may be the most strange yet wonderful book i’ve read. bear with me.

this book feels real, whimsical, heavy, lyrical, and profound all in one.

two-step devil unravels themes of grief, love, and the complications of faith. we follow a man who calls himself the Prophet, and the Girl he must rescue. the two have suffered greatly; but while we learn the Prophet’s past, we see the Girl’s future unfold.

all the while, the Two-Step Devil is a lingering & opposing force who gradually becomes more prominent into a grand finale; where he takes the narrative and turns his attention to the reader.

this is the kind of book that you’ll need to sit with and fully digest. the themes and topics brought to light in this novel are very prevalent in todays society.
i have never read a book with such a unique narrative flow before. there are three major perspective shifts, but all feel so purposeful and mesmerizing in their delivery. i have to give props to Quatro for taking such risks — from themes to format and everything in between.

Voice.
Voice, voice, voice.
In “Two-Step Devil” by Jamie Quatro, the main character, known principally as The Prophet, speaks with a voice that you’ve heard all your life and that you’ve never heard before.
On vomit: “That’ll clean.”
On hens: “I used to let them roam but it was feeding the coyotes, is why I'm down to five.”
The reader hears the kudzu wrapped around each word, the tomatoes swelling, the chickens scratching. Quatro has so wholly embodied the Prophet, or rather, the Prophet has so wholly embodied her, that the Prophet’s speech is effortlessly authentic: “God weren’t ashamed to be a baby in a trough, and he ain’t ashamed to use a vegetable as his messenger.”
Even though I grew up far north of the book’s Lookout Mountain setting, I heard my grandpa in the Prophet’s voice, other ancestors, generations who lived off the soil and with animals. Their voices rose from the page like smoke. The book conjured them, much like the Prophet conjures his own spirit being, the Two-Step Devil, whose visits are announced by smoke seeping through the cabin’s walls. When heard through the Prophet’s point of view, Two-Step’s voice mirrors the Prophet’s: “Look at you. Third-grade educated, a-fooling yourself with all this vision talk.” However, in the second half of the book, the reader experiences Two-Step outside the Prophet as intermediary, and his voice is condescending, flowery, at one point listing more than twenty names for Satan. And the reader realizes that Two-Step might be more than a figment of the Prophet’s imagination.
Visions drop before the Prophet on a five-foot screen, warning of future calamities. One seems to predict 9/11. He is driven to recreate them, painting the scenes on scraps of wood, on the walls and ceiling of the cabin, window glass, objects found in a nearby junkyard. His wife has died, but his son, Zeke, remains. Zeke sings with “a throat full of wonders,” and the Prophet is sure the gift was God’s purpose for the boy, to use his silver voice to share his father’s visions with the world outside their remote cabin. But Zeke rejects his father’s visions and refuses to use his voice, opting instead for the suburbs, his stomach growing large and soft.
Given the emphasis on voice throughout the book (Indeed, the Prophet claims that his voice can actually heal, and visitors pay him for this cure), I was disappointed initially in the scenes written in the point of view of Michael, a girl who comes to stay with the Prophet. These scenes are coated in drug use, so her narrative is grainy, muddled with painful memories that are also steeped in drugs. When other characters’ voices are so prominent, hers is bleary. At one point, the Prophet even asks her to serve as his voice. As I thought on this, it occurred to me that this lack of voice is representative of her lived experience. Like other women and girls in her situation, she has little agency, so I don’t begrudge her the comfort of drugs. I no longer want her to use her voice. I just want her to survive.
Big thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for the eARC of this unusual, unforgettable book, one that I will continue to think about for the days and weeks to come, maybe longer.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

This was beautifully written! Not what I was expecting but it really shows what an author can do with a limited cast and a smaller setting.

Jamie Quatro!!!! I was so excited when I saw this egalley was available, and it didn't disappoint. This novel is so distinctly a Jamie Quatro production. Strange and delightful, I was hooked from the beginning. Thanks to the publisher for the egalley.

This book was very difficult for me to read. The writing was visceral and truly eerie. Although I could see what Quatro was trying to do— the ending really made a point— I did not enjoy the reading experience at all. Perhaps that was the point? I wish there had been less dream/vision scenes and as someone who is familiar with the Bible, I was still quite confused about what exactly was going on. Again, maybe this was the point? I believe this book could’ve been a short story or a play because I just couldn’t stomach some of the scenes. It felt very experimental in structure and the writing was very poetic. But I’m afraid I cannot recommend this book to my audience.

An effective blend of real and imagined, literary and performative, evil and good. I hope this novel goes far- it deserves to.

The Prophet is slightly weird, but I like how he rescues Michael and how their unusual friendship develops. Both of these characters have suffered a lot, and there is definitely a bit of a depressed feel to the novel.

The three parts of the book hold together well.

The ending may be divisive, but I thought it fit the story.

Content warnings abound (abortion, miscarriage, rape, to name a few)

Thank to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance e-galley; all opinions are my own.

Quatro's novel presents such an intimate exploration into what it means to be sane in such a corrupt world. I really enjoyed the characters, but the Prophet (or Winston) is particularly intriguing and strangely loveable—portrayed as almost pathetically noble, a reader can't help but to sympathize with his underlying loneliness and desperation to connect with his family and Michael. The character of Two-Step also has a cynical charm to him that electrifies any scene he's apart of. Quatro's writing style is so strikingly vivid that it pulls you into the Prophet's world. I also really loved the shift in narrative format near the end of the book, it really brought the story to a new and exciting place. Delightfully challenging at certain points, Two-Step Devil is a fantastic story that will transport you to places you didn't know existed and make you feels things you didn't understand was possible.

Wow. This book blew me away.

The Prophet has had a life full of suffering, much of which he has drank his way through. For nearly as long as he can remember, he has received visions from God. Now, he’s old and isolated, lonely in his cabin in the backwoods of Alabama, spending his days sketching his visions down on whatever he can find. When he’s out at the abandoned junkyard one day, the Lord sends him a real-life vision—a calling to be a real-life prophet—when he witnesses an Innocent being kidnapped and takes it as a sign that he is the one who is destined to rescue her. The girl—Michael—joins the Prophet on his destiny, the two forming an unlikely alliance filled with surprising tenderness.

This story is wildly creative and has a captivating narrative. The characters are fascinating. The Prophet, specifically, makes for a complex character study. With meditations on faith, religion, and redemption, <I>Two-Step Devil</i> is a bold, unique, and intensely compelling read; I will recommend it to readers far and wide. I will be really interested to see readers' thoughts and interpretations, as well as the author's discussions, once this releases. Hovering between four and five stars on this one because the ending threw me for a loop so I still need to sit and ponder it but overall, I was very taken with this novel so I'm rounding up.

Thank you Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review. Available 09/10/2024!

First of all, thanks to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for the eARC of Two-Step Devil by Jamie Quatro. The novel deals with two characters who are struggling with faith and their purpose in life. Set in the south and mixing in doses of the fantastic and the strange, the story recalls Flanery O'Connor's work. Both The Prophet and Michael are utterly captivating as characters and made the story easy to read.

Challenging. Risky. Stuttering toward greatness. Constantly surprising. At first the main protagonist reminded me of Joe Christmas in Light in August, or Hazel "Haze" Motes in Wise Blood...but he is so much more complicated than either, and to call this novel "southern gothic" is to diminish it. There is so much more going on here. It's a difficult book, but the rewards are great. I loved Fire Sermon, but this is another beast altogether. It's utterly unique. I didn't always enjoy what I was reading, but I was continually amazed by it.

This book was amazing! I love reading books where I am familiar with the setting, and this so happened to be placed about 40 minutes from my hometown. Additionally, as a pastor’s kid and deconstructing adult, I found this book healing in a sense.

I was captivated while reading and found myself getting through this in less than 24 hours! Jamie is truly talented with words and the art of storytelling!

I am not usually a fan of multiple P.O.V’s because I feel like they hinder pacing, but in “Two-Step Devil” the mixture of point-of-views between The Prophet, Michael, and then the change to the outside P.O.V was articulately done. It kept me entertained and gave the novel a refreshing feeling - something that I haven’t felt from literature lately.

I found relatability in each of the characters and their developments throughout. Truly, I was just blown away by this book and cannot wait to recommend it to my peers and family!

"True, the myth of Satan is finished. But when the giants dissipate, the windmills stand. Why shouldn't it be so with me?" – Two-Step Devil by Jamie Quatro

⭐⭐⭐⭐(⭐?)/5

⚠️ cw: chronic illness, pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, religious themes, sexual content, pedophilia, rape, trafficking, physical and emotional abuse

I requested this title on a whim, simply because it seemed interesting, thinking it was going to be, at most, ok. Boy, was I wrong.

The Prophet has been having visions of the future for the most part of his adult life. Now an old man, he's lost his wife, his son has moved on with his life, and he's left living a heremitical life while trying to find a way to get his premonitions to the president of the United States. Until, one day, he rescues a fifteen year old girl, Michael (like the angel) from sex traffickers, believing she's the one who will finally fulfill the task he cannot complete.

Like the TWs suggest, this isn't an easy read. Both the Prophet and Michael's lives are characterised by differing kinds of misery, having been severely failed by both their country and those surrounding them. The time they spend together, however brief, is defined by an unusual type of tenderness and care that Quatro represents beautifully. The book definitely picked up a lot for me in those parts.

The book is roughly divided into three parts, with the largest one following the Prophet and his life, a smaller one following Michael on the mission she's sent on, and a third one I won't spoil. While the Prophet's story was important, it didn't grab me as much as the rest, and could maybe have been cut a bit shorter – but I am glad I stuck with it. With that mysterious third part, Quatro does something that immediately sold me on the rest of the book.

Overall, I am very glad I followed my hunch. The mixture of disillusionment in both faith and institutions feels very topical, and while the potential ending had me worried for a second, ultimately I really appreciated its message. There are no happy ever afters here, but after all, those stories need telling, too.

Go preorder it or request it on NetGalley!

I loved this book. The writing was enchanting and took me out of my world and into that of the characters, one of whom is also moving between two worlds, presented with visions and tormented, or perhaps just annoyed, by a devil. Searching for a mission and meaning to his visions, he sets out to rescue an underage prostitute, whom he hopes will spread his message to the wider world. The themes touch on art, relationships, religion, politics, and abortion. The writing is captivating and unique. I found the book hard to put down and read it in about three days - fast for me.

I read and loved one of Jamie Quatro's short stories ("Yogurt Days" from The New Yorker) so I was excited about "Two-Step Devil." The narrative is powerful, with a relationship between two characters who live on the edges of society. I would recommend this for readers who are not scared away by religion and mental illness, or are fans of "Silver Alert" by Lee Child, and/or Flannery O'Conner's stories. I felt disappointed with the ending, but a tidier wrap-up might not have rang true. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

I think this book was good. I requested it because it sounded interesting, and it was. The cast of characters was interesting and all so different from one another