Thank you netgally and penguin group for letting me read this in exchange for an honest review.

This is another one of my new favorite queer books. I love reading queer young adult books, it heals something for my inner child who didn’t grow up reading them. My inner child/teen would have been so happy with this book.

First of all, the title pages are some of the best I’ve ever read. I like seeing them but usually end up skipping over them a little bit. But with this book, every chapter had my excited about what it was gonna be this time. Also loved how it always ended up being revelend in every chapter.

This story mostly takes place at church camp and as someone who has been to a lot of church camps when I was younger it was very relatable.

It’s such a sweet coming of age story about discovering who you are, who you like but also about realizing not everything adults is true. Riley made it her mission to commit all seven sins at the camp, which sounded very bad but the way she went about it was actually great. She made friends along the way, talked and helped the girl she hated through some hard stuff and also made her realize not everything the pastor says is true and kissed the girl she liked.

I also loved the ending, it was kinda sad that Julia got outed in the church but how everyone stood up for her? That was the best chapter development everyone could have had. Ben coming out as a lesbian trying to help his sister made me laugh out loud.

In conclusion, if you’re someone who loves queer coming of age stories, definitely read this one!

This book brought me back to Jesus camp in the very best way! I loved the Saved! vibes and the unique look at how religion can cause more harm than good, and how religion and faith aren’t the same thing. The romance was messy and fun to read, and I’m thrilled this book exists for those who need it. Voris knocks it out of the park yet again!

Many thanks to Netgalley for the e-arc!

This was a lot of fun and totally relatable for me. I don't normally gravitate to YA novels but I would highly recommend this book!

I received an advanced reader's copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The marketing team for this book says if you love the movie Saved! (which I do), then you will love this book too (but I did not). I wanted to like this, but it fell flat for me. The main character Riley is a very good student and gets in trouble at school, so her punishment is to go to a church camp and write a term paper about what she learned. If she doesn't do this, she'll be suspended and not be able to participate in the school play. So she picks church camp.

Let's pause there. Why on earth would a public school not affiliated with a church decide this is a good alternative to suspension? Also, why would the Pastor later reveal that the school admin has been keeping tabs on Riley through the Pastor while she's away? WEIRD.

The whole theme for the church camp is seven virtues v seven deadly sins. Riley decides she wants to do the sinning, but honestly the antics she gets up to are just... boring. The camp is boring. The characters aren't developed well. And the romance isn't even a romance but more like a realized mutual crush on a best friend. Also, did anyone else think that the best friend's older brother is gay but then ends up having a giant crush on Riley's sister?

The pacing on this didn't work for me. There are things mentioned that have no other time on page, and it's a bit of a stump of why even bring it up?

I do think the author tried to tell a story for young adults that helps with LGBT+ and religion being able to coexist, and the challenges one goes through feeling both identities sometimes feel mutually exclusive. I'm not sure it fully worked, but I can tell that was what the author was trying to do. I also like how the author leaves things at the end because these are 17 year olds, and not everything is ride off into the sunset on the back of a horse at that age. So I liked that.

Thank you to Netgalley and PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group | Viking Books for Young Readers for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I will say, this is not my typical type of book that I would read. I did enjoy the storyline of this book and some of the characters. I do think it was well written. I would recommend this book.

A queer girl ending up in a church camp as a punishment decides to cause as much chaos as possible? This was great, and I enjoyed every second of it, even when it hurt my heart a little.

Riley decides to make some trouble by committing every deadly sin at her 7 day camp where they're discussing the seven heavenly virtues. She sets out to prove that these sins can be good, depending on the circumstances, and prove their awful pastor wrong. She also may or may not have a crush on the pastor's daughter, her friend.

Over the week, while causing chaos, she gets a little bit of her love story, causes trouble, bonds with the other girls there, and sorts out her problems with the various mean girls that had gotten her into this in the first place. It was nice watching her give these people the support they needed, even when she doubted them.

Of course, there is the usual third act drama, and everything goes to hell, and that hurt and was super stressful, but I'll stop there to try and avoid spoilers.

Also fun chapter headers! (Think Percy Jackson)

This is a great book for young people who are exploring their identifies, especially those who have been raised in restrictive religious environments. It would be a great book for a young adult book club.

Riley is in trouble for slapping another student. Her principal gives her a choice: attend church camp with the pastor who publicly shamed her beloved sister, or miss appearing in the school musical.

I loved this book full of queer love, a hilarious mc, camp adventures, and taking down a pastor full of righteous hate. Riley’s adventure back into her old church community through camp is definitely an adventure for her and her campmates. I loved seeing her relationships develop and grow with friends new and old. We get to see how these relationships between each other and the church are tested and that the love of each other is stronger than the fear of a pastor.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book enough to finish it all the way through.

I do think this book is the perfect story for a younger me! Perhaps that is what brought me towards it when I requested it. I have no regrets in trying it out!

This is THE book for the girlies with religious trauma!! Jenna Voris truly writes for southern and midwestern kids who need to escape their small towns. At the beginning of this book, Riley has a lot of spite towards her old church, and the many members of its congregation--she is forced to go to church camp for slapping one of those said members in the high school hallway. However, as she spends the week at camp, she her relationships with those girls becomes less black-and-white. I really appreciated how Voris doesn't utilize the 'mean girl' trope and gives every character the growth and depth they deserve. I also really appreciated that this, much like Every Time You Hear That Song, doesn't end in a neat little bow, but rather, leads us to envision joyful, queer futures while remaining in the present. It allows teens to see that "It Gets Better" doesn't have to start when you leave town but can happen through small, tender, joyful moments.

Was I up until 2am finishing this book? Yes. Yes I was. As a kid who grew up at a church camp (albeit, a very liberal one) and as an adult who is coming out of a time of religious trauma, this book was excellent. I really related to the characters and the story, particularly what the author had to say about church members' complacency around pastor's wrong doings and abuse. This is much more than a YA romance.

I don’t usually read books with religion, but this one called to me. I have a special place in my heart for teens that need help. I will move everything to help them if I can. And I tried my hardest to do this for the teens in this book. Even when I knew they couldn’t hear me.

My favorite part of this was the main character. I appreciate that she was looking into religion at all the gray areas. I also appreciated that she was so gritty and down for her family. She didn’t allow anyone to mess with them, no matter who they were. I have to say I was impressed. There are so many people (teens and even adults) that would have something like this happen to them and would give up. I DID find it weird that she was more upset about everything than who it happened to, but I just chalked it up to her being the more angry one since she was still younger.

The plot is what sucked me in tho. I was so enthralled with how she was going to challenge the 7 deadly sins and I was also really enthralled with how she was going to survive camp because seriously, all of them were terrible lol I knew where it was going immediately when I read that her best friend’s dad was the pastor, so I was immediately interested in seeing how it was going to go. And then like I kept thinking it was so bad that it could only get better. But no. Things continuously got more and more bad lol That ending?! Lordt I was on pins and needles.

The writing style was also so good. I LOVED that she wrote both sides of the religion and the gray area. Granted it WAS the really extreme views of religion, but I appreciated that she gave both sides. In a teen book this will help them see both sides and can help them start to think for themselves and help them make their own decisions.

The romance was ok. I wish we got to see more of them together, but this was more realistic and I hated it. I legit cried when they were trying to figure out who the one thing belonged to at the end. My heart breaks for these teens that are going through this. But I did like that the author gave us a glimpse of them at the end.

This was so good. There were things that I wished were different, but I think overall it was done really well. It definitely made me want to read her entire backlist. And hopefully they’re all as good as this.

if you're queer kid who spent your summers at christian camp, you are entitled to this book as reparations <3

Say A Little Prayer follows Riley, a queer high school theater student who’s reluctantly sent to Pleasant Hills Baptist church camp to spend her spring break "reconnecting" with her faith and atoning for her sins. Her big sin? <spoiler>Slapping the girl who bullied Riley's sister Hannah, after Hannah had an abortion. </spoiler>

The silver lining? Riley’s best friends, Ben and Julia, are also going to the camp. The catch? Ben and Julia's father runs the camp and just so happens to be the pastor who kicked Riley and her family out of the church the year before. Fed up with being ostracized by the church for her supposed sins—being bisexual is high on that list—Riley decides to challenge the pastor. She plans to commit all seven deadly sins in seven days, hoping to prove that she won't be smited and sent to hell for causing a little chaos. And maybe, just maybe, she'll figure out her feelings for the girl she's been crushing on, even if she is the pastor's angellic daughter.

Say a Little Prayer is sharp, silly, heartfelt, and painfully real despite being utterly ridiculous at times, and I loved it! Riley is an idiot sometimes, in the honest and genuine way only 16/17 year old girls can be, and I spent this whole book wanting to give her and Hannah and Julia the biggest hugs. They are all trying so hard to be themselves within a community that wants to tamp down everything that makes them special, and I love them for it. In fact, even the supposed villains of the story had my empathy - I know what's like to grow up around religion, to be made to feel like the church's opinion of you is all that matters - and all of the teenage characters in this were just so painfully human. All of them deserved a chance to be better, and I was rooting for all of them.

There were a few awkward moments in this, and some of the characters were pretty underdeveloped, but the heart of this story was its emotional intensity, and it delivered; Riley's feelings explode all over the page, and I was blown away by her strength, her resilience, and her capacity for growth. And, I was impressed by the nuanced view of religion Say a Little Prayer offered its readers. It would have been so easy for Jenna Voris to denounce religion completely, and instead she chose to focus on specific abusive behaviours and manipulative tendences that stopped the Pleasant Hills church community from being as welcoming and as inclusive as it could have otherwise been. I'm not even religious, I don't even like religion, and I thought that aspect was really well done.

This was a powerful reflection on the damage that can be done by the Church, and the fear tactics used to control congregations rather than truly help them grow in any way other than a follower. This was written for the queer folks with religious trauma constantly bubbling under the surface, giving a voice to the questions that need to be asked. But the true power lies in the fact that Voris doesn't use this story to only harp on the negatives, but explore the bittersweet reality of community, and the tragedy of how fragile a community could be with the wrong leadership at the helm. While Riley is accused of thinking she's "better than everyone" because she saw the truth in the local Baptist church, this book doesn't read with that kind of pretention. It isn't here to convince anyone of anything they didn't already know, but to validate the fears and concerns and traumas that young people are facing in the name of religion. I especially love that the characters in Voris' novel run the gamut, while some are completely disillusioned with religion entirely, others have worked through some parts of that trauma to find their own sense of spirituality separate from those toxic teachings, and others still remain faithful attendees because they're not in a place to do anything else just yet. And most importantly, none of them are painted as "wrong", but merely as just another side of a very complex issue.

I know what you’re thinking: Kristi loved a book about a bisexual with religious trauma? Shocking. But truly this book is so good. It blends humor with the heartbreak of missing something that’s not good for you.

I didn’t like how the crush on her friend came out of nowhere, but at the same time they were cute so I’m willing to over look it.

I liked how they handled the topic of her sister’s abortion. For their family it wasn’t a big mistake thing she made and they’ll hold over her head forever. Everyone else made it that.

Say a Little Prayer was the perfect amount of fun, frustrating, bittersweet, and hopeful. It was easy to dive into Jenna Voris' novel and I flew through the novel.

My biggest issues with the novels were all personal preferences—I can be picky on pop culture references and this book bordered on having one too many for me. I also found myself frustrated with Riley at times before reminding myself that she was 17 and this, at the end of the day is a YA novel. Like I said — nothing on Voris + the novel but my own ever-changing novel preferences.

But, I had fun with the pace, the characters. They were all flawed in such a realistic way and still lovable and redeemable. The camp antics (as someone who went to a Lutheran summer camp as a kid) were just the kind of ridiculous you'd hope to find in the novel. I also think that covering religious guilt and queerness is SUCH an important topic to cover in novels, especially for young adult readers. I appreciated that while the ending was hopeful, it wasn't a perfect happy-ending. Overall, I had so much fun reading this.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for this read!

I truly enjoyed it so much more than I anticipated to. It was so refreshing to read a YA book that didn’t contain any spice, just the normal teenage longing and some kissing involved as well. I loved the main character, even though she was a tad annoying, her character arc helped in making me forget that. I wish I would have had a book like this when I was younger, and I hope younger readers see themselves in this book and others! Truly wonderful representation! I would recommend and I will definitely be rereading at some point!

I absolutely devoured this read. It perfectly blended humor, actual challenges of teenagers, and the experience of questioning the church. Say a Little Prayer is about Riley, a teen who slaps her sister's ex friend at school and to avoid a punishment that would pull her out of the production of Shrek: The Musical, she attends a weeklong christian camp. (I will say, I have no idea how that would ever be allowed, but just vibe with it.)

Her time at camp is spent sinning, bringing women together, and kissing at the chapel. I ate up every moment of it and can't wait to recommend it!

I LOVED this book so much, wish I had this in high school! This book had me at the first chapter title, actually all of the chapter titles were hilarious. I enjoyed Riley's character, even when she was annoying(which what teen isn't?). I love when the main characters aren't picture perfect. As someone who grew up in the Catholic church I related a lot to being made to feel terrible about my sexuality and it's taken me decades to overcome a lot of the damage, so this book was very healing. If you are queer and/or have Catholic guilt, this book is for you! I know this will make a great addition for my library and for my teen patrons.

I enjoyed Every Time You Hear That Song so much. My expectations for this one were high and it met them plus some! This book felt familiar to me. It felt like something I would have experienced growing up as a closeted lesbian in rural West Virginia. While also having a heavily religious community and family. The characters blended together a little bit for me but that is my only major complaint. I enjoyed this story so much and I will be revisiting it again very soon! My Goodreads review will be posted within the next week.