Sisters are a promise. That’s what Bea Denham’s mother told her when her baby sister Lo was born. Bea had been six. Sisters are a promise. And Bea did everything she could to keep that promise, until the day her whole world fell apart. The semi truck that his the family and killed her parents also put Lo in the hospital, barely alive. Nineteen-year-old Bea didn’t know what to do and found herself in the small chapel at the hospital, praying for help. Lev answered that call.
Lev Warren has a vision. He wants to create a community where people can focus on doing God’s work. He hears the voice of God. He helps Bea understand why she was chosen to suffer, and he offers her a place at The Unity Project, where she can find love and redemption. Where she can heal. Where she can help others.
Lo, meanwhile, is left alone in the hospital. Her entire family is gone, except for her mother’s sister Patty. Aunt Patty helps Lo on those long days of recovery in the hospital, and she gives Lo a home when it’s time for her to be released. But her recovery is still long and painful, and the separation from Bea only makes it worse. She tries to find her, she calls The Unity Project over and over begging to talk to Bea. They tell Lo that Bea doesn’t want to talk to her.
Years go by, and Lo gets a job working for a powerful media man. He built his magazine by reporting on stories no one else would touch. Lo can’t help but hope that she can solidify her reputation as a writer the same way, by writing about cult leader Lev Warren. Her boss refuses to support her, so she starts to investigate anyway.
Lo can’t go undercover to investigate—the scars from her car accident are too obvious, and everyone knows her as Bea’s sister anyway. So the only way she has to learn anything is to go straight to the heart of The Unity Project. There is an annual sermon that Lev gives that is open to everyone. Le decides to start there, but it’s not long before she’s spotted and asked to leave by Casey, the woman who runs the day-to-day business of the Project. Lo leaves, but she keeps digging. And asking to speak to Bea.
There are all the good works that the Project is known for—helping the homeless and the hungry, and counseling for those who need it. There are the people who say that Lev brought a girl back from the dead. There are those who believe that a man’s suicide is because of abuse he suffered at the Project. There are phone calls to Lo’s cell phone, where no one speaks on the other line. There are a lot of pieces, but Lo can’t figure out how to make them fit together.
And then, Lev offers Lo the chance to come to the farm and meet with him, to interview him for an article. She will have exclusive access, something he’s granted to no other reporter. She heads to the farmhouse where he lives, and her life is never the same.
The Project is about the promises between sisters and the larger-than-life heroes who helped them heal from their loss of their parents and then them figure out who they are. Author Courtney Summers has crafted a story that is full of twists that leave you breathless and turns that bring you back home. Told in alternating perspectives, from Bea at 19 and then Lo at 19, the events happening 6 years apart but parallel in emotion.
I struggled with The Project, because the emotional lives of these characters were so intense. Add to that Summers’ stinginess with the clues of what’s really happening, and I felt a little like I was being gaslighted like a member of a cult. I loved that we get to see this cult through the eyes of a true believer as well as the betrayed, making it fascinating to see how Lev was able to draw people into his reality and keep them suspended there, despite the sacrifices that were asked of them. This is not an easy read, but the journey from broken to whole that these women take us through is so rich and rewarding, you will be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t read it.
Egalleys for The Project were provided by St. Martins Press (Wednesday Books) through NetGalley, with many thanks.
