I have loved all of Jennifer Mathieu's books so far and Devoted was no exception! The religious focus was fascinating and Rachel was such an authentic character.

This could have been a typical book about a religious cult, where the cult members are depicted as slightly deranged and dangerous, but the author handles things far more sensitively than that, and we get a clear sense of the struggle Rachel goes through to find her own freedom while trying not to lose her family. Her family aren't painted as religious lunatics, but simply as people who are in many ways good and caring, but whose beliefs are, for Rachel at least, too controlling and limiting. It's a really absorbing book which I couldn't put down - it's easy to care about the characters and sympathize with the situations, and it's even possible to see Rachel's family's side of things, even if most readers absolutely wouldn't agree with their handling of things or their extreme beliefs.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

I found this to be a very thought provoking story. The subject matter was handled well as it follows Rachel navigating through life in a strictly religious family and whether she really wants to be part of it anymore.

In a weird and twisted way, I love books about cults. I love seeing the effects of how a human mind can be turned and brainwashed. Mathieu has for sure done her research here because the experiences Rachel has and the life she lives are fantastically portrayed.

I really liked Rachel. Her family are very sweet- all 12 of them. I loved her progression from the second third or so of the book on.

Like Rachel, I began to doubt my faith in my teens, and like Lauren I pretty much abandoned it completely. It was so interesting to read this same activity being done by someone with a much deeper religious connection.

An intriguing look at a community with a difference. I have enjoyed Mathieu's previous books which were recently released in the UK and was thrilled to find out I could get my hands on Devoted.

I did enjoy this book! It did take me a while to get through it, but I think I i was in a bit of a reading slump!

I'm a big fan of religious cult stories and this is an excellent one. Rachael has grown up in an LDS community and is starting to feel frustrated and question whether it's the life she wants. When she hears about Lauren Sullivan moving back to town she remembers her as the rebellious girl who walked out on her family to start a new life and is drawn to her. She reads her blog in the middle of the night when her family are asleep and one night she gets the courage to send her an email.

Mathieu must either come from a religious background or she has done incredible research. Rachael comes across as very authentic and she lives and breathes scripture. Her rebellion is nuanced and conflicted. It isn't so much that she becomes fed up and explodes, its more like a quiet, constant itch she can't ignore any longer. Rachel and Lauren are compelling characters and you can't help but like and respect them.

Definitely a book I'll make use of in the classroom and I think a lot of students will be interested in this one.

I swallowed Devoted in one sitting. I hope it goes down very well in the US, where it is set; I'm not quite sure how it will play with UK teens who may not have come across the Quiverfull movement before and consequently might seem outlandish. As an adult familiar with stories like The Handmaid's Tale and The Miseducation of Cameron Post, I found Devoted by turns creepy, terrifying, uplifting and exhausting. Poor Rachel. Poor Lauren. Brilliant Rachel, brilliant Lauren, The writing is really gripping, in a much darker sense than Moxie - Matthieu has created a completely believable world which is all the more shocking knowing that the premise is absolutely true.

Two strands stood out particularly for me - the contrast between Rachel and Lauren's reactions to religion, and Rachel's relationship with Mark. Both took the road rather less travelled in contemporary YA, in that Matthieu gives both religion and romance time to breathe. There is no knee-jerk rejection or insta-love for either, which is remarkable given that Devoted is not a long book. How the author manages to get the pacing so right is beyond me! I wish Devoted every success and I hope it finds all the young people (and not so young!) who need it.

achel's life has always been controlled from what she reads to what she wears, where she goes and her schooling. Her parents dominate how her life should be; modesty, marriage, obedience and childbearing. She knows no different, that is until a girl who escaped their close knit community moves back to town and shakes up Rachel's world. She soon starts to realise that her life is hers and hers alone and starts to find courage to change her life for the greater good.

Wow! Devoted is a book full of emotion, belief, friendship, love and ultimately finding the courage to live your life how you want to live it. It also touches on the topic of religion, more specifically christianity. I was worried that it would end up being a scare story about religion but I couldn't have been more wrong. The topic is handled in a respectable, subtle way and shows you how it can affect families and their communities.

The plot was you could say cut into two parts. In the first part we experience the community Rachel is growing up in. This community was quite frankly awful. Children are under constant surveillance and are home schooled, women are taught that they are only useful for child rearing and keeping their husbands happy and girls are told they can't wear anything that could tempt boys. Some sections were quite uncomfortable to read and did anger me. However, this in my mind could have been the reaction the author was expecting.

In the second part we get to see Rachel come into her own and start choosing how she wants to live her life. This part really touched me and took me alongside Rachel on her journey of self discovery. I loved seeing her interact with people outside of her churchy community and forming relationships with Lauren, Mr and Mrs Treats and Mark. Rachel's blossoming relationship with Mark was so heartwarming. Mark was such a cutie and his respect towards Rachel was admirable. I am hoping they got their happy ending with each other.

Rachel was a character that I could certainly sympathise with. I completely understood her dilemmas over her faith, her life, her new relationships and her family. Her development throughout the story was next to none and I found myself with a tear in my eye towards the end of her journey. A strong feminine character for sure!

Devoted was a powerful, informative, emotional read and I really didn't want to put it down. It will really get you thinking about your own life and how you can live it the best you can.

Jennifer Mathieu's Moxie (a glorious YA paean to feminism, friendships and the power of zines) was one of my favourite books of 2017, so I was keen to read this, the follow-up.

Devoted is the story of Rachel, the oldest daughter of a large family who belong to a fundamentalist Christian sect clearly modelled on the Quiverfull movement (think Duggar family). Rachel has never questioned the strict dictates of her church about what she reads and wears or where she goes. Until, that is, she comes across a book in the library with which she becomes fascinated: Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time. Questioning why she can't read the book leads her to question an awful lot about her faith, a process that is facilitated by her encounters with Lauren (who has run away from the church Rachel is a member of and now writes a blog about her experiences).

It would be easy, for a lesser writer than Mathieu, for Devoted to function as a criticism of all religion (and certainly all Christianity), but this is a far more nuanced and intelligent book than that. Highly recommended.

Thank you NetGalley and Hachette Children's Group for providing me with a copy for review.

The protagonist, Rachel, lives in an extremely religious community that controls every aspect of her life from where to goes and what she can do to what her aspirations should be and how she should think. It is a cult. She feels incredibly trapped by all these rules and what is expected of her, especially as a woman, and begins to become interested in a girl who escaped from the cult a few years ago and has recently moved back to the area. 

I really liked this book and how it made me think about many different things. It is a very feminist novel that does a great job of handling heavy topics with delicacy and making them accessible to a wide audience. The characters give so many different points of view of topics throughout the novel and it shows how many things are not black and white. Even Lauren and Rachel, the two main characters in the novel who grew up in the cult and have a lot in common, do not always agree and occasionally argue about their conflicting opinions and feelings. It is a very raw novel.

Though I'm not religious myself, I'm always unsure about reading books about cult-like depictions of religious groups as these groups are extreme and few in actuality and I think it's important to demonstrate the positive aspects of religion as well as the negative. I think this book does an excellent job of showing both sides of this coin. Rachel's family and community highlights the negativity and problems with extremism, but the Treats family and Rachel herself show how religion can be positive and helpful. They show that religion cannot be blamed for why her family behaves in this way because most religious people are not like this. It is a problem with them, not with being religious.

Overall, I really liked this novel and the characters that Rachel meets along her journey. I'm so glad that I got the opportunity to review it as I'm not sure it is one that I would have found or otherwise thought to pick up without it.

I really feel like I need to give A Wrinkle in Time another chance after reading this too as the novel is so prominent in the story and important to the main character.

*** REVIEW NOT LIVE UNTIL RELEASE ***

5 Words: Belief, family, control, friendship, living.



Devoted is a very emotional story, and I think it was written with a lot of care and consideration - there is nothing vilifying about region itself, it is more a commentary on some more extreme beliefs and how they can effect individuals, families, and communities.



Rachel is such a deep and complicated character, and I found it so easy to feel sympathy for her. I felt dread when she did, love when she did, relief when she did. And I was rooting for her all through the story.



I thought that Rachel and Mark were adorable. I loved their back and forth, their word games, the slow build of their relationship as they got to know each other and become comfortable being around someone from such a different world.



This is quite a fast paced contemporary for all that I can't really say anything super action-y takes place. But I could not put it down. The writing is engaging and I cared so much about Rachel that I didn't want her story to end.



Devoted is a marvellous book, a brave story, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes contemporary and fantastically written characters.

Jennifer Mathieu knocks it out the ball park again with another feminist triumph. This is about a young girl, Rachel, who grows up as part of a born again Christian sect, but begins to question the oppressive elements of her religion. The narrative is emotional, insightful, and sensitive in its discussion of radical religion. Rachel, as a main character, is easy to warm to and sympathise with. She's gentle and kind, but has formidable inner courage that I really liked. After having been told how she should act for most of her life, it's wonderful to see her take charge of her own destiny. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was captivated by the story. There are few other YA books that deal with religion and gender so thoroughly and with such scrutiny.

One of those books that doesn’t immediately strike you as appealing, but definitely one to get you thinking.
When we first meet Rachel she is living a hectic but peaceful life, living at home with her many brothers and sisters and their parents. Her every waking moment is carefully timetabled, and yet she cannot help but question the way she is expected to behave. At first this is simply wanting to satisfy her own curiosity, but soon it becomes more about trying to establish her own identity.
Rachel takes a huge risk and reaches out to an old member of their community, one who is ostracised for her behaviour. It takes time, but when her parents discover she has been asking questions and threaten to send her to Jesus Camp, Rachel plans to leave.
I can’t imagine how scary it would be to figure out who you are with no support from your family, who actively reject you because you question their attempts to control you. Mathieu explores this experience with sensitivity, and it’s certainly a book I’d encourage people to read.
Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for my thoughts.

I eagerly requested this having read Jennifer Mathieu's other books MOXIE and THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE, which I enjoyed a lot. I'm glad to say DEVOTED is just as good.

I love books about cults, and DEVOTED tapped into so many of the tropes I love about this genre. It's never exploitative but is a realistic and emotional look at a girl who slowly discovers that maybe she doesn't belong in this group, and maybe that "wild girl" she has been warned of instead so terrible after all. It feels incredibly real, and we get swept up with Rachel as she learns more about the wider world.

There's a sweet, small romance thread, which could easily have gone off in a worrying direction but thankfully never did. It felt like it was left a bit open-ended, which I'm not a fan of - I'd have liked a more satisfying ending - but the ride to the end was so enjoyable that this didn't impact my reading too much.

A very sweet yet sad, and all-too-real look at the experience of growing up in a Christian cult.

I adore cult stories, and this one is right up there with the best. It's possibly worse for seeming so innocent; there are no hidden compounds here, no men with guns. This is just a town with a church. It could be your town. It makes it even more terrifying.

Jennifer Mathieu has bested herself again with this fabulous read. I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.

This hasn't quite knocked Moxie off the top of my 'books by Jennifer Mathieu' list, but it has overtaken Alice. I'm fascinated by cult narratives and how some people swallow it all and some see through it. This isn't the worst cult I've read about; there's no polygamy or child brides, for one thing, but it is bad enough, and I was proud of Rachel as she worked her way through it.

I wasn't sure about Mark, when he first turned up; my thoughts were something along the lines of 'Girl On Run From Patriarchal Cult Should Not Need Man To Save Her', and I was glad when that wasn't where the storyline went. I can't really explain that knee jerk reaction, since apart from some awkward flirting near the end he didn't really seem to register her as a girl.

I liked the other characters - even the Church members, most of whom seemed to be well-meaning, just too enmeshed to see anything else - and Jennifer Mathieu has firmly arrived on my Instabuy list.

Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way..

An empowering,coming of age story from Jennifer Matthieu, who is fast becoming the writer that I wish was around when I was in my teens if her books keep consistently being this damn good (spoilers ahead).

The characters, particularly Rachel are incredibly well developed in this book and seeing the relationship between Lauren and Rachel get stronger as they get to know one another and become friends is one of the most awesome and feminist parts of this book - there’s no judgement, just two people who get it and I love this book for the strong female friendship it portrayed.

I feel like the plot can move a little slowly sometimes, but it certainly picks up around eighty pages in and totally makes this book worth it. This book sucks you in slowly and then takes you on this emotional ride that you are going to need to take a breath for. Yes this book still feels like this book has probably happened, the best fiction lies in truth and Devoted certainly feels like the truth is there.

Another great book from Matthieu, I highly recommend this book if you liked books such as Autoboyography, it certainly feels it runs the same kind of lines.

Devoted is quite possibly the most difficult read I’ve ever experienced. It’s expertly written and contained wonderful, well rounded and well intended, characters to compliment a complex and compelling story.
However, it really held me ransom and I had to take a few pauses and even considered abandoning it completely at one point. Again, this is actually a testament to the writer. Mathieu has, again, created something real and emotive. It just so happens that while I have a love of books like Book of Fire and The Special One’s that contain a cult-like society, I found devoted, being one rooted within a real religion, so unbelievably frightening.
There were certain fears I had about the progression of the plot and that the book would send an anti-religion message. I’m happy to say, the message I wanted was made very clear.
It’s the first contemporary book I’ve read in a long time that has had me question the world in which we live in. My main reason for not abandoning the book was that I felt I had a duty to not leave Rachel with her family. I felt overwhelmed and trapped within the narrative, just as she did. Mathieu’s writing helped me moved past my own weakness and I felt like I was supporting Rachel on her journey.
I loved the romantic sub plot between Rachel and Mark. More so that there was no rush to tell their story within the confines of the novel. I’ve been inspired, they’re now part of me and I will spend some time considering their blossoming friendship and perhaps romance.