Book Review: The Project by Courtney Summers
The Details
Media Type: Print Book
Title: The Project
Author: Courtney Summers
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Pages/Length: Hardcover; 352
Release Date: February 2, 2021
Source: NetGalley
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Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died, Lo’s sister, Bea, joined The Unity Project, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt. Thanks to its extensive charitable work and community outreach, The Unity Project has won the hearts and minds of most in the Upstate New York region, but Lo knows there’s more to the group than meets the eye. She’s spent the last six years of her life trying—and failing—to prove it.
When a man shows up at the magazine Lo works for claiming The Unity Project killed his son, Lo sees the perfect opportunity to expose the group and reunite with Bea once and for all. When her investigation puts her in the direct path of its leader, Lev Warren and as Lo delves deeper into The Project, the lives of its members it upends everything she thought she knew about her sister, herself, cults, and the world around her—to the point she can no longer tell what’s real or true. Lo never thought she could afford to believe in Lev Warren . . . but now she doesn’t know if she can afford not to.
The Review
If you know my reading tastes, then you’ll know that I am always in to read anything that has to do with cults. The fact that an individual can be so charismatic and intuitive, and then use those skills to create something so sinister, is fascinating to me. My favorite kinds of stories are always about those on the inside looking out. Those who were lured in, and then realized that they had to escape. So when I saw the premise of The Project, I knew that it was going on my reading list. It hit all those little reader buttons inside my brain, and I was thrilled. Perhaps my excitement was a little too high though, because this book and I had some problems with one another.
Starting with the kudos, I have to say that I was immediately won over by the relationship between Bea and Lo. Although it wasn’t ever “perfect”, what sisterly bond ever is? Their connection felt realistic to me. I felt for Lo so deeply, as she tried to get back the one person that she had left in this world. I struggled not to tear up as her only living relative constantly ignored her, and pushed her away, in favor of the cult that ensnared her. In the same vein, I had so much love for the rawness that was Lo’s character. Not only had she lost so much around her, but she’d lost a portion of herself after the accident. I understood her pain, saw her fault lines, and wanted to comfort her.
It is the pace of this story that I truly struggled with. The first third, where Lo was digging into the history of the The Project, was perfect. I’m generally not a fan of alternating points of view, but in this case I couldn’t get enough of flashing back to Bea’s story and slowly uncovering what was really going. As the book neared the middle though, things drastically slowed down. This is also the point where I started to feel like Lo’s character was sliding uncomfortably into someone to pity instead of support. I truly felt like she had been built up to be someone who, despite everything, was fairly strong. Or at least that she put up a good front. Which made the latter half of this book extremely upsetting for me.
The other issue was that I never truly believed in Lev Warren. As a cult leader, I expected him to be larger than life. Someone who others were enraptured by, and wanted to follow. Instead, he felt a bit hollow to me. Like the idea of what a leader of this kind should be, without the actual flesh on the outside. I had a hard time believing that anyone would want to give their lives up for him, much less that he would be able to sway someone like Lo to his side. It felt manufactured, and I can’t deny that this made me sad. I was fairly sure I knew how this book was going to end by the mid point, and I was right. So I also felt like I missed out on any surprises.
I’m rambling, I know. My feelings about this story are all over the place. On the one hand, The Project is excellently written. Anyone who has read Courtney Summers’ stories before knows exactly what I mean. Bea and Lo were real people to me, and I was invested in their story. On the other hand, this book just didn’t deliver what I was hoping for. Maybe it’s because Sadie, Summers’ last book, completely broke my heart but this one fell flat for me.
