The third book in Sarina Bowen’s True North series.
Plot: Wealthy young woman goes on a volunteer trip in a developing country, does not follow instructions, and is kidnapped and held hostage. She is understandably traumatized, and ends up at the Shipley farm trying to recover away from the prying eyes of her family. Zachariah also carries trauma, from having grown up in a cult and then being unceremoniously dumped by them a couple years ago. He too is trying to learn how to carry the heavy toll of his experiences without being crushed by them. Together, they might figure it out. Shenanigans ensue.
This book tested my patience, in a good way. I’ve definitely had less patience for people this year and as you can tell from the plot description, I did not have time for Lark (ugh). I bought into her harmful internal narrative. Then she goes to therapy and her therapist points some stuff out and I realized about the same time she did that maybe she was being a bit of a bitch to herself. This is actually something I really love about romance novels, which take me, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the minds of people who think differently than I do, who act differently than I do.
Zachariah’s story is a bit more interesting to me just because I’m slightly obsessed with cults, and the inner workings of this fictional group was fascinating to me. More often than not when I read or watch documentaries about cults, they focus on the lives of the women – no doubt because that’s the most salacious. Where a man can marry girls as young as 12 and as many as they’d like, how do you provide enough wives for every guy? Well there’s at least one answer – you just throw out the young troublemakers and use the leverage of “eventually we’ll give you a wife or two” to get free labour out of the others.