Live, Laugh, Kidnap
-
- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
From the author of Layoverland comes another bitingly clever, laugh-out-loud funny novel, about a group of teen girls going up against an exploitative megachurch in their small Montana town.
The only thing Genesis, Holly and Zoe seem to have in common is being stuck in Violet, Montana. Well, that and the fact that Hope Harvest Ministries is trying to ruin their lives.
Genesis lives on a commune that is now an echo of the New Age cult it once was. She’s witnessed power couple Pastor Jay and Ree Reaps transform their sleepy small town into a haven for online Influencers, who flock to Violet, Bible in one hand and Ree’s bestselling ACT LIKE A LADY, PRAY LIKE A BOSS in the other. Now, the Reaps have decided it’s God’s Will™ that they take over Gen’s ranch.
Holly is a begrudging tourist, forced to spend the summer with her estranged father as punishment for her unsavory behavior back in LA. To Holly, Hope Harvest is nothing but a gimmicky marketing ploy, but it’s threatening to put her father’s diner out of business and, for some reason, Holly cares.
All Zoe wants is to leave Violet, working thankless shifts at the diner to scrape together enough cash to start a new life with her girlfriend. But Zoe’s mother has lost everything to the church’s multilevel marketing schemes so the little money that Zoe manages to make goes right to debt collectors.
The only solution to their problems is to scam the scammers and protect what’s theirs. It shouldn’t take much – the Reaps’ golden son, an accidental kidnapping, some light blackmail – and the Reaps’ fortune will be in the girls’ much more deserving hands. As long as everything goes according to plan…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Noone's (Layoverland) laugh-out-loud novel centers four white teens' unconventional scheme to topple their Violet, Mont., town's glitzy Christian megachurch. Holly, Zoe, and Genesis feel as if they have nothing in common. Prep school student Holly is spending the summer in Violet with her estranged father after an incident back home in L.A.; dry-humored Zoe's financial precarity prevents her from running away from Violet's closed-minded environment with her secret girlfriend; and influencers, lured by the neighboring Hope Harvest Church run by affluent Pastor Reaps and his wife, have turned reserved Genesis's once blissful New Age commune home into a crowded social media hot spot. But when the Reaps' son, ministry golden boy Dustin, tasks the girls with faking his kidnapping to escape his controlling parents, the teens find themselves biting off more than they can chew, and what begins as an eccentric disappearing act evolves into an over-the-top megachurch takedown. While the premise is largely satirical on the surface, Noone capably employs alternating perspectives—and a smattering of romance—to explore faith, societal pressures and expectations, and the sometimes-all-consuming fear of impending adulthood. This riotous caper, and its similarly hilarious cast, is a joy. Ages 14–up.
