Small Town Sinners
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Lacey Anne Byer is a perennial good girl and lifelong member of the House of Enlightenment, the Evangelical church in her small town. With her driver's license in hand and the chance to try out for a lead role in Hell House, her church's annual haunted house of sin, Lacey's junior year is looking promising. But when a cute new stranger comes to town, something begins to stir inside her. Ty Davis doesn't know the sweet, shy Lacey Anne Byer everyone else does. With Ty, Lacey could reinvent herself. As her feelings for Ty make Lacey test her boundaries, events surrounding Hell House make her question her religion.
Melissa Walker has crafted the perfect balance of engrossing, thought-provoking topics and relatable, likable characters. Set against the backdrop of extreme religion, Small Town Sinners is foremost a universal story of first love and finding yourself, and it will stay with readers long after the last page.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Both tender and provocative, this coming-of-age story takes place in a small evangelical town famous for a graphic, terrifying Hell House staged every Halloween by the House of Enlightenment. Sixteen-year-old narrator Lacey, a pastor's daughter, wins the coveted role of "Abortion Girl" after the previously cast girl gets sent away to a residence for pregnant teens. Sharing her father's belief that "You got to shake 'em to wake 'em," Lacey embraces her responsibility to show others "what the consequences are if you don't accept Jesus into your heart." Disrupting her certainty in literal biblical interpretations is gorgeous Ty Davis, returning to town after a decade-long absence, rekindling first-grade friendships and asking thoughtful questions that challenge Lacey's convictions. While the combined sincerity and extremism of the Hell House production is viscerally shocking, Walker (Lovestruck Summer) creates an astutely balanced portrait of a conservative congregation's in-your-face response to perennial issues of domestic abuse, teen pregnancy, and suicide, as well as of those who struggle to fit the prescribed Christian mold.
