Review: "Good Christian Girls" by Elizabeth Bradshaw

Good Christian Girls by Elizabeth Bradshaw
Published February 2024 via Bold Strokes Books
★★★

Jo doesn't want to be at Bible camp—she wants to be at science camp. But since the incident, her family is worried that she needs more Jesus in her life, so...to Bible camp it is. Meanwhile, Lacey can barely conceive of anything other than Bible camp; her parents own and run Camp Lavender, and it's where she's been raised and homeschooled. She's seen year after year of campers come and go...but Jo is the first one to make her question the singular way of viewing the world that she's been taught.

I approach this subgenre of queer-teens-in-hyperconservative-environments with a certain amount of trepidation, but this was a lucky find. Jo and Lacey's stories are subtle—Jo understands who she is better than Lacey does at the beginning of the book (and the summer), and though Lacey starts to figure things out herself, there's only so much growth and change that she can do in one summer. Better, this isn't a fire-and-brimstone camp with an underbelly of abuse: it's a camp in which well-intentioned adults with some specific beliefs are genuinely trying to do right by their charges...even if they can't always see that their one-size-fits-all way of life, uh...doesn't fit all. This isn't a conversion camp; it's a good place for many of the girls, and even Jo—who doesn't want to be there—is observant enough to notice that there are girls for whom it's probably the only place they fit in.

Writing-wise, I think it took part of the book for the author to find her stride (the dual first-person doesn't really help), and there are some logistical things that don't quite line up—first Lacey never ever shares her poetry, and then a few pages later we learn that she's been posting it online for weeks; she doesn't get much interaction on her posts, but Jo is able to find her account immediately because it's a popular one; it doesn't occur to Lacey to wonder why, by the middle of summer, her top-choice college hasn't gotten back to her; etc. There are also a number of side plots that go nowhere and could easily have been cut out. But...I also suspect the author is writing from personal experience here, and that even if she was never a (queer) preacher's daughter living at Bible camp, she knows quite well what it is to be a sheltered, religious kid starting to figure out a bit more of the world. Again, it helps a lot that this is a pretty understated story, with no furious Bible-thumping or closed-door beatings or dramatic escapes in the middle of the night—well, maybe the last one, but you can read the book if you want the details.

This is one for readers looking for something more coming-of-age than romance—it's a better book for it.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.