Atheists Who Kneel and Pray

by Tarryn Fisher

[Linda]

This review was originally posted on (un)Conventional Bookviews
Atheists Who Kneel and Pray is a love story, but it's also much more than that. Self-discovery sounds like a cliché, and this story was so far from a cliché I can't really use that to describe it.



Atheists Who Kneel and Pray was my first Tarryn Fisher book. And I was pretty much blown away by it. I think what got to me the most is that Yara, the heroine, is not really all that likeable, but she's very relatable. I wanted to get to know her and her story, even when she did things I didn't agree with. Or when I didn't like her at all. That takes some pretty mad writing skills, right? To get you to love a story even when you don't really like the main character it's all about.

As I got to know Yara better, Atheists Who Kneel and Pray became better and better. And I could understand where she came from. Maybe especially when I didn't agree with her actions, I understood her well. She was insecure. Fairly selfish. Always on the run. And afraid of being left behind. David was kind of opposite of Yara. He had a lot of self confidence. Had a hero / rescue thing going on. And he was in a band, with girls throwing themselves at him after shows.

Atheists Who Kneel and Pray is about more than love, though. Or maybe that should be more than loving someone else. Yara really needed to learn to love herself, because she grew up with a mother who was emotionally distant. A mother who made her feel unloved and insecure. And as soon as she could, Yara up and left home, to never go back. This became her pattern, leaving when the going got tough. Until the moment when Yara figured out that leaving and running away didn't help her move forward in any way.

There are a lot of feelings packed into Atheists Who Kneel and Pray. The writing grabbed me from the first word, and I could hardly put the book down until I was finished. And I'm pretty sure it's going to be one of the very few books I will re-read. And I'm going to do so fairly soon.



You should model, she said. Her husband nodded in agreement. I smiled dumbly and excused myself to get their food from the kitchen. I was not a face. I was tired of being called pretty. I was tired of people seeing my potential. I could be whoever I wanted to be, and for now, that was a bartender.

"I've not been worshipped that way before," I told him, half joking and half serious. I rolled on top of him to distract him from my outlandish statement, pressing my nose to his.
"That seems wrong," he said, his voice husky. "Something as powerful as you."