God Spare the Girls

I’ve been on the lookout for comp titles—books similar in theme or story to novels I am working on. I saw a brief review of God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney and thought it might have connections to my YA novel Keep Sweet, a story of a fourteen-year-old girl living in a polygamist colony in the Southwest.

While God Spare the Girls is an adult novel about a more mainstream evangelical family in Texas, there are parallels in this coming-of-age story: the religious hypocrisy it highlights; the push-pull relationship between siblings; the obsessive focus on sexual purity for the unmarried by adult religious leaders who are far from pure themselves; the hunger for power that makes those who have it (in religious hierarchies, specific males) keep their thumbs on those who don’t (pretty much all women). There is also the truth that family members love one another despite their failing—and sometimes they don’t know how to negotiate that love. The attempt to break free of familial chains without causing harm to family members is bound to fail in some aspect. We either remain captive or we tear the bond.

I was thinking if the family in God Spare the Girls had their megachurch meetings in the local high school auditorium, they would be the family that instigates all the harm to the secular protagonist (a teacher) and her friends in an adult novel I’m perpetually working on. I’ve never been able to figure out where that novel would land, but the more I see evangelicalism affecting the daily lives of ordinary people, the more I think I need to figure it out. 

God Spare the Girls is a very interesting dive into the evangelical mindset and the effect it has on people trapped within it. Recommended reading!