Maeve Whitman has come a long way. As a teenage mom who’d escaped an artists’ cult by sacrificing her best friend, she’s created a safe and perfect suburban life.
But when the former cult leader, who is now a renowned photographer and father of her daughter, tracks her down and threatens to force her child back to the farm she escaped from, Maeve is faced with a choice: take her children and flee or stay and fight for the life she’s built for her family.
With her daughter facing the chaotic and slippery monsters who almost destroyed Maeve, she’s pulled back into a web of destruction she thought she’d escaped for good.
By confronting her past, she’ll need to find the strength to take back her future and change the path her mother once set for them. Just how far will the colony go to get her back in their clutches?
Hilary Faktor is a writer shaped by the boreal forest and the rhythms of a northern mining town. Her work explores family relationships, hidden histories, remote landscapes, and the tensions that simmer beneath them.
Her essays and journalism have appeared in Canada’s History, The Globe and Mail, HuffPost Canada, and Maclean’s, among other publications. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in English at the University of Calgary. “Pretty Bird” is her first novel.
She lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with her husband, daughters, and black lab.
My thoughts: Maeve has fled a violent and tragic past, building a new life with her husband Mark and their children. But the past has a way of catching up with us and hers is about to come crashing into her life.
Now her daughter is in danger and Maeve must find the strength to stand up to the person she fled from as a teenager. With the help of her grandmother, and for her daughter, she will do whatever it takes.
Gripping and intense, with flashbacks that show the increasing horror of the supposed artists commune that was Paradise, I rooted for Maeve, even if it meant her killing someone, to save her family from the monster she once ran from.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
🖤🤎 Thank you so much for being a part of this adventure x
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