Hello my lovely readers! It's been a while. Unfortunately, I had some health issues shortly after my last review and I just couldn't handle writing reviews.
I have read a lot of books though, but they were all...meh. Stay tuned for another "Quick Reviews!"
Now let's get into this book!
SYNOPSIS
No one believed it could happen in their town.
Valarie Clark Miller seemed to have it all. Smart, beautiful, and athletic, with a wealthy, successful husband and growing family, Valarie appeared to be the picture-perfect Mormon wife. But it was all a façade. Inside, she was crumbling from the pressures of long-repressed memories of a childhood plagued with sexual and physical abuse.
In Hometown Betrayal, author Emily Benedek brings you behind the closed doors of the remote Mormon community of Clarkston, Utah. With the help of hundreds of individual stories, she pieces together not only what happened to Valarie, but also the conditions and culture that allowed it. Hometown Betrayal culminates in an account of the Miller family’s fight to hold accountable the men—including the local cop-- who abused Valarie and controlled the systems designed to look the other way.
MY THOUGHTS
This was a tough read. One quote in particular stood out to me.
Every little girl in Clarkston has been abused by somebody.
Absolutely heartbreaking. This book taught me a lot about the history of Clarkson, Utah as well as Mormonism, which I appreciated.
I enjoyed the first half of the book as it focused solely on Valerie and showed how abuse and trauma affects generations of a family and how it manifests in our body in different ways.
The second half of the book was a bit too much for me. It seemed all over the place with the amount of people Benedek interviewed. She also mentioned that the family hired her to write this book, which clearly shows. I completely understand the family wanting to get their story out there, but I don't like how it was executed through Benedek's writing.
Justice for Valerie Clark Miller.
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