At 14 years old, Evie Boyd feels lost in her own life. She doesn't relate to her friends or her family in any way, she has no passion, no desire to push herself in anything, no real substance she can hold onto. That's until she witnesses a group of girls rummaging through a dumpster in their bare feet. This excites her, the non-conformity, the letting lose, the carelessness. Evie's never felt like she's had an experience as memorable or as daring as the one these girls are having, which makes it extremely enticing to her. So when she finds herself in the hazy, subterranean, mystical world of the ranch, she feels like she's found purpose, or at the very least, a place she can really call home.

 

On the ranch, Evie accelerates into adolescence much faster than any other girl her age. Her perceptions of the outside world change drastically, allowing her to shrug off false belief and make distinctions between appearance and reality. Both of her parents become imitations of real people to her, trying to be someone they're not, forcing others to perceive them in a way that's so evidently transparent. It's interesting that she can make these distinctions in the outside world, but on the ranch she is eager to not only turn a blind eye, but to convince her self that the increasingly unnerving behaviour is justifiable.

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The ranch is enticing to Evie because it makes her feel important. She takes pride in the work she does there, she feels grateful to be a part of a group, that she believes, understands her. She not only finds a role model in Suzanne, the woman who runs the ranch, but she also experiences love and lust for her. She also tries drugs and has sex for the first time. All of these new and exciting experiences draw her further and further into a world that she so desperately wants to be apart of. She wants to prove her worth, make herself useful, and above all, fit in. It's what any young, sensitive, impressionable, young girl wants from the world. Unfortunately, it's in a terribly sinister cult that Evie Boyd confides in for all of these things.

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The signs are there but Evie chooses not to see them. The constant consumption of drugs, the sexual assault and rape, the stealing, the harassment, the mental manipulation, the list goes on. The dilapidation of the ranch itself is a metaphor for the loss of control these women have on their own mental states. They become pawns in Russell's wicked chess match, moving and doing whatever he asks without hesitation, with a sense of duty to him.

 

Just as Evie hangs onto every word, every movement that Suzanne makes, 

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the way the novel is written mimics the plot

 

 

This novel made me feel raw in the most natural sense. From the sensory descriptors, to the character personalities, to the setting.