Heretics Anonymous Review

“It's theology. Were you expecting sex, drugs, and rock and roll?"
"One out of the three would be nice.”

This is a book that delivers on a lot more than the set-up promises. The set-up, after all, sounds like a joke you’ll see on Twitter: An atheist teenager is enrolled in a Catholic school…

Some hilarity does follow, but mostly, what this book gives the reader is a surprisingly respectful look at several faiths without overreaching. The protagonist, Michael, is indeed stuck in Catholic school, but he quickly finds his tribe among a secret club for students whose beliefs don’t match the school’s: Judaism, Paganism, progressive Catholicism, and the belief that capes should be acceptable school-wear. None of these characters, or their beliefs, is played off as a joke. They might be quirky, stubborn, or occasionally unpleasant, but each is treated like a person, not a punch line, and I give the author, Katie Henry, a lot of credit for handling the delicate subject of religion with grace and humor .

As one can imagine, the titular club gets a little subversive at their school. They don’t pull pranks, per se, but their merry band does start to push back on what they see as hypocrisy in the school, and here again Henry does a solid job of making the audience root for the group’s choices, while also showing that decisions have unforeseen consequences that spiral out to the rest of the school. Despite the fact that life and death are off the table in the story, the author does a pretty good job of keeping up the tension, though occasionally you just want to tell Michael to cut his losses and get over it. But given Michael also loves to double-down on already questionable decisions, that’s not in the cards, and it makes for good reading.

So, overall we’re left with a story that handles belief and its characters well, but also struggles to make some of the protagonist’s angst feel urgent and involved. Within its genre, I’d give it a 4 nuns out of 5 .