Corinne (Rebecca Morrow) book review
This book was my favorite early fall low-stakes drama so its review gets its own post. Enjoy!
Corinne by Rebecca MorrowMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Let me tell you about this book. It popped up on my radar when a Reddit thread went viral on BookTok and then took over my group chats. The story was that Stephenie Meyer wrote this book under a pseudonym to avoid any repercussions from her church (she's Mormon; the main character of the book leaves/is thrown out of a high-demand religion). The book jacket itself says only that "Rebecca Morrow is a pseudonym for a New York Times-bestselling author." This mystery was a weird intersection of a bunch of interests of mine and I just had to read it. Let's examine the claims of the Reddit thread one by one.
1. "The book was written by a Mormon." I'm actually not convinced of this and I'm not sure why everyone is so "oh, obviously" about this point! The religion in the book is very clearly not exactly Mormonism but it's not a clumsily disguised version of Mormonism, either. I think the author borrowed from a lot of evangelical religious traditions, especially the more hardcore ones, and it ends up being Mormon-y but also just kind of nonspecifically high-demand. So I'm not convinced the author is Mormon, if that premise is based solely on the religion in the book being Mormonism (it's not).
2. "The book was written by Stephenie Meyer under a pseudonym." Whether or not the author is Mormon, it is almost certainly not Stephenie Meyer. BookTok got into the evidence for this and so I don't feel the need to re-hash it but it's just not. Totally different writing style and none of her tics are on display. Plus, "Mormon author + NYT-bestselling author" could actually be a ton of people! Off the top of my head, I very easily came up with at least ten people who are or have been both of those things; my favorite wildcard was Ken Jennings (I mean I wish he wrote this book but...no). It could also have been written by any one of the FLDS women who have left that religion and then written bestselling memoirs - I wanted this to be true but after reading the book, I don't think it is. Oh and my other favorite wildcard was Tara Westover because she technically is a NYT-bestselling author but I also don't think it's her.
3. "The pseudonym was to avoid repercussions from a/the church because the plot revolves around a girl leaving her religion." Maybe? But I think it's far more likely that the pseudonym is because this book represents a shift away from whatever the author's normal oeuvre is generally, and more specifically, a shift toward a book with explicit sex in it. Because boy howdy, is there explicit sex in this book! If someone in a position of religious authority over the author wanted to call them into their office to Have A Discussion, it would be because of the explicit sex first (and second and third and fourth...) and the "girl leaves her religion" part as an afterthought on their way out the door, if at all. My sense on these things is sometimes off but I thought the "girl leaves her religion" plot wasn't provocative at all. But the sex is. (To be clear, I don't think this author should be called into any bishop's office. I'm just speaking to the speculation that the pseudonym is to avoid that.)
So who wrote this book? I'm not sure...but I have a guess. I read the first chapter and thought "this sure does sound like ______" and that stayed true for the rest of the book (I'm not going to name the author here).
Drama about this book's author aside...this was one of the weirdest books I've ever read. It felt like...therapy? But not the good part of therapy where you put yourself back together: the bad part, before that, where you take yourself apart. I almost wonder if this book began as a kind of writing exercise (or even a therapy exercise!) (or both!!) for the author to explore either a previous leaving-a-religion experience, or one she was currently going through; PLUS an examination of sex under those circumstances. I did not find the sex in this book to be very sexy because it was just drenched in trauma (the main character is disfellowshipped from her religion as a teenager because she has sex with a boy in her congregation and she struggles to deal with the consequences of that all through her adulthood). The descriptions of the sex were clinical and introspective and self-conscious and read, to me, like a response to a therapist asking "but why do you think that's the only way you can orgasm? Tell me more." I did not look forward to reading it BUT there are some very good chapters with really thoughtful discussions about what a mixed-faith marriage might look like for someone like Corinne.
But despite those thoughtful discussions and some really loveable side characters who do so much with very little page time, I didn't like the ending. It reminded me of (view spoiler) Which lends credence to my "the author wrote this book in therapy" theory because the ending reads like something they hope for/have visualized.
So a very strange book but a fun little mystery surrounding it! I love a good low-stakes internet drama and this whole thing provided me with plenty of entertainment, even if in the end I didn't love the book.
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