Review: Apocalypse Child: A Life in End Times

Apocalypse Child: A Life in End Times by Flor Edwards
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a must-read for me, because of my obsession with cults and people who leave them! The author grew up in the infamous Children of God cult that started in the 60s, capitalizing on the free love idea and pulling people in around the world. Adherents gave up their possessions and reproduced while awaiting the apocalypse, which was scheduled to happen in 1993. Flor and her twin turned 12 that year, and that was also when she started to suspect that maybe not everything she'd been told was completely true.

This is more of a 3.5 stars read. The story is compelling, of course, but it lacks the perspective I wish I had. The author is an adult now, and I wish she'd done more to fill in the gaps of what she didn't know as a child. Much of the memoir still only contains what happened directly to her. The writing also isn't stellar. It isn't bad, exactly, but that isn't the strength of the book. Still, considering that she actually was practically uneducated as a child, maybe this is asking too much.

I uncomfortably discovered that this group is still around, now known as The Family, still asking people for donations and recruiting people to something thinly veiled as Christian beliefs. Buyer beware!

Thanks to the publisher for approving my request to read this ahead of time through Edelweiss. It comes out March 13, 2018.

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