Gay the Pray Away is the first novel by Natalie Naudus.
Finished on: 14.1.2025

Content Note: child abuse, (critical treatment of) queermisia, misogyny, cults and religious trauma, racism

Plot:
Valerie lives a very, let’s say sheltered life with her family. She and her brother are homeschooled and their curriculum mostly consists of the Bible. Her life consists mostly of devotionals, prayers and a tight-knit group of like-minded people. But then Valerie stumbles on a book in the library. A queer book. And she knows that she has to read it, even if her parents would never allow it. It is the start of an awakening for her that is only accelerated when the beautiful, confident Riley joins her church.

Gay the Pray Away is an obviously very personal, soft and warm book – well, as soft and as warm as a book about growing up in an abusive environment can be. I was completely caught up in it and was rooting for Valerie and Riley so hard, I practically inhaled the book.

From what I gather from the author’s notes, Valerie’s upbringing is a lot like Naudus’ upbringing, cult and all. And the book reads really personal. That includes the occasional moment where the book really wants to make a point and to make absolutely sure that we understand it, it spells it out rather than trusting that we’d get it. But I prefer books that earnestly want to share something, even if they are a bit klunky at times, so much over books that withdraw into empty cynicism, that I didn’t overly mind those moments.

The oppressive nature of Valerie’s environment is very obvious here in any case, as are the ways people profit from the oppression, both with regards to money and in more intangible ways. Hitting childrem is expected of parents, and they don’t question it. Nobody is allowed to question anything anyway. The cult Valerie in is deeply sexist and racist, and both extend to the interracial relationship between Valerie’s Taiwanese mother and her white father. Riley, too, is a PoC, probably Black, though Naudus never really makes the exact natur of her race explicit, apart from mentioning that she is multiracial, so we are left guessing. I don’t even know if her mother or her father are PoC – I thought that was one of the weaker points of the story.

So, there is a lot of darkness in the novel, a lot of difficult topics and moments that had me literally gulping. But ultimately, it is the story of Valerie growing out of these structures and finding her way in a world that is so much bigger than she thought. This framing gives the novel a much more positive spin than I would have thought possible.

Plus, Valerie’s romance with Riley is supercute. I am pretty sure that I was grinning through most of the book, always about half a second away from audibly squealing and pressing the book to my heart. What more could I have hoped for?

Summarizing: absolutely lovely, especially for a debut.