I was really looking forward to reading this one, I have watched so many documentaries about Cults, and find it hard how some can stay there and leave their families behind. So seeing this was about that I really wanted it to be good.

As I was reading I picked up little bit that I have heard or seen about cult life. But as I was reading it I was starting to struggle. The story is told in the Now and Then the chapters are mostly quite short but I found myself having to go back and see if it was now or then.

Catherine/Zoe has escaped the cult she is living for free in Ireland working in a cafe, her sister had left the cult before her but she had no way of finding her. She was adapting to her new freedom, everyday learning things she had never know whilst in the cult. But then someone she had hoped she would never see again turned up. The hand of god. He tells her her sister Amy is back with the cult, that she is with the Hand. Catherine feels she has to go back to rescue her sister.

When she returns she obviously has to prove that she wishes to atone, and the sisters really put her through things. For me the problem was I found my mind kept wandering away from the story, I wanted it to grip me but sadly it didn’t. I couldn’t understand all the killings and why no one ever seemed to investigate. The Hand of God would take Catherine out and train her how the boys (the warriors) were trained.

Even when I finished this, I wasn’t sure of what had really happened, I know there will be others out there who love this but it just didn’t grab me enough. The writing is good I think for me it was the plot that didn’t grab me. But I will look out for what the author writes next. 3⭐️ read.

I received this ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve long since been interested in cults and have watched countless documentaries about them and a number of books, with that being said this book was much more than I ever could have imagined. It was so dark I had to keep having breaks then continuing.

The story flips between Catherine/Zoe in Now & Then, Zoe has a relatively normal life living in a little flat and working in a cafe, she’s trying to move on after escaping the cult and she’s doing well until someone from her past appears and offers her the chance to go back and get the one thing back that she’s always wanted, her sister!.

I felt that the ending could have given us more or could have had an epilogue so we got to see what happened. That didn’t take away from the rest of the story at all though.

Home follows Catherine/Zoe in a dual timeline: we see her as Catherine, growing up in a cult known as the Children, and then as Zoe, an adult who has escaped the cult and started a new life for herself. But the two worlds collide as someone from the cult comes back to find her, and Zoe finds herself caught up again. The world of the cult is carefully imagined and chillingly believable. There are some really challenging topics here - sexual assault, coercive control, abuse - but it doesn't feel gratuitous. It's really fast-paced, so I found myself zooming through it, eager to find out what would happen.

The book is not an easy read it deals with some uncomfortable issues mainly dealing with control and coercion however the author has dealt with this in a sympathetic way I think. It’s the story of Zoe/Catherine and is told in two timelines then and now which I did think at times to be a little confusing but overall it kept my attention throughout.

I love a good cult read. They're endlessly fascinating to me. This one is set in two time periods, Then covering the protagonist's childhood up to about five years before Now. (She is known as Catherine, later Acolyte, Then and Zoe, later Catherine again, Now.) Catherine was born into the cult and knows nothing else, which makes for an interesting contrast between the two time periods; the abuse and conditioning she suffers and accepts as normal Then, and her understanding of the same issues Now, are fascinating.

Cult stories are often quite difficult to read, and there are sections of this, in both time streams, that are very hard to get through. From an outsider's perspective, it's very obvious what's going on, but of course Catherine has no idea. (In a way that will be very irritating for some readers, she's also prone to blacking out at important times, so it's not always clear exactly what's happening. It didn't bother me, but it is a factor.)

We never have any sense of how old Catherine/Zoe is - she starts her period at one point, but being malnourished and driven through physical training could easily delay it for several years. She's clearly old enough to date, but that could cover a multitude of ages. It makes everything creepier, considering the things the Hand makes her do.

This is a great look at what cults can do, and a very creepy read. I recommend it. (Although that ending is very annoying!)

Zoe is living in Dublin, free from her former life in the cult of Children, until a man from her past turns up. The last thing she wants to do is go back to the place she escaped from, yet when she realises her sister is in danger she is faced with the decision of whether to risk returning.

I could barely put down this incredible book.

I love a book that makes me think about topics that wouldn't usually cross my mind. Like most people I had heard of cults before. However, what really caught my attention was how you don't normally stop to think what happens to people after they have escaped. Physical freedom doesn't necessarily mean psychological freedom. This was really well demonstrated throughout Cailean Steed's writing. Every detail is well-crafted and makes the characters so real and believable.

There was such a tense atmosphere from the very first page that made it completely absorbing. The story switches between the past and present day which created a fast pace.

I would recommend this to anyone and everyone. It is a book that will stay with you long after you finish reading.

Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Catherine has been raised in a cult, and having escaped 6 years, and now named Zoe, she works in a cafe and lives in a grotty flat, but at least its freedom.

So when one day she comes home to the flat to find The Hand of God waiting for her, Zoe's life is turned upside down. He asks her to return to the cult, to save her sister Amy who has married the Father of the cult...

I found this an interesting premise and we go backwards and forwards in time through each chapter, so at times it's a little disorientating, and there are sections which are tough to read as the women in the cult are treated so badly (TW: violence, punishment).

This wasn't for me I'm afraid. I couldn't really connect with the characters or storyline. It didn't grip me enough to keep me interested

OMG this book was wild 🤯😱😅 I read #Home by Cailean Steed with my friend Kerry Louise who is a massive fan of reading book cults. Same K-Lou!

This story focuses on a young woman who was raised in a cult environment called Home. After she believes she has escaped Home, someone from her past manages to entice Zoe back. This whole book was tense from start to finish. It had a shock factor (no spoilers but a lot of stuff goes down 😱) and it’s covers a lot of triggering topics so it’s not an easy read. Yet, I found it incredibly fascinating, tense and stomach churning. Omg it was such a wild ride! I can’t really go into alot of detail about the book as it may give spoilers. Really it explores the psychological impact of cults and how people become indoctrinated into them. It’s a coming of age story as well as examining trauma, abuse, survival and belonging. Loved the short chapter format, always do with stories like this as very chapter ends on a cliffhanger 😰 And I liked how the narrative switched from “now/Zoe” to “the past/Catherine” (her cult name).

I kept screaming “is she going to get out again?!!!!” 🫣 I thought the ending was quite abrupt but then maybe it needed to be 🤔 Such a gripping, believable and intense story. Not for the faint hearted!!! 👏🏻

I can’t get enough of cult stories so I was sold the minute I read the description.

This one isn’t for the faint hearted, it’s pretty brutal and more along the lines of a thriller than a typical cult narrative, it was fast paced and easy to read.

The ending was very abrupt and I do think that there were lots of unanswered questions that I would have like to have answered but over all a good read.

This book was just not for me, it seemed too far fetched and the different points of view were just weird. Sorry I didn’t finish it.

When I picked up HOME, I didn't expect to tear through it in one sitting. But this book surprised me at every turn. A clever, fast-paced and hard-hitting story of coercion, fanaticism and survival. It is understandably dark (trigger warnings for abuse, sexual assault and torture) and at times uncomfortable to read, but highly compelling and well worth the read.

The premise of this book was excellent but I felt that it was sometimes lacking in flow.

Some of the elements came across as authentic but some seemed to be written for shock value only.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for gifting me this arc in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Home is a well-plotted and clever novel, that delves into being in a cult and thinking you'd escaped. The dual pov adds such layer and depth to the story, immersing you in the story even more.

A good read but too many unanswered questions at the closing of the book,fascinating to read about a cuot,as always,and the author has handled difficult subjects well

Home was, sadly, a somewhat underwhelming thriller. If there’s one thing that I look for in a good thriller is that, as per the name, I am thrilled by it. I was not thrilled by this one, although I am willing to accept that’s a me problem.

The story follows Zoe who, five years previously, escaped from a cult. That same cult is now drawing her back in, holding her sister’s safety over her. The narrative proceeds flipping back and forth between the present day and Zoe’s past experiences with the cult, from a young age.

As mentioned at the start, my biggest issue with this book was the lack of thrill. I don’t know what it was — there are a number of options which I will suggest later — but I just didn’t feel the most important thing: the thrill. I couldn’t find it within myself to care, particularly, although I was definitely being told to.

I think the reasons for this are twofold. The first is that the chapters were short and choppy, almost enough to contain each a single scene before moving on. And it alternated between past and present. You never really got to spend any amount of time in either timeline, let alone enough to get a sense of the characters. It felt like being shown snapshots only. For me, it would have been much more effective to build up Zoe going back to the cult for a lot of the book, to build a sense of fear that she’s being watched, interspersed by only a few flashbacks in longer chapters. As it was, the flashbacks felt repetitive and the way they stretched out across the whole book didn’t add to it at all. It was hard to tell from them why Zoe might be convinced to go back to the cult, just as it was hard to believe she would make that decision so rapidly in the present.

Secondly, the characters. The main character, understandably, was the most fleshed out, but even she felt very vague and ill-defined. Everyone felt quite one-dimensional, especially the side characters and particularly the villains, among them groomers. Now, maybe I’m reading too sceptically, but I feel like I was being told a lot by the narrator that the Hand of God loved her and she believed it. Yet, I never felt like it was obviously there. There was a disconnect: as the reader, you know this character is bad, but you still have to see, still have to feel, how the main character gets sucked into it. I could see it, but I never felt it.

All of this ties back to the lack of thrill because, really, there was a lack of any feeling for me. There was no creeping sense of danger from the cult, no feeling of being watched in the present. This is why I wasn’t thrilled. And, ultimately, I feel that came back mainly to the pacing.

Home caught my eye due to three things: 1) it's about a cult, 2) it's a debut and I love supporting debut authors, 3) the cover is pretty cool. I think it had a lot of potential and I was really excited to read it, but I unfortunately came out of it feeling pretty meh overall.

I think the concept was a good one, but the execution was a let down. The story is told in alternating chapters between Catherine in the past as she's just learning that her community is a cult and not normal, and Zoe in the present after she has left the cult but is suddenly having to go back in.

This style really didn't work for me, as a lot of the tension from Catherine's chapters was lost because we knew she would escape, only to have to go back in. And while Zoe's chapters were a little more exciting due to the task of rescuing Amy, we were immediately flung back into the cult setting without much build up.

I think this could have been improved by telling the story in parts rather than alternating flashback chapters. Part one could have ended as Catherine was escaping the cult, and part two could have Zoe already settled and going back in, with flashbacks to show her coming to terms with society and the real world.

I didn't hate Home by any means but it was fairly average. It was fast paced and intriguing, yes, but I think it should have been structured differently to make the most out of the setting, the characters, and the plot.

Someone has broken into Zoe’s flat.
A man she thought she’d never have to see again.
They call him the Hand of God.
She thought she’d left him far behind, along with the cult of the Children.

This story immediately reminded me of The Handmaid's Tale in the references to an earlier life. The story is told in two timelines, then and now. I liked the lead character Zoe and felt sympathy for the way she was treated in the cult. The short chapters make for easy reading in my opinion and I found it difficult to put down. She is a tough character who has had to fight her whole life. Well written, paced and interesting.

My thanks to #NetGalley and #BloomsburyPublishing for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I had high hopes for Home after reading the book description I do find books about cults fascinating but unfortunately whilst the premise was interesting, I did find the different POV's confusing at times, and the end left a lot of unfinished questions.

An interesting book looking at the inner world of a cult. Definitely full of an oppressive building tension. I did feel it leant a bit too far into building the world of the cult to the point that some things verged on the absurd. It started off compelling but lost me a little as we got toward the end. Just doing too much perhaps. But overall there is a lot to interest here, it had me on the edge of my seat in parts.