The Last Days by Ali Millar

I guess many religions are based on a set of beliefs; beliefs which cannot be proven, and when challenged, require faith to be maintained. Belief and faith become integral to our make up, extremely difficult to let go. Added to this is the spirit of community and possible collective responsibility, all of which present a guide for a way of life.

This courageous book is about someone who feels the need to leave The Jehovah’s Witnesses. It describes the events that result from this, the inner turmoil created and the anxious uncertainty of leaving the unhappy familiar for a hopeful future.

I am sure the author’s journey has been traversed by many in The Jehovah’s Witnesses and probably other devout faiths. I read this book with an open mind, hoping to understand more about The JW and the author’s experiences as I had met someone who found themselves in similar circumstances. I feel more informed about both as a result.

I thoroughly enjoyed this fascinating, often deeply disturbing memoir; Ali Millar grew up in Scotland as a Jehovah's Witness. In this unflinching account of her upbringing, teenage and adult years, Ali tells the story of how she came to eventually leave her religion and begin life as a "worldly" person. I knew a little about Jehovah's Witnesses but this book told me so much more; I will look at the local Witnesses through very different eyes next time I see them. Such an interesting and beautifully written book. I hope Ali keeps writing, I love her raw honesty and openness.
With grateful thanks to NetGalley, Ebury Publishing and Penguin Random House for my advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Defiantly an eye opener.
Ali Millar tells her story of her life being brought up as a Jehovah Witness, it`s a very moving story and I had no idea what happened to people in this religion, a lot I was quite shocked by and found it upsetting in places to know this is how she experienced her life and I`m so glad she has found peace.
A lot of people have said this didn`t happen to them but this is her story and how it happened to her.
A brilliant well told story.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher for the ARC

The Last Days by Ali Millar was a very interesting book, it's an open memoir, where the Ali the author did not hold back in showing how truly toxic the Jehovah's Witness community can be and still are. Ali was born into the Jehovah's Witness community as her mother had become a Witness before she was born, and had to follow in her mothers footsteps. Ali had no control of her childhood to adulthood. I never understood about this Christian Religion. I had a friend who was at my first and middle school I felt so sorry for her as she could not join in our assembly's etc, Christmas and Easter celebrations, She had to sit outside or in a class room on her own with a teacher and her books. Her birthday was the worst no cards or cake was shared....no invitations was sent to her. for our birthdays etc.........Thats no childhood. So when this book came available I wanted to learn more about.

Why! and how this religion was so different to my Church of England Christian religion!

But, Its Christian?!? Isn't that the same? Hmmmmmmmm

Ali, I could Hug you all those years lost but I am so glad you wrote your memoirs about it. It was a honest and so shocking. I wish you all the best and happiness for the future.

I highly recommend The Last Days by Ali Millar. 5 Big stars from me and a hug. Thank you xx

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Ebury Press for an advanced copy in exchange for a review.

It does not surprise me that this author used writing as a means of coping with life and a way of working out where she fits in as she is a beautiful writer with excellent recall of her early life. She rightly says that this is a memoir and admits that memories can be false and are also different for different people. Jehovah’s witnesses often knocked on my door in the 1990s and I used to feel sorry for the little children who must have had to get used to doors being shut in their faces. I haven’t seen any recently but a friend of mine has a sister who became a Jehovah’s witness and I have to say she allowed her children to celebrate Christmas while not celebrating herself. Ali writes about living in a cult. She had to be very strong to escape such indoctrination and to lose her family. Readers with eating disorders will be able to relate to Ali’s anorexia and realise that there is light at the end of the tunnel. The book also talks about coercive control which is suffered by many people as well as those living in a patriarchal society such as the Jehovah’s witnesses. The role of religion is also explored and provides much food for thought. Highly recommended.

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

Wow wow wow!

It’s very rare that I read autobiographies or memoirs but when I read about this one I was intrigued as I’ve always found religion fascinating and suffocating if I’m honest.

The writing style is incredible it’s like you’re right in the room/situation with Ali in every part of her life year and year.

This is a very raw and deeply honest look into the life of a Jehovah’s Witness from the perspective of a young girl right up to being a woman with a child/children, this harrowing memoir will stay with me for a long time.

That was my one and only (knowing) run in with the JW. I went on to read Ian McEwan’s rendering on the faith, focused on the refusal of blood transfusions, and then listened to Deborah Frances White’s anecdotes on her well-loved podcast The Guilty Feminist , where she explains the sinister side of her own Australian Witness upbringing. That is my working knowledge, until I sat down with Ali Millar, author of the memoir The Last Days, a story of being raised in the Scottish Borders as a member of the Jehovah Witnesses.

We meet in the wake of the Roe vs Wade injustice, and although that seems tangential to the story of Millar’s life, one of the most visceral scenes in the book (and there are many), is set in a Scottish hospital ward, her own abortion looming. She can still recall the bland, militant room, lacking any identifying features to let a passer-by know a person is making a choice to terminate a pregnancy, while we talk,. She warns of religious folk in Scotland and beyond that will be emboldened by the American decision, knowing all too well how religious doctrine can impinge on personal choice through her own dalliances with faith. “From a young kid, knowing if I got pregnant, I had to have the baby, regardless, we never called them embryos, foetuses, they were always, babies, children”.

“They [America] are moving towards a theocracy, and that was what I was raised in”. Millar grew up believing the world was going to end, imminently. The story of her life opens with her mother, we are with her, in first person present tense, feeling out the rules of this religion her mother has seemingly, quite randomly, adopted as a new way to live by. “I chose the tense partly as it is one of the best ways to build tension, I wanted the reader to be right next to me”. It is disconcerting as a reader, sold on the blurb of a cult like religion ruining a woman’s life, to be immediately stuck in the head of naivety, of childhood. She chose this style for good reason though, “a child can present events without historical bias, I never wanted to tell the reader what to think, to pass judgement on the organisation”, although as the chapters go on, it is difficult to unsee the misogyny, the discrimination, the destruction of family it caused.

It would be an easy sell, to market this story as cultish, the appetite for cult tales never seems to die (and I am as guilty as the rest, devouring the newest Netflix output alongside you all). The word cult isn’t mentioned until the final pages, when the afterword gestures towards the rotten core of the group, hinting at money laundering and illicit power, though that is a story for another day I suspect. Millar remains adamant that the first person tense didn’t allow for reflection on cult-like behaviours, “the reader is doing the reflection, I spent my whole life banging people over the head with my beliefs, I have no desire to be doing that now”. And rightly so, what makes a cult a cult is, in part, its willing participants, no one who knows their group is a cult is joining in, as Millar notes, “I just believed I was part of the one true religion”.

We stay with Millar as she ages from young girl to teenager and rebellion sets in. She learns to live outside of the rules, for the most part. As trouble from above came to meet her, as it does for anyone, particularly a woman, disobeying the dogma, Millar turned to other compulsions to keep her internal torture at bay. She became consumed by an eating disorder, which wasn’t looked upon fondly by elders, it is after all, ungrateful to refuse the food Jehovah gives you. She says there is little acknowledgement of mental ill health or conditions like Anorexia, “there are a lot of people within the organisations mainly women, where the default is to be depressed.. You are told to expect depression as part of the deal when living in Satan's system [aka the secular world].” It’s a specific kind of religious dogma that weaponizes mental ill health as the anti-Christ, when the groups own practices are a more likely cause of distress.

Millar notes a difference between physically leaving and mentally unpicking the past. Most readers will highlight the most visceral scene of Millar’s witness life as the sofa side grilling on questions of sexual pleasure, infidelity and unfaithfulness by three elders. I was moved too, but am more attached to another image, long after Millar sets the Bible aside. She carries her child to the entrance of her flat, leaves the carrier at the door and rushes to be sick in the bathroom, stuck by the fear that Satan was coming for her child. Millar recalls this vividly: “That was 2014, years after I left. I was still having nightmares, and flashbacks, I didn’t know it was PTSD then”. Even after a decade without the church, she believes she will always be in recovery from religion.

It is a story of trauma, religious and intergenerational. Her entry into what can be described as a cult of its own – motherhood, forces Millar to make her final exit from the group: “I could have carried on lying to myself with that doubling, but as soon as you are responsible for someone else it changes, I couldn't inflict that upon her”. The story starts with her mother’s choice to join the Jehovah’s Witnesses and we close with her exit as a new mother, the breaking of intergenerational trauma guiding Millar’s story to a redemptive end.

Will JW members be heading to Waterstones? Unlikely. “They are warned against the media, which I am included in, part of Satan’s system, I doubt devout people will read it” - they will be told not to. “I expect there will be backlash, they’ve [The Jehovah's Witness] have already published articles in their own magazines about not believing books, and seeking out critical things”. Millar still hopes the book will reach people who are teetering on the edge, someone questioning, like she once was: “People who have doubts, who think that it's something wrong with them instead of the system they are in, I hope they will find some kind of comfort from the book”.

If we take women’s writing on trauma as catharsis, as much of modern literary criticism does, the question would be rhetorical. However, Millar [and I] strongly rebuke such belittling of women’s words. She describes the writing process as hell, “I felt sick, I had panic attacks, I have never showered as much as I did when I wrote that first draft” - that doesn’t sound like self-care to me.

A memoir of growing female in a conservative high demand religion. Candid but lyrical, harsh like the Scottish weather and beautiful as the country's landscape.

(Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC!) ...more

I remember being a young girl at middle school and there being a family of girls who could never join in assembly when we sang hymns and could never join in making cards at Easter or Christmas. We knew they were Jehovah Witnesses but we didn’t have a clue what that meant. Later I learnt they couldn’t have blood if they were in hospital and needed it. But how could we understand, we were 10 years old.
When I saw this title, those little girls came back to me and I wanted to know more about what their childhood must have been like. Ali Millar bravely tells it as it is: all the teachings; the rules; the belief that the outside world was full of sin; the coming of the end and the new world for the Witnesses that would follow. Her writing pulls you in from the very beginning, simple and yet captivating. I wonder now if those little girls at my school felt like Ali. A highly emotive subject that will leave you speechless at times, I felt so much for Ali growing up and becoming a young woman. A very courageous person in many ways. Thank you for sharing your story.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for a review.

This was such a fantastic and candidly open memoir, where the author did not hold back in showing how truly toxic the Jehovah's Witness community can be.

Growing up as a Jehovah's Witness and leaving the community when I was 14, I have struggled to find memoirs, if any, that portray the inside of the community as it really is. Most people view Witnesses as quiet but strange with their stances on refusing blood transfusions and not celebrating birthdays and Christmas, but not many people understand the abuse and trauma you can go through when you are a member as well as when you leave.

Ali Millar is a beautiful writer and is able to write from each period of her life as if she was still in that moment. I really do thank her for bringing the truth to light and making it accessible for everyone. Whether you are into non-fiction works about religion and cults, memoirs or coming of age books, I really think this will be a book for everyone and I hope it also brings courage to people still in the community as well.

I knew very little about the Jehovah's Witness before I read this memoir. Ali Millar lays bare the the details of the the sect in a brave and profoundly moving way. She was born into the program as her mother had become a Witness before she was born, he mother uses it as a crutch and life is totally subsumed by the teachings.
Ali writes about early life as though the procession of meetings, knocking on doors to sell copies of Watertower, and the constant limiting of daily life by the elders was perfectly normal. Her enforced distance from many aspects of everyday life is shocking. Even when she rebels briefly as a teenager she is quickly pulled back in, leading to a long lasting mental illness which is largely ignored by those around her. A marriage to another Witness is unbearably sad, she isn't forced but given little choice and the marriage only increases her illness and isolation.
When she finally breaks away it is heartbreaking as she is forced to make the most unbearable of choices.
I urge everyone to read The Last Days, it is a searing indictment of the Jehovah's Witness, an unflinching picture of anorexia and in the end, a story of true courage.
Thank you to #netgalley #penguinrandom and#eburypublishing for allowing me to review this ARC

This memoir is a very well written and brutally honest read about a religion which is not too well understood by most people, including myself.
Her decision to leave must have been such a hard one for her to make, knowing the consequences of such! Always so interesting to read about the struggles people have within themselves and how it all transpires.
A huge thank you to the author for being so confident and brave in telling her story. Also many thanx to the publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this interesting book

Fascinating book and what an insight to a religion I knew nothing about. Your mum made me cry but I’m so glad that I’m the end you found the way for you.

What a ride Ali Millar has had in her life, and how brilliantly she writes about it. Her description of growing up with Jehovah’s Witnesses is moving and horrifying in equal measure and her treatment as an adult at the hands of the ‘elders’ is shocking. I am in awe of the bravery of her decision to leave the Witnesses after spending her whole life being indoctrinated at their hands. There are so many disturbing issues raised in this book, but the people least likely to read it are probably the Witnesses themselves, the rest of us can just be better informed about what goes on behind the closed doors of this sect, although it won’t make me any more willing to purchase their magazines when they come knocking on my door.

Such an intriguing coming of age story of a Scottish woman growing up in the Jehovah's Witnesses. These stories always interest me so much and I think Ali told her story so well and it was so captivating.

The Last Days – Ali Millar – this is a very moving memoir of a young women struggling with life as a Jehovah’s Witness and eventually leaving the religion. I found it a very insightful, whilst disturbing view of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. There were some things I knew but others were a revelation to me. I felt shocked and saddened that a child then young adult’s severe mental illness could go unnoticed or even ignored for so long.
Thanks to NetGalley and Ebury Publishing, Penguin Random House for the review access.

The Last Days is a raw and honest memoir about the author’s childhood as a Jehovah’s Witness and the incredible turmoil her and her family went through in order to escape from them. Escape, being the operative word, as their hold on their members may not be physical but the emotional baggage makes leaving the Jehovah’s Witness faith (and some would label it a cult) almost impossible unless you are a very strong minded person and have some a very good support network to turn to.

Ali Millar’s true story will stay with me and I do hope that she is able to somehow reconcile the broken relationships that she has had to endure by her leaving, especially that with her mother. These are relationships that are not broken because of Ali’s doing but because of the harsh rules the Jehovah’s Witness organisation imposes on members who leave.

This is a very important story to tell and I commend Ali Millar on doing so and hopefully giving courage to others who are still enmeshed in the Jehovah’s Witness network who would like to escape.

With thanks to NetGalley and Ebury Publishing, Penguin Random House for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When I started reading this book, for some reason I didn’t realise that the subject was the author’s own life. It’s a sad and thought provoking tale and I really commend Ali Millar for being so brave in telling her story, which is at times heartbreaking. It is well written and shows not only how sheltered life can be as a Jehovahs Witness, but also how so much of their life is similar to non JWs. I didn’t expect there to be so much freedom in a religion with such strict rules, and so I found the book very educational as well.
Whilst the story is emotional in times, I was glad that the ending was uplifting and optimistic, and I really wish the author all the best for the future.

Such a good book. To see inside and almost live the life of a Jehovah’s Witness is powerful. To understand why Ali makes her decisions, or why she is unable and is coerced into her life choices is eye opening and very sad and brave. A page turner as I hoped Ali mangled to gain her control and feel empowered to live her own life.

As a keen observer of other religions and cultures I looked forward to reading this.

What an intriguing and dark insight into the JW world. I had little idea of it’s beliefs and practices and was saddened by its treatment of Ali and others who did not quite conform. The attitude towards women is particularly difficult to understand. The organisation is run by men for men, with women being considered only in a subservient context.

This is only one memoir, I have nothing to compare it with, but if only part is accurate it is quite an eye opener. Of course, all religions have their flaws, and the words “sect” and “cult” are bandied about without any conscious thought to their meaning.

Ali’s narrative is distressing and no doubt will be considered controversial. A brave and deeply sad book, well written and will definitely be talked about.

Thank you NetGalley.

A tale of Religion versus Love, i know what I prefer.

A true tale with names changed of girl Ali now a Lady who grew up with a Mum a sister and the JW's, I'm guessing not many of them will read this but we'll I will let you make your mind up. There is a truth with an honesty rarely seen in these sort of accounts our Heroine Ali makes no secret of her faults or are they her human nature. When searching for something you look everywhere if your honest and this feels very honest. I'm a Christian not a JW I hate religion and the way it destroyed lives. To love is divine fear of Man is not.

So I'm being honest our heroine is very honest and if you read this I'm guessing you will be challenged as we are all different I'm not sure how your challenge will look but it will make sense to you even if not to anyone else. It's one of those books that will have a different impact on different people and that's part of why I like it so much. I'm not for bashing anyone for the sake of it but there are somethings in life that are wrong and somethings that stick out as such and some don't this is how Ali was robbed of so much and a warning that just because your told something is right it doesn't mean it is.

Part of my challenge is to ask why do I do what I do why do I believe what I do the ansa isn't written in the clouds or this book but there are some very big clues for you to see. You won't need a magnified glass to see it unless your sight is bad I think for anyone who has questions on the road they are being lead down this may make sense to you is your trapped in a religion or could I say abusive relationship even this is a good read. If your not but want to see a super human tale then this is a great book to read. I highly recommend it. Thanks Alj for our it out there to challenge and help others you are a heroine to me.

Little Ali Millar, sitting in the Kingdom Hall, listening to the Elders preach - Waiting for Armageddon. She is terrified about what she may see happen, it haunts her. She attends the Jehovah’s Witness meetings with her Mother and Sister. So much to learn, so much to get right.

I found this memoir very brave for the author to write. For me personally reading this it gave me an insight into the life of a member of the Jehovah Witness Kingdom.
Written with such powerful emotion, you can feel the fear and bewildering thoughts of the young Ali. How it was drummed into her, how she felt helpless like her life was chosen for her, without having a chance of how she may have wanted her life direction to go.
It follows her into adulthood and how her life plays out.
It took me a little longer to read as I wanted to absorb it in all it’s detail. It’s an emotionally charged book, written with the most descriptive sentences. I like the style of her writing, her own unique way of bringing her memories to paper.
A religious upbringing written from a child’s into adults point of view. A most compelling read, and I am certain this book will stay with me, and be remembered.
Thank you NetGalley and Ebury Publishing for a copy of this e- book. My thoughts of this book are honestly written.

For anyone who hasn't experienced life in a highly structured, authoritarian, patriarchal religion such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, they won't realise how brave Ali Milar was in writing this book. Whenever I hear, "We think" or "We believe or "Our faith tells us" my hackles rise. Nobody comes out of the womb uttering those words, they are the adopted thoughts and beliefs of someone who founded whichever sect, group, following or religion others follow. A sort of 'loving' coercion brings new people in to the group but more usually the children of those already indoctrinated. After all, children look up to their parents with absolute trust so are easy meat for the process. So easy to scare in to submission too. Jehovah's Witnesses aren't the only ones who refer to their way as the 'truth'. Truth has a very long section in Wikipedia, possibly because of its multifaceted meanings. One thing is certain, there are many truths out there and they are all man-made. I wonder what Woman's Hour would make of the cringeworthy examination by the Elders of her marital situation with Marc and their perverted questionning of her pleasure but never his. That's patriarchy for you!

Wow, what a fantastic read! Ali Millar’s novel, The Last Days, centres on a young woman, brought up in the beliefs of a religious sect, and her attempts to leave it. The novel is the author’s very brave and candid account of coercion and control to subvert individuality and free-thinking within the organisation. Ali’s ‘inquisition’ of her ‘sins’ by the elders of the religion is, at best, intrusive and misogynistic, leaving her feeling that all wrongs are her fault in the eyes of the church. However, her abandonment by the church, and even by her own family, all she knows, has made her an outcast and object of ridicule as ordered by the religious elders. Revelations abound in this book.

A fascinating memoir about Ali’s journey to freedom from being in the Jehovah’s Witness community, and all the hardships that ali experiences along the way . I was totally invested in this book and Ali’s journey. I’ve not read a book on this subject before and that’s what made this book stand out . Ali journey is sad and emotional but overall shows true strength in character. Some parts in the book could be triggering for readers personally I found the eating disorders difficult to read but not enough to stop me from reading . This book is a fascinating memoir

Wow. What a tremendous memoir. I’ll preface this review by saying my thoughts on JW as a religious organisation are not clear cut. I have friends who are JW and are really happy, my friend doesn’t appear oppressed by her husband and her children are bright, happy and just regular kids. As a CofE Christian myself there are a few things that my friends Kingdom Hall do that I really think we could learn from as our church slowly dwindles as it’s ageing population dies. BUT all that aside I have no doubt that Ali’s experience is genuine and that she and many hundreds or even thousands of other ex Witnesses have been traumatised by the very people and place that are supposed to provide you with comfort and safety. The fact that, like Mormonism the JW faith has been written and designed by ‘modern’ day white men in ivory towers in the USA is enough to make me suspicious of its true biblical purpose and reading how women are expected to be submissive to their parents, then church then husband it’s definitely something I couldn’t be a part of.
But my experiences aren’t relevant here, Ali Millars’s are and she writes them so beautifully. It is incredible how she manages to capture the spirit of whatever age she is and imbue that into those chapters so that you’d be forgiven for thinking that she was copying from a childhood log book. Her growing maturity matches the maturity of the storytelling until by the end it is elegiac and fully grown.
I could have carried on reading it for days and am a little cross that it was so good I raced through it!

Whatever your thoughts on religion this is a great book about being a woman and how your life changes and is changed for you by the choices you make and the people who surround you.

Wow, what an emotive book that was to read. There is a Kingdom hall not far from where I like and you've always wondered what goes on behind closed doors - this book certainly gives you the answers, and answers that now I know the answer to, I will give it a wide berth. You have to hand it to the author for wanting a life outside of being a Witness and their rules/lifestyle even if it has come at a huge personal loss.

This is a staggering work, lyrical and devastating, yet hopeful. How Millar has captured her voice through the different stages of her memories is awe-inspiring. Setting the absolute case for keeping children free from religious ideologies because of the damage they do, this has to be the non-fiction book of 2022.