Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! DNF at 27%.

Teenagers Sophie and Noah are twins being raised by their deeply devout and pious Catholic parents. When their parents catch Noah with a gay pornographic magazine, he is sent away to a Catholic boarding school for “troubled” teens. The novel follows Sophie as a flu outbreak sweeps across the US, and she rushes to save her brother Noah.

Sophie lives in an extremely small, rural, and isolated town in which the church members make up almost the entire population. Sophie hates her parents and her religion so much, she barely wants to live, feels like she’s not even living. The town librarian secretly funnels her novels to read, as her mother has strict rules about what books she’s allowed to check out. There is a strong emphasis on virginity and the danger of women’s beauty. Sophie’s mother became deeply devout and ascetic after being sexually assaulted, because she believes she invited the assault and that her piousness will protect her moving forward. In this way, American Rapture explores how religion can turn us against ourselves.

The flu eventually makes its way to Sophie’s town, and she’s sent home from school one day when a student tests positive. Sophie returns home to find her parents having sex on the living room floor, an almost unthinkable experience considering their devout piousness. When Sophie tries to flee the house, her parents begin to attack her. This culminates in Sophie’s dad attempting to rape her, which she is able to escape from. She steals her parents’ car and heads toward the facility where Noah is being held. On the way, she gets stuck in unmoving traffic. A man in a nearby car becomes infected, breaks into Sophie’s car, and also sexually attacks her. At this point, it becomes clear that the virus is driving people to sexual violence. I realized that American Rapture is a book about a teenage girl surviving a sexual violence epidemic. Considering this is essentially my actual life, I did not feel the need to continue reading this book. This book needs some major trigger warnings for incest and sexual assault.