I really enjoyed Jason Kirk’s Hell Is a World Without You, and I loved this book. It’s great.

The book is set around a group of teenagers in the evangelical church in the late 1990s to the early 2000s. It follows a young kid named Isaac through high school juggling church, friendships, girls, and family. As he gets deeper into high school, Isaac’s relationship with church and spirituality collide and collapse leading him to question everyone and everything.

Knowing the topic that this book was going to touch on made this a “must read” for me. I’m roughly the same age as the Isaac character in the… Do we call this a “period piece”? It’s 25 years ago now! Anyway, the things that Isaac was dealing with were the same things that a lot of us were.

While I can’t relate to the church aspect completely, my parents did send me my brothers and I to a private, Christian school. We never were church goers (I know that’s contradictory.), but I could see so much of this story in the kids that I grew up with at that time. While I was lucky and got out to a public high school, some of that still impacted my thinking to this day. I’m very anti-religion for the most part thanks in part to those experiences and the people that I knew.

One of the things that I despise the most that was a regular feature in this book is when folks hide behind their religion to be bigots or to try and control people (mostly women). Some of the most vile and reprehensible behavior is when you try and use your religion to control others and get away with abhorrent behavior. It’s disgusting.

I’m rambling here, but Kirk’s book really made me take a step back and look at my experiences and how messed up we all are.

I really liked the book, and you should check it out!

You can pick up the book here.