Gay the Pray Away cover art

Gay the Pray Away

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About this listen

Valerie Danners is in a cult. She just doesn’t know it yet. When she finds a queer book at the library and smuggles it home, her conservative Christian homeschooling world begins to crack. And when the cutest girl she’s ever met shows up to Bible class, she starts to question everything.

Riley is so confident and kind, and she and Valerie bond quickly over existing as multiracial teens in a very white Christian community. As Valerie explores her feelings for Riley, she begins to see that the world she knows is a carefully crafted narrative.

Publicly, the girls are close friends—holding hands in prayer, rooming together at a conference. Privately, they grasp at any chance to continue their forbidden romance—until they are found out. Now, Valerie must choose between staying with a family she fears will never accept her, or running away with the girl she loves.

©2024 Natalie Naudus (P)2024 Natalie Naudus Coming of Age Editors Select LGBTQ+ LGBTQIA+ Creators Literature & Fiction Romance

Editorial Review

What if you just realized you grew up in a cult?
At Audible, we’ve long known Natalie Naudus as a beloved narrator. Now, she’s written and performed her own novel that’s heavily inspired by her own childhood in a religious cult. To write it, she imagined what her life might have been like if she’d discovered her favorite narrated novels as a teen. Listening to Gay the Pray Away, I was struck not by the darkness of Valerie’s complicated family situation and the prejudice of her community, but by how the story was shot through with hope and discovery, and how it only takes one person to pull you out of a difficult path. It’s a YA story for those who are looking for the bright side to the darkness in our world. — Melissa B., Audible Editor

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Such a great book! I’ve devoured it in one day it’s so good! Beautiful characterisation, good pace to the story and captures the anguish of queer awakening so well!

Absolutely excellent!!

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Wow. This book is outstanding, and the narration of course is perfect. What an incredible story of bravery and endurance in the face of a warped religious upbringing. I was so worried for them both as the story unfolded ...and what about Hannah's little brother(???) I hope he found some peace from his demented parents, poor kid. The two main characters are utterly adorable, thank goodness they made it out. The poignance of the story to the author makes it and her all the more brilliant.

Amazing

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Beautifully narrated, the book really captures the tension and pressure of growing up in a home marred by anger and control. It’s got all the giddiness of first love and starting afresh, but perfectly balances it with the need to escape what holds us back.

Gorgeous, hopeful, queer coming-of-age

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This opened up a few wounds that I didn’t know I still had. Wow the Primal terror of her nearly getting caught and some of the other stuff I can’t even!

Oh wow

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I love the narration and also the story. The characters are really good and I love the small snippets of meta in it. Like nodd to a book the author has been the narrator for.

The setting of the book is something new to me.

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