Comments (15)

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Jan 02, 2024kevinorth rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Masterfully written and precisely unique in how the author 'saw the light' through his mother's first being able to draw the conclusion that the mission, message, and tactics of the reparative therapy the author was attempting to be…
Jan 02, 2024library8537 rated this title 1 out of 5 stars
I’m angry. This is not a book that encourages young questioning kids to come out. It shows only the fear and results of oppression. Not the courage or self understanding that helps people to be healthy and okay with themselves. Don’t…
Jul 13, 2021severina2001 rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
A memoir of the author's experiences at "Love in Action", a gay conversion therapy centre. Garrard was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist church in the southern USA by a father who was called late in life to be a preacher. Prior to this,…
Jun 20, 2019IndyPL_MaryW rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
This is the story of Garrard Conley’s young adult years. Garrard lives in the south and is a son of a preacher. In a most startling fashion he is outed as a gay man. Despite what medical and mental health professionals consider as…
Apr 22, 2019kwillen rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
This is not an easy book to read nor is it meant to be entertaining in any way. Conley often confuses the reader by ranging from the bizarre conversion therapy itself to seemingly random memories told in a more palatable narrative style.…
Colleenita
Jan 03, 2019Colleenita rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
The book and the film are essentially different - the novel is a very internal, intimate, detailed personal exploration of sexual identity in a faith context. The film is extremely pared back and reduced to the bare bones of the story.…
CarleeMcDot
Nov 27, 2018CarleeMcDot rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
I grabbed this book because I saw they were making a movie adaptation from it and recently the books made movies have been some pretty great reads. (I am of the camp that believes books are better than the movies 99.95% of the time.…
Nov 06, 2018
I'm definitely adding this to my To Read list after seeing the trailer for the film. I love that movies have become one of the best ways to find great books to read.
Nov 02, 2018SF_READER rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
www.focusfeatures.com/boy-erased
Feb 03, 2018WendyLC rated this title 0.5 out of 5 stars
conversion therapy is awful but this book is almost as awful. A privileged kid lies to and mistreats his beard girlfriend, chooses to go to a day-only conversion therapy, and chooses to stop after a week, and everyone lets him. I…
Mar 11, 2017
What slowly struck me as I was reading this book was how short the "reparative" therapy the author undertook was. It was about two weeks, with some "counselling" sessions beforehand. The book definitely captures the distress for…
Feb 08, 2017DorisWaggoner rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
This first memoir is ragged around the edges. (Spoiler alerts follow.) The author's happy family has holes in it that he's unaware of. The son of a Missionary Baptist preacher in Alabama who also runs an auto dealership where the employees…
Dec 04, 2016laparesseuse rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
A beautifully written and harrowing testament to the damage caused by so-called gay conversion therapy.
Cynthia_N
Sep 03, 2016Cynthia_N rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
This was an interesting read. Conley doesn't go for shock value. This is the story of how he was outed to his family, how they tried to cure him, how it didn't work, and how nothing has been the same since then.
Jun 18, 2016AmandaG7 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This was beautifully written and an extraordinary story that really deserved to be told. I appreciated that he didn't make his parents the enemies. He worked hard to portray them as well meaning people who only wanted to their best for…