Heretics Anonymous is billed as The Breakfast Club meets Saved! but that is giving it too much credit. That isn’t to say Heretics is disappointing, I enjoyed it immensely, but it is a pretty straightforward YA novel. There is your standard love story, although our heroine longing to be a Catholic priest when she grows up is a bit of a twist, and the well worn struggle of a son who doesn’t get along with his mostly absent father.
Michael’s family has moved for the fourth time in ten years. Despite being an atheist Michael is enrolled at St Clare’s, a private catholic school, where he is awestruck by the outspoken Lucy during their history class. Lucy introduces Michael to her friends and their secret society- Heretics Anonymous. There is Avi, a gay Jewish boy; Eden, a pagan; and Max, a Unitarian who wants to be allowed to wear a cape with his school uniform. And then there is Lucy; a devout Catholic whose life ambition is to be a priest despite it being an impossibility for a woman.
“A heretic is someone who has belief, but not the right kind. At least according to the Catholic Church. A heretic might believe in God, but some of the other things she believes don’t match up with the party line.”
Lucy is Catholic the way Fitzgerald Grant was a Republican on Scandal. She is devoutly religious, yes, but the author clearly wants the audience to like her so she is supportive of gay marriage, the right to choose and other aspects people find off-putting about the Catholic Church. It is a bit of a “having your cake and eating it too” approach to character development but I’ve come to expect that in YA.
Their club is mostly harmless although with Michael’s joining they go a bit more public. They make some edits to the sex education anti-choice video being shown one day during an assembly and publish a challenge to the dress code in the school paper. Essentially Heretics Anonymous is just a place for the five of them to spend time together discussing their various ideals but it also gives Michael a place to call home after so many relocations. Things change after a teacher is fired for violating the school’s mortality clause by marrying her longtime girlfriend and Michael comes up with a plan the other Heretics disagree with.
There is also a typically angsty subplot involving Michael’s tenuous relationship with his father, a man largely absent from his life despite being the architect of the many moves the family has made over the years. Michael also has a hyper intelligent younger sister who fills the “precocious tweenager” role so many books and movies employ lately.