This well-written and carefully researched book, which tackles head-on the stubborn stereotype that those who took monastic vows were coerced to do so, should be required reading for anyone examining the history of early modern monasticism. Schutte's examination of the records of nearly a thousand cases, most of them drawn from the archives of the Holy Congregation of the Council, yields some significant observations. For example, male monastics comprised almost 83 per cent of those who petitioned for release from their vows. Certainly, some of this was because of their better access to the resources – legal and monetary – that made such appeals possible. But considering the prevalence of the assumption that the majority of nuns were unwilling inmates of their convents, Schutte's findings should prompt a gendered reconsideration of who took solemn vows, who tried to be released from them, and why. Though it is students of monasticism who will find Schutte's book most rewarding, it is important to point out that she also uses her sources to tackle some of the hoary debates in early modern family history. She employs the evidence of parents dictating their children's paths in life – whether monastic or otherwise – to demonstrate that the period did not see the rise of the less patriarchal, more affectionate family. Rather, her sources illuminate parents making detailed, and not necessarily compassionate, decisions about the future of their children, but sometimes in ways that we might not expect. It was not always younger siblings, for example, who were destined for lives as enclosed religious. Parents often based their decisions on more complex strategies about siblings, step-siblings, and their future prospects. The book finds Schutte at the top of her scholarly game. She uses the introduction to explain her methodology, her sources (both their advantages and their limitations), and scholarly assumptions in a direct and engaging style. Schutte ably balances the quantitative data with the individual struggles of these unwilling monastics. Despite the assumptions of their contemporaries (and some modern scholars) that they sought release from their vows due to sexual desires, Schutte finds a host of other factors at play. Many worried, for example, that they might be ‘eternally damned for living a life to which God had not called them’ (p. 3). What emerges, then, is a well-argued portrait of forced monachisation that should put to rest many of the persistent stereotypes about early modern European monasticism. There are even some tantalising suggestions for future research in her closing remarks. She finds evidence of what she calls an emerging ‘lexicon of liberty’ (p. 255) in some of the cases from the mid-eighteenth century. Here, one of the secretaries to the council, began to base his appeals in part on a ‘profreedom rhetoric’ (p. 262) that emphasised releasing children from the tyrannical demands of their parents. Some may object to Schutte ending with such a provocative proposition that is mostly left dangling. But, as she cogently suggests, ‘before a new concept of adolescents’ freedom of vocational choice could be widely accepted, I believe it had to become potentially “thinkable”’ (p. 262). It is precisely this kind of sharp reading of the sources and thinking that makes Schutte's book such a pleasure to read.