Summer Reading, Part Two

I have been waiting a long time for a specific book to hit the shelves.  I'm one of those people, the kind that likes an author so much I stalk their website, looking for the release date of their next novel.  But, in the chaos of post-grad life, I completely missed the release date and didn't pick up The Moon and More until about ten days after it came out.  Even then, I was in the middle of another book, so I had to wait to catch up on the happenings in Colby until just recently.

Visit the website here.

I have been a fan of Sarah Dessen ever since her novel This Lullaby.  Although she is fairly famous for her earliest novels That Summer and Someone Like You (which were adapted into the Mandy Moore movie How to Deal), I'm not so much a fan of the books that came before This Lullaby.  As far as I'm concerned,  that's where Dessen hit her stride with YA fiction, with the notable exception of Lock and Key, which was a disappointment in the middle of a great run.

The Moon and More, like many of Dessen's books, contains cameo appearances of characters from previous novels.  Some might consider this cheesy, but I feel it's a brilliant move - we all know that pain of not wanting a novel to end, so why not give us a sneak peak back at the characters we love and how they're doing now?  It's set in the southern beach town of Colby, and centers around Emaline's struggle to deal with biological and step family, the start of college, her perfect boyfriend who just doesn't seem right anymore, the new guy, and the expectations everyone else holds for her.

With The Moon and More, I couldn't predict the end, and for most of the book, I wasn't sure how I wanted it to end.  Although the ending was someone reminiscent of Lock and Key, it was the perfect ending to a well-written story that made discomfort and embarrassment leap of the page.  I know this will be one of those books I hand down when I have a daughter.

Summer Reading, Part One

As I mentioned before, I am a big reader.  If I leave the house, I almost always have a book packed with me.  I choose my purse based on whether or not it can hold a paperback.  I have a section of my bookshelf dedicated to books I've purchased but not yet read.  It's a glamorous life of staying up later than I should, measuring daily accomplishments by how many chapters read, and making Post-Its lists of to whom I loaned which series.

Since graduation, I've already devoured seven books (that's a low figure for me, but I've been working, helping with our home remodel, and I didn't read over my five-day vacation). Most of them have been what I refer to as Semi-Trashy Romance Novels (distinguished from Trashy Romance Novels because the Semi-Trashy are historical, lending them a small bit of decorum).  Two of the novels I've read that fall outside this category were the first two novels in the newest Cindy Woodsmall trilogy.

Woodsmall writes Amish fiction, focusing on Amish life in the current time period.  Because of the Amish focus, Woodsmall's writing examines ideas of God, community, belonging, and the nature of modern living.  I find that, for many, these themes prevent books like Woodsmall's from even been picked off the shelf. 

The third book of Woodsmall's trilogy comes out in August.

Don't let that put you off right from the start.  Woodsmall's prose makes Amish life, language, and ideas easy to access, even for someone with no experience with Amish customs.  The ideas of God brought out in the characters' thoughts and speech are not the fire-and-brimestone that many people expect, but rather a gentle exploration of beliefs.  In the world of Christian fiction, Woodsmall creates beautiful settings and characters without trying to force her readers into a belief system.