My Review of "Waiting for Morning"

Karen Kingsbury's Waiting for Morning is the first of her novels I've ever read. So I was excited to get to review Waiting for Morning, and although it had its imperfections, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think the characters are, for the most part, very real.

The story recounts the tragedy of Hannah Ryan. Hannah waits at home for her family -- her husband and two teenaged daughters -- to return from a camping trip. But what she wants, isn't want she gets. Instead, a police car pulls into her driveway, delivering to her the worst news a mother and wife could imagine. The aftermath of what has happened is simple: Hannah is full of rage and grief and makes it her missing to get revenge on Brian Wesley, the drunk driver who took her family from her. Somewhere along the way, she began to blame God, too, and now it's up to two people to bring her peace and forgiveness and closeness to God again.

The story weaves the biblical text of Lamentations into the real lives of people who face extraordinary loss. What we find in Waiting for Morning is a Christian retelling of the story of Lamentations -- the movements and moments between grief and hope, between anger and forgiveness. What readers find here is a moving story of just how those things must exist together. Without grief, hope becomes insipid. Without forgiveness, anger only becomes bitterness.

Certain elements of the story are predictable -- those are Waiting for Morning's imperfections. And I had to suspend my disbelief more than once. (Jenny is a particular character that I found just too unbelievable to be real.) But if you overlook those, Kingsbury's Waiting for Morning is a novel worth reading.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

Comments

My Review of "Home on the Range"

Ruther Logan Herne's Home on the Range is a novel about the Double S Ranch and Nick, who is raising his two daughters by himself. I found the characters to be very realistic. The setting is wonderful and I loved to read all the struggles of each person. It makes it more realistic and easier to read and believe. Elsa is a wonderful character. I love that her past is a secret until the end of the book -- which, itself, is very well written. I was very pleased with this contemporary cowboy read. I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "The Tea Planter's Wife"

Dinah Jefferies' The Tea Planter's Wife is a fun novel that vividly depicts the 1920s. Gwendolyn Hooper, her 19-year-old heroine, speaks for an empire-branded breed of gutsy young British women who left the security of England to embark on extraordinary adventures abroad. Not the back-packing, "lonely planet" travels of today, gap-year kids constantly connected with the folks back home via internet and smartphones, and usually safely and predictably back home for good inside a year. Girls like Gwen married men who made their living and fortunes out in the colonies -- or what until very recently had been colonies -- and went out to join them, standing shoulder-to shoulder with their husbands to face down hardship, danger, disease, monsoon, drought, and not least the simmering and sometimes murderous resentment of locals. That makes The Tea Planter's Wife so much more than a love story -- it's a recognition that girls like Gwen had guts, and c...

My Review of "Roadfood"

Jane & Michael Stern's Roadfood gives us another (this is the 10th edition!) gastro road trip across the US. Roadfood is like a road map through backroads and interstates for some of the best food in each state and region in the US. Roadfood celebrates venues most travelers would never venture near, let alone enter. Most of the state-by-state listed restaurants are, however, for dining on the cheap. Like Litton's in Knoville, TN -- which really does have amazing burgers. While one could hardly map a road trip by the Sterns' restaurant finds -- some cities, like Chicago, are overrepresented, while the rest of Illinois is all but ignored -- this fun and fanciful volume is pure pleasure. I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

The Mrs. & the Minister

Search This Blog