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.

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