Divine - Karen Kingsbury

Title: Divine
Author: Karen Kingsbury
Genre: Christian fiction
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 384
Date read: August, 2011

Mary Madison was a child of unspeakable horrors, a young woman society wanted to forget. Now a divine power has set Mary free to bring life-changing hope and love to battered and abused women living in the shadow of the nation's capital.

Emma Randall is a single mother fleeing an abusive relationship, wondering whether there is hope for her and her young daughters. She is desperate, broken, and unloved, tempted to commit the unthinkable. Then Mary Madison introduces Emma to the greatest love of all, greater than any either of them has ever imagined.

I started off really liking this book, but unfortunately it ended up going way over the top, and I ended up only finding it okay. The bad parts were really, really, bad; the good parts were toothache-inducing saccharine; every Christian was a wonderful person, and every non-Christian was an evil, evil monster (or, at the very best, neutral). All in all, it was just so black and white that it just got annoying.

I loved the relationship between Mary and Emma, but didn't buy the relationship between Terrance and Emma at all, and the relationship between Mary and Nigel just bugged me. Karen Kingsbury means well, but I think she tries too hard to give her books a Christian message, that it comes out as being unrealistic and stylized. I have read one amazing book by her though (Halfway to Forever) so I'm willing to not quite give up on her yet.

In Between - Jenny B. Jones

Title: In Between
Author: Jenny B. Jones
Genre: Christian fiction, YA
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 343 pages
Date read: August 2011

Unlike most kids, teenage Katie Parker never got a fair shot at a normal life. With a mother in jail and a missing-in-action dad, she's never known what it's like to truly be loved. Low on options and family members, she's soon shipped off to a foster home. Now in an unfamiliar town, Katie's rebellious attitude is at odds with her new family, school, and classmates. And after falling in with all the wrong people at school, things go from bad to really bad after she takes the blame for vandalizing the local performing arts theater. But in the midst of a dark situation, Katie finds light in the most unexpected places: through her new friendship with an eccentric senior, the commitment of her foster family, and a tragic secret that changed them forever. And as she inches closer to acceptance and forgiveness, she finds that God has been there all along.

This is one of those treasures that I picked up more or less on a whim, and ended up loving. I read it in two sittings and while I can see its flaws, I was mostly so charmed by it, that I think it deserves a 4.5 rating. This is YA at its best, with a troubled teen who makes mistakes, but who learns from her mistakes, and doesn't end up repeating them. It had a realistic depiction of a youth church (which actually came very close to my own experiences), and of Christian teens in general. It was rather interesting to discover that it was Christian fiction though, as I hadn't picked that up from the book blurb (not the one above), and only discovered it a couple of chapters into the book.

The end was perhaps a bit too perfect, but I thought it fit the style of the book quite nicely, and now I'd really like to read the next two books in the series.