Wednesday, February 27, 2013

A Kingsbury Collection: A Review

I recently received a copy of A Kingsbury Collection by Karen Kingsbury.  This is a collection of three of her earlier novels, Where Yesterday Lives, When Joy Came to Stay, and On Every Side, all in one volume.  I jumped at the chance to review this book because I love Karen Kingsbury's novels and I hadn't read any of these.
 
In Where Yesterday Lives we meet the Barrett family of five siblings, who used to be close, but have drifted apart due to circumstance and distance.  The novel tells the story of the family rediscovering their love for each other in the week following their father's death.
 
When Joy Came to Stay tackles the subject of severe depression and takes on the foster care system as well.  Maggie Stovall is one of those people who seems to have it all together, but she is hiding a secret that threatens to tear her apart.  Through her story we learn of the power of God's redeeming love.
 
A beloved statue on public property depicting Jesus is at the center of controversy in On Every Side.  Jordan Riley, a human rights attorney who turned his back on God when he lost his mother to death, his sister to the foster system and his best friend to circumstance as a child fights to have the statue removed, but through the fight finds his way back to his childhood faith.
 
I really enjoyed this book.  Karen Kingsbury's novels are like Oreo cookies to me.  Once I start eating Oreos, it's so hard to stop.  And once I start reading a Karen Kingsbury book, it is so hard to stop until the book is done.  These were no exception.  Her stories are simple and good and they always make me cry because everything always works out the way it ought to--happy endings, always.  Life, in Karen's books, is the way that I long for it to be.  Karen's faith is woven throughout her work and shines through her characters.  God is so present, so close, in Karen's stories--it is a wonderful perspective to see, from the outside, how God is at work in her character's lives, and to imagine that maybe it's not so different for us--that God is at work in our lives as well.
 
I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review

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Keep reading!...I've included an excerpt from A Kingsbury Collection by Karen Kingsbury below:
  

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