Book Synopsis:
When it all falls apart, who can you believe in?
Everything is going right for Lucy Hansson, until her mom’s cancer reappears. Just like that, Lucy breaks with all the constants in her life: her do-good boyfriend, her steady faith, even her longtime summer church camp job.
Instead, Lucy lands at a camp for kids who have been through tough times. As a counselor, Lucy is in over her head and longs to be with her parents across the lake. But that’s before she gets to know her coworkers, who are as loving and unafraid as she so desperately wants to be.
It’s not just new friends that Lucy discovers at camp—more than one old secret is revealed along the way. In fact, maybe there’s much more to her family and her faith than Lucy ever realized.
My Review:
4/5 stars. This book was not a Christian book, nor was it written by a Christian author, yet Christianity was a big part of the story. I was a curious and a bit skeptical of how that would be done. While there were some things I took issue with, it was fairly accurate. This book had a lot of good messages and powerful themes. I loved the setting and the characters were decent, if a little lacking in depth. I enjoyed this book, but I wouldn’t recommend it to others because of some of the things I had issues with.
The portrayal of Christians started off pretty realistic. Even when Lucy started having doubts during hard times, that was realistic. It's normal for believers to doubt God's presence and feel like He's not there in tough situations. This never really got resolved at the end, though. She didn't come out of it with stronger faith. Instead, it was more like, maybe God's real, maybe He isn't, but faith makes me feel good and that's all that matters. She never cemented her beliefs, she ended the book happy with being unsure. That annoyed me.
That wasn't the only problem I had with the beliefs shown. Lucy has a conversation with the love interest about faith and if he's a Christian. His response is basically that he is, but not in the same way. He has beliefs in a god, but not really all the church and Bible stuff. Lucy accepts this as a good thing, and it seems like the author supports this, too. I know the author isn't a Christian, but it seemed like she was promoting progressive or lukewarm Christianity, which isn't a good message.
Another big issue I had with the views presented was the acceptance of a trans character. One character is revealed to be transgender. This is spoken about in a completely positive way, with Lucy explicitly saying "people are who they say they are." That's accepted as a fact for the rest of the book.
Going back to the love interest and the romance, though, it was cute. I liked Lucy's boyfriend at the beginning of the story before she broke up with him, but I liked Henry, too. With him, we got to see more of the spark and development as they spent time together. They had good chemistry. It wasn't a relationship that I was giddy about every little moment, but it was cute enough.
In terms of the emotions, this book was pretty impactful. The characters have gone through a lot of tough situations in their past, and you feel for them. I've volunteered at a camp for inner-city kids before, and while that's not exactly the same thing as the camp in this book, some of the situations could be similar to those of kids I know.
The camp setting of this book was one of the best parts. I loved reading about all the summer camp stuff happening and the general environment that's familiar to me. I've been to different camps throughout my childhood, so I could somewhat relate to all the different activities the characters did.
Speaking of the characters, they were likable but not all of them had much depth. One of the main group of friends we barely learn about. For the others that are more developed, we know about their past/family a little, but not much about their actual personality. They didn't feel different enough. I still enjoyed them, though.
Music was a small theme of the story. Specifically, the emotional power of music, how hearing good music makes a person feel. Lucy plays piano, so there are some good descriptions of what it's like to be the one making the music, and there are good descriptions about being moved by music played by someone else. As someone who loves music and sings, I liked those parts.
One of the big plot twists at the end, that Lucy's mom was pregnant as a teen and gave the child up for adoption, was good. I kind of predicted it earlier on - which shows that there was good foreshadowing by the author - but it was still impactful.
The ending was overall a bit unsatisfying. It wasn't really a direct cliffhanger, but it kind of was because you don't know if Lucy's mom is going to live. I also mentioned my issues with the faith element of the ending above.
To summarize, this book was an enjoyable read that I got pretty into, but I wouldn't recommend it to others because of the content. I wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea about what I believe.
Content Warning:
There was more negative content in this book than I was expecting. Language was probably the biggest. There were some f-bombs, sh-, a-hole, bi-, da-, and the word sexy. It wasn't too frequent, but still in there more than I was okay with.
As for romance, it was pretty clean in terms of what actually happened. Nothing more than kissing happens between characters, but it's mentioned one time that Lucy and her first boyfriend almost went further than that - taking their shirts off. There are conversations between characters about kissing with tongue, but nothing like that is described when the characters actually do kiss.
There wasn't any graphic violence. A couple campers get into a physical fight, but it isn't detailed. Some of the characters have a bit of violence in their backstory, but, again, it's not described much.
Some other stuff to note: There is casual, underage drinking. Lucy doesn't drink and thinks it tastes bad when she does, but goes along with it anyway. There are two mentions of teen pregnancy - one with a 14-year-old camper and one with Lucy's mom when she was 16. In the very first chapter of the book, there's a mention of two girls dating and going to prom together.
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