You know we’re friends when I’m
willing to (cautiously) break my self-imposed reading rules for you. One of
these rules, and the one I most stick to, is no Christian fiction, and for
pity’s sake no Christian YA fiction. I am a Christian but that doesn’t mean I
will lower my literary standards for Christian authors, and it also doesn’t
mean I enjoy being beaten over the head with a (generally poor) Gospel sermon
every time I pick up my book to relax. I have had never yet read a
well-written Christian fiction novel, let alone the double-whammy of a
Christian YA novel.
Well, I’ve made a new friend the
last few months, and I broke my rule, and I’m very happy I did so. Like Moonlight at Low Tide is everything
I didn’t think Christian YA fiction could ever be, and everything I think it
should be.
When high school junior Melissa Keiser
returns to her hometown of Anna Maria Island, Florida, she has one goal: hide
from the bullies who had convinced her she was the ugliest girl in school. But
when she is caught sneaking into a neighbor's pool at night, everything
changes. Something is different now that Melissa is sixteen, and the guys and
popular girls who once made her life miserable have taken notice. When Melissa
gets the chance to escape life in a house ruled by her mom's latest boyfriend,
she must choose where her loyalties lie between a long-time crush, a new
friend, and her surfer brother who makes it impossible to forget her roots.
Just as Melissa seems to achieve everything she ever wanted, she loses a loved one
to suicide. Melissa must not only grieve for her loss, she must find the truth
about the three boys who loved her and discover that joy sometimes comes from
the most unexpected place of all.
On the surface it sounds like a
fairly run-of-the-mill YA novel. But as I started reading it, I was pleasantly
surprised. Missy is fighting to keep her head above water in the one place
she’d hoped never to return to. But nothing is what she’d expected. She is
forced to confront elements of her past that she’d rather forget about, and
deal with a painful present. Add to that the three boys in her life that all
love her different ways – her popular long-time crush, the new friend that
gives her a haven away from her home, and her brother, desperately pursuing his
dream to one day escape. She calls them “the boy who loved me, the one who
couldn’t, and the one who didn’t know how.” It’s part of the mystery of this
story as you try to figure out which boy falls into which category.
My primary problems with Christian
YA are threefold. They tend to be poorly written and overly preachy, as I said
above. But also, they seem to have the exact opposite problem secular YA has –
they’re too squeaky-clean and overly sanitized. Now I know that may seem like
an odd complaint, but it’s not the fact that they’re “clean” that I take issue
with. It’s the unrealistically, perfect Christian girl trope…the
oh-so-saccharine, evangelical Mary Sue. I have no interest in having a
fantastically ideal inhuman Christian
thrown in my face. It’s not helpful for me, and only serves to aggravate me
with useless comparisons, or disgust at such an outlandish character.
Christianity is not neat and tidy. It’s a messy, difficult, painful journey –
there’s a reason it’s compared to warfare in the Bible. And no Christian novels
seem to effectively capture this for me.
But in Like Moonlight, it’s not about portraying a perfect Christian. It’s
about showing how faith heals broken people. Missy’s life is broken, her family
is broken, and she is broken. There’s nowhere for her to turn, and the harder
she tries to find an answer, the more she realizes how lost she really is. She’s no
perfect Mary Sue. She’s a perfectly human human.
This is not a squeaky-clean book
(thank heavens), but neither is it full of profligacy and foul language.
Quigley does not go out of her way to show sin and ugliness in full-color
detail, nor does she dwell on it unduly. She simply shows that it is there, and
how it affects people. Again, that’s how life is. We are surrounded by sin and
ugliness, and while we may not want to dwell on that, we cannot close our eyes
to it. Quigley balances things well. Overall, this is a generally well-written
novel. The setting lives and breathes and the characters are fairly
well-developed. I look forward to reading it again.
Four stars out of five, and I
highly recommend this book to all Christian young adults, and any Christian
fiction skeptics, who are willing to give it a try.
What about you? Have you read this
one? What did you think of it?
Hello, old friend! :) Well. You've piqued my curiosity and won me over with the first and last paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteHello! Hahaha! I'm glad! Just be warned, as I said, there's a bit of "hard-living" as you expect in YA, but I felt like it served it's purpose.
Delete"I have no interest in having a fantastically ideal inhuman Christian thrown in my face. It’s not helpful for me, and only serves to aggravate me with useless comparisons, or disgust at such an outlandish character. Christianity is not neat and tidy. It’s a messy, difficult, painful journey – there’s a reason it’s compared to warfare in the Bible."
ReplyDeleteWell put! And I couldn't agree more!
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