Review: Rachel's Contrition

Rachel's Contrition

About the Book:

Rachel Winters had nothing, won it all, and then lost everything

After the death of her daughter, grief-spawned delusions cause Rachel to lose her husband, her home, and custody of her son.

Help arrives from two unlikely sources: a young teen, Lilly, battling her own demons, and a tattered holy card depicting Saint Therese of Lisieux. 

As Rachel grows closer to Lilly and comes to know Saint Therese, unbidden memories from her edgy past reveal fearful mysteries of seduction, madness, and murder . . . and a truth that will haunt her forever.

My Comments:

It has all too often been my experience that what is published today as "Catholic fiction" are books praising big families and touting the benefits of Natural Family Planning.   I'm pleased to say that Rachel's Contrition doesn't mention Natural Family Planning or birth control one time.  It is the story of a mentally ill woman coming to grips with the death of an infant daughter who was left in a car.  It is also the story of a horribly dysfunctional family whose apartment she rents.  In the end, that part of the story just struck me as bizarre, it was just too unrealistic to ring true.  However, I did like Rachel's story.

Rachel grew up as the child of a single mom, a mom who went from man to man, using them and never really loving them.  She was from the wrong side of the tracks. In college she reinvented herself, got in with the right crowd and met and married a doctor.  However, she always felt like she was acting, like she was playing a role rather than being herself.  That insecurity, the death of the baby, and probably some post-partum depression caused her to have a breakdown.  Part of what helped her find her way back was St. Therese of Lisieux's Story of a Soul.  Though she was not Catholic she found herself in a Catholic church talking to a priest.  Still, it doesn't come across as preachy, but more along the lines of "you've tried other stuff, and it hasn't worked, how about trying this?".  It is one of those books where finding Jesus leads to healing in this life.  

Michelle Buckman is a good writer, a real wordsmith.  Though published by a small Catholic press, this is not an amateur production.   It is available both in  paperback and e-book.  I definitely recommend it.  I was thinking of giving it an "A" but the whole unrealistic resolution of the subplot about the other family makes me mark it down to a B+.  

I purchased this book with Amazon reward points and can say what I want about it (but as you know I say what I want about anything I read).

Review: Maggie Come Lately

Maggie Come Lately (The Pathway Collection #1)

About the Book:

Maggie isn’t exactly popular. In fact, she’s pretty much invisible. While most girls are going to parties with boyfriends, she’s busy acting as mother and housewife to her two brothers and father. But what she really wants is to be noticed by her brother’s friend Webb. Unfortunately, he’s dating the school’s hottest cheerleader.

When her sixteenth birthday comes along, Maggie makes a wish: Please, Lord, let sixteen be a great year; let me be pretty and popular and let Webb . . . it’s too big a dream to even put the rest into words. Then she hears a noise in the woods that she can’t ignore and takes a path that changes her life forever.

My Comments:

What Maggie finds in the Woods is Webb's girlfriend.  She's been bound, raped and left for dead.  Maggie, of course, calls the police.   Of course when she gets to school the next day, everyone wants to know what happened, and she goes from being invisible to having the in-crowd around.  Then she realizes she doesn't even like these kids.

Maggie's mom committed suicide when she was four and she has been the de-facto housewife/mother at their house for a long time.  When she turns sixteen, her dad shows up with something, or should we say someone new, a lady friend who happens to work at a rape crisis center and who tries to take over the household.  She wasn't a very likable person, really she came off as a talking head and not much more, but she knew a lot about rape and sexual assault.  

The book was interesting, if a little slow.  It is clearly a "message" book--rape isn't the only form of sexual assault; date rape and molestation are much more common.  Also, your body is yours and you don't have to allow someone access to it.

In some ways Maggie reminded me of myself--not sure where she fit, and not sure she wanted to fit in with the usual teenaged antics.  The first time she goes on a real date with one of the popular kids he tries to touch her breast and she slaps him.  The first time she goes to a party with alcohol she drinks one beer and gets drunk and has a hangover the next day.  I'm a cheap drunk, but that's a little too cheap.

The book doesn't push purity before marriage so much as it pushes respecting yourself and making the decisions that are right for you.  Characters in the book pray and go to church.  It is said several times that God works things out for the best in the end.

In short, I give the book a B- .  It has some good parts, but also comes across a little like a speech on sexual abuse and there are a lot of creepy people in her neighborhood.  I purchased this one with my own money.