Characters leave lasting impression
“The Art of Losing Yourself” by Katie Ganshert (Waterbrook Press, April 2015)
Plot: Carmen Hart is used to being put together – the image of perfection. Her outer self hides the turmoil she carries inside over her crumbling marriage to the ever-popular high school football coach. To their community, they’re the ideal couple, but Carmen knows the truth – about her unfulfilled longing for children and of her broken heart. She struggles in her once firm faith, secretly trying to figure out if God exists at all. How could he allow the crib to stay empty and her husband to stay distant?
Carmen’s not-so-perfect life gets shaken even further when her 17-yearold half-sister Gracie runs away from their addict mother and is found squatting at a rundown motel that belongs to their sickly aunt. Carmen insists Gracie stay with them until their mother is ready to be a mom again. But Gracie doesn’t like the mom she has and definitely doesn’t need her sister pretending to take on the role next … especially after she feels like Carmen abandoned her to a better life and left her alone with their family drama.
But as a testament to His mysterious ways, God uses a broken teenager and an abandoned dream to breathe life back into a struggling woman’s faith and marriage– and uses a different dream to help a teenager find her faith for the first time, in both God and family. And in doing so, these two half-sisters slowly begin to make each other whole.
Why you would recommend this book:
I love reading because it’s like free (or at least, cheaper!) therapy. I often read to escape and put myself into a foreign environment, whether that’s a different country, or a different time period. Yet most of the time, I prefer reading that resonates with me personally. This type of reading isn’t escapism, so much as it is therapeutic and purging. Getting to relate to the character and the situations in the novel usually serve as a catalyst to inspire me to deal with my own emotions over a situation in my life, or provide an opportunity to feel those feelings instead of stuffing them down, deal with them, and then move forward freer. I would recommend this novel for those same reasons. It’s an incredibly relatable book, for many walks of life and circumstances, and I feel it would serve as not only an entertaining few hours for those who simply love a good story but could provide a measure of healing and peace for those struggling with similar situations.
That moment you were on the edge of your seat: I waited anxiously through this whole story to see if Carmen and her husband were going to stay together or not. As an avid reader of many genres, I know that all stories don’t necessarily end with a happily ever after for each plot thread in the novel. And because the depths of Carmen’s marital issues, was never entirely sure what was going to happen. Carmen kept tending to ignore (out of fear and other internal struggles) what she had (a husband) because of staying so broken over what she didn’t have (a baby). Having been through a painful divorce myself, I had much empathy for the panicked, desperate mindset that Carmen clung to—the faulty mindset of “if this or that will just come together, everything else will be fine.” Yet typically, that is not the case at all. Carmen had to learn a similar lesson that kept me breathlessly cheering her on to the final revelation.
Lasting impressions: The characters in this story are that special breed, the ones that linger long after you shut the last page – largely because they’re so relatable. They are so many layers to them, it’s impossible not to find yourself connecting in one way or another. Whether you’re a mom relating to a wayward or rebellious child, an older sister or caregiver relating to a stubborn youth, a young person relating to an older sibling or parental figure you can’t understand, or a wife in a crumbling marriage, there’s something for every reader to grab onto and become a part of. Carmen and Gracie will live in my mind for months to come!
What are you reading next?
“A Love Like Ours” by Becky Wade
