AMY INSPIRED by BETHANY PIERCE

Amy is an aspiring writer who keeps receiving rejection letters. She was even rejected by her boyfriend and co-worker. Here you have a woman of twenty-nine still trying to find herself. Amy is an English teacher and finds herself on the college campus most of the time. When she was little she made a list of what she wanted to become when she was older. Everything on the list was not to be. All she has left is writing and she feels as though she is failing at this also. We meet her roommate, Zoe, and other characters, but none of them really stuck with me. There was really nothing that ever stood out for me in this book. It left me wanting more. Questioning, "What did happen to, Amy?" We see Amy struggle to find herself, to find happiness. But she kept looking in all the wrong places. She was determined to find a man. She is accepting to allow her new friend, Eli, to move in with her. He too is searching. Amy is struggling with, Eli, so close because she is falling for him. But Eli has a girlfriend and is not interested.

Amy was looking everywhere for something to make her feel special, wanted and  accepted. She had it all the time she just didn't choose to see it. For me, that is the message of this book. So, I would have liked to see more faith and more inspiration, but maybe that was just it, there wasn't any and that is what was missing. Amy was stuck in a rut. Just as we do in our lives. We search to something that completes us. The only One who will complete us is Jesus Christ. As Amy wanted acceptance from others, what she really needed was to accept herself.

When I read Christian Fiction I want to put the book down only to pick it back up again. I want to leave with a message and feel as though I just experienced God moving.

It is as though everyone in Amy's life is moving forward and finding blessings at every corner, except for her. I could see her struggle in that and the struggle of, Zoe, when she lost her mom. But this book held many things I didn't agree with on a Christian level. I so wanted to love this book as I too am an aspiring writer. I think Bethany Pierce is gifted in her writing. The reading did flow, but it just didn't flow into my heart as I wished it did. You may pick this book up and love it. I hope you do. I hope you give it a chance. Maybe you will find something inspiring and touching.

This book was a gift from Bethany House for it's review.

After completing a master's in Creative Writing and working as a visiting instructor at Miami University in Ohio, Bethany Pierce now lives with her husband in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is a  member of the McGuffey Art Center and continues to write. Her first book, Feeling for Bones, was one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2007.