"Amy Inspired" by Bethany Pierce

When I started reading this book, I was immediately sucked in. The characters are real and the tone is purposeful. Essentially, readers are taken into the mind of a thirty-year-old English professor (minus the tenure). She lives with quite a character that is her roommate in an apartment. Love is tied into the story but not in a graphic fashion. There is tension over relationships, but the book is not cheesy because it does not dwell on that. Whether this is a metaphor for how women should not dwell on men is another story. Regardless, the men in the book are always there but do not take up the whole story. Also, Pierce is careful to keep the book real while not making it shameful. In a sense, nothing is sugarcoated, but, at the same time, readers do not feel like the book should be on a Christian d0-not-read-list. Christianity is woven into the story in an honest way through the characters' eyes. There is grief in the story but not in a cliched manner. Women may like this book more than men, but, for the male readers, it will give them a glimpse into the female psyche that is surprisingly accurate. What's great about this book is that the story starts and ends after a while, but you realize that not many physical events happened; yet, you kept turning the pages. This is not easy for all writers to pull off, but Pierce does it. Also, there is a set of discussion questions at the end. As a book reviewer, I could have sped-read this book and still have gotten the gist of what happened. But I didn't and did not want to.