Author: Virginia Smith
3.5 out of 5 Stars
Plot Background:
Joan Sanderson is stuck in a rutt. The middle child of three sisters, she feels her life is at a stand-still as her older sister Allie is starting a family and her younger sister Tori is starting a career. Joan lives at home with her mother and grandmother and has no prospects in her love life. Everything begins to change however as a handsome young doctor and his dog move in next door to her. Suddenly, she feels her life shifting and tilting on its axis- everything she thought she had moved past begins bubbling to the surface. Faced with a bit of rivalry from her younger sister Tori, Joan must learn who she is and who God is in order to get to know Ken(the hunky doctor).
My Thoughts:
This book was a really funny one to me. I love books about sisters (big surprise, I have sisters myself), and this book drew me in because I too am a middle child.
I'll start with the things I loved about the book. Joan is such an honest and relatable character. I feel like I know her, and I felt like I have experienced so many of the things that she is going through in the novel. It was funny because as I was reading this book, I felt like the author must have written it about my life. It struck me how similar our situations were growing up, how much our relationships with our sisters compared, and how much our relationships with God have been. A huge part of the novel was Joan, who was raised in church but who had struggled to keep her faith, trying to get back to a place of trusting and believing God, even when her earthly father had let her down so much. It really spoke to me in a way that I needed to hear, and I very much enjoyed spending time inside Joan's head.
Another strength in the book was just the humor It wasn't all melancholy and praise and worship songs, the novel had some really funny elements. I wont give anything away, but certain parts made me chuckle. The whole book had a lightness to it, which is something I needed greatly after coming off of a string of serious and dark novels.
There were a few flaws I saw in the book. The first major flaw I found was pacing. I felt like the book took a while to really get going, and then once it got going there were parts where it seemed like the steam was starting to run out, and then suddenly it was ending. A lot of the slower parts were parts with quiet reflection, which may have been the intent of the author, but there were quite a few parts that just felt like walking through sand.
Another flaw I found was Ken. He was just too, perfect? I am not sure that's the right word, but I kept trying to find flaws in him where there were none, which made him seem unhuman and therefore unrelatable. Aside from the fact that he almost doesn't like Joan because she isn't religious enough, he has nothing wrong with him-- he has abs and he jogs and he has a great dog and he is a doctor and he volunteers in third world countries. I have never in my life met someone as perfect as Ken, and the idea that this perfect person would randomly move in next door and fall in love with you was hard to wrap my head around.
Aside from that though, this was an enjoyable book. It was light and fun. If you are not a fan of religion this may not be the novel for you, but if you are okay reading about someone's spiritual journey with Christ and reading a little romance mixed with sister bonding, then you will love it.
Here is a link to the book on Kindle, best of all it is FREE!:
http://www.amazon.com/Stuck-Middle-Sister---Sister-ebook/dp/B001GMANO4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351199889&sr=8-1&keywords=stuck+in+the+middle
Happy Reading!
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