Review of Loving Grace

Title:  Loving Grace

Author: April Smith

Chapters: 21 plus Epilogue

Pages: 226

Genre: teen chick lit Young Adult Contemporary 

Rating: 4 stars

Loving Grace by April Smith is a sweet Christian YA. Grace lives with her grandfather and works for the Baron's on their watermelon farm.  Her parents and the Barons had been friends for years before the accident. This summer Mr. and Mrs.  Baron have the idea to sponsor Grace for Watermelon queen.  But when Mr. Baron gets injured on the farm Beau and his brother end up having to travel with Grace to her queenly duties if their mother can't make it.  

This book has a YA Trope that I normally don't like the girl torn between who she thinks as the boy of her dreams and the boy almost next door.    To Grace Warren Hartley is the guy of her dreams and even though Beau Barron is the boy almost next door she just sees him as her brother's best friend and the guy she's known most of her life.  Will Grace make a mistake or will she finally see what's been in front of her this whole time. 

Loving Grace above everything else is a story about loving yourself first and trusting God, and trusting His timing.  This is a book that I wish had been out when I was a teenage girl.   When I was a teen Christian YA and Clean YA reads weren't really a thing. For Christian YA we had the Christy Miller series by Robin Jones Gunn.  For Clean YA we had Lurlene McDaniel but the majority of her books where dealing with teens dealing with terminal illness not light happy reading.  

Had I read this book as a teen it would have been 5 stars for sure. It ended up being 4 stars mainly because I figured out how it was going to end and who she picked before it ended.  I knew who I was rooting for pretty much as soon as I met him.  

Even though this was a YA novel and I'm technically passed that age bracket I am looking forward to the next book from April Smith.