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.
