A Treasure Waiting to be Discovered ~ The Sweetest Thing by Elizabeth Musser ~ Review

This week, the

  Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing The Sweetest Thing • Bethany House (June 1, 2011) by Elizabeth MusserABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Elizabeth Musser, an Atlanta native, studied English and French literature at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. While at Vanderbilt, she had the opportunity to spend a semester in Aix-en-Provence, France.

During her Senior year at Vanderbilt, she attended a five-day missions conference for students and discovered an amazing thing: God had missionaries in France, and she felt God calling her there. After graduation, she spent eight months training for the mission field in Chicago, Illinois and then two years serving in a tiny Protestant church in Eastern France where she met her future husband.

 
Elizabeth lives in southern France with her husband and their two sons. She find her work as a mother, wife, author and missionary filled with challenges and chances to see God’s hand at work daily in her life. Inspiration for her novels come both from her experiences growing up in Atlanta as well as through the people she meets in her work in France. Many conversations within her novels are inspired from real-life conversations with skeptics and seekers alike.

 
Her acclaimed novel, The Swan House, was a Book Sense bestseller list in the Southeast and was selected as one of the top Christian books for 2001 by Amazon's editors. The Sweetest Thing is her sixth novel.


ABOUT THE BOOK

Compelling Southern Novel Explores Atlanta Society in the 1930s.

 
The Singleton family’s fortunes seem unaffected by the Great Depression, and Perri—along with the other girls at Atlanta’s elite Washington Seminary—lives a life of tea dances with college boys and matinees at the cinema. When tragedy strikes, Perri is confronted with a world far different from the one she has always known.

 
At the insistence of her parents, Mary ‘Dobbs’ Dillard, the daughter of an itinerant preacher, is sent from inner-city Chicago to live with her aunt and attend Washington Seminary. Dobbs, passionate, fiercely individualistic and deeply religious, enters Washington Seminary as a bull in a china shop and shocks the girls with her frank talk about poverty and her stories of revival on the road. Her arrival intersects at the point of Perri’s ultimate crisis, and the tragedy forges an unlikely friendship.

 
The Sweetest Thing tells the story of two remarkable young women—opposites in every way—fighting for the same goal: surviving tumultuous change. Just as the Great Depression collides disastrously with Perri's well-ordered life, friendship blossoms--a friendship that will be tested by jealousy, betrayal, and family secrets...

 
If you would like to read the first chapter of The Sweetest Thing, go HERE.

 
My Review:

I slipped into “The Sweetest Thing” like a favorite pair of shoes. A perfect fit, with just a little pinch to remind you that these shoes were made for walkin’.

I love first-person dramas (word of warning to action readers, this book won’t be for you). The book is very character driven with a story that reached down deep and tugged at my heart strings. While the story revolves around two young women, both searching for their way, the plot never dragged. Perri and Dobbs are thrust in and out of their faith, making decisions that often affect their daily lives in difficult ways and a mystery plot thread that actually leads to a pretty surprising conclusion.

I didn’t want to put this book down. It has the perfect balance of action propelling the characters forward and the development of said characters. Their emotional and faith arc were a fantastic progression through the story. The writing is beautifully woven and there were several times I stopped just to enjoy the beauty of the words.

Fans of Lynn Austin are going to love this author, I know I do and I plan to read many more. This is definitely a treasure waiting to be discovered.

This review is my honest opinion. Thanks to the publishers through CFBA for my copy to review.