Amy Inspired
November 12, 2010
This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing Amy Inspired Bethany House; Original edition (October 1, 2010) by Bethany Pierce
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
After completing a master’s in Creative Writing and working as a visiting instructor at Miami University in Ohio, Bethany Pierce now lives with her husband in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is a member of the McGuffey Art Center and continues to write. Her first book, Feeling for Bones, was one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2007.
ABOUT THE BOOK
With rejections piling up, she could use just a little inspiration…
Amy Gallagher is an aspiring writer who, after countless rejections, has settled for a career as an English professor in small-town Ohio just to pay the bills. All her dreams suddenly start to unravel as rejections pile up–both from publishers and her boyfriend.
But just as Amy fears her life is stuck in a holding pattern, she meets the mysterious, attractive, and unavailable Eli. She struggles to walk the fine line between friendship and something more with Eli, even as staying true to her faith becomes unexpectedly complicated.
When secrets, tragedy, and poor decisions cause rifts in Amy’s relationships, she must come to terms with who she’s become, her unrealized aspirations for her life, and the state of her faith. Can she dare to hope that she will find love and fulfillment despite it all?
If you would like to read the first chapter of Amy Inspired, go HERE.
Sally Says: One of my pet peeves are novels about writers where the writer makes it big with their first book and has enough to live the Hollywood version of a novelist — and all before the age of twenty-eight. If anyone should understand the real struggle of being a writer, it should be other novelists.
Finally, a story that’s a lot more realistic.
What intrigued me about the book was the cover first. I love it. The curly hair, the dress, the way she’s sitting, the leaves floating down behind her. And I liked that it was about a writer.
I bet a lot of people, even non-writers, can identify with Amy, the heroine. She has a dream that seems to be farther out of reach than ever, and life just isn’t happening remotely close to what she expected. Haven’t we all been there?
For Amy, life has gotten confusing. The black and white has become gray. Things she’s been taught in the past don’t make sense anymore, and beneath everything that happens to her, she searches for the right thing to do, the right direction to go.
This is not a fairy tale; it’s real life, whether people think it’s pretty or not. Isn’t it easy to get caught up in our culture and forget what we believe or why we believed it? To struggle with what we should do when nothing is turning out how we expected it? That’s the topic Amy Inspired tackles. It’s a bit gritty, filled a bit more than usual with the struggles of life. But I know there’s a slew of people out there who want exactly this type of Christian fiction. This kind of realistic escape.
To those people, Amy Inspired is your kind of book.