Book Review THE REST OF HER LIFE

I went to the public library Saturday morning and picked up a book called The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty. I knew it was not a Christian book, which is what I usually read, but it looked interesting, so I starting reading. I finished the last twenty-five or so pages this morning. It was so compelling I could not put it down (except while I was at church yesterday).  From the first paragraph, I was hooked.

On the very first page, a high school senior has an accident in her SUV that kills another student at the school she attends and where her mother is a teacher. The entire book deals with relationships-- with the girl's parents, her parents' friends, the mother of the dead girl--so many little twists and turns that keep you flipping pages faster and faster, and reading carefully to get all the details.

It made me wonder "What would I do?" if this were an event in my life.

The mother of the high school student came from a dysfunctional family and there were many flashbacks into her life, as the reader tries to understand her and the dysfunctionality of her own family.

The girl who was driving the car goes through a great transition as she deals with the accident.

The girl who was killed was a member of a church, but the family of the girl who was driving the car saw no use for church in their lives.

I realize not every book is Christian, but I could not help but think that if the author had shown God's plan in the lives of these people, they could have overcome their problems much more easily. As it was, the girl who had the accident came to a realistic solution in her life. She was very depressed, but she found a satisfactory solution to relieve herself of guilt. However, God could have done it so much better.

There is some bad language in this book, but not an inordinate amount. If there had been, I probably would not have finished it.

This book is written as many of Jodi Piccoult's books are. It give a contemporary moral dilemma and tells how it is resolved. The characters are believeable and interesting.