One of my favorite authors is Lurlene McDaniel, I discovered her around my sophomore year in high school. In high school, I was part of that
cool group of kids who hung out in the library. Yea, ya’ know, that awesome group of people who spent almost all their extra time reading and hanging out with the phenomenal librarian.
Wait -- what? You didn’t have that group of kids at your school? Not ‘cool’? Please! That was the happening place.
Ha ha, okay, so my group might not have been the ‘coolest,’ ‘most popular,’ or ‘trend-setters.’ But we did have TONS of fun hanging out in the library. We were known as the ‘lunch bunch,’ and if you asked anyone in our class if they knew where we were their answer most likely would have been: “Have you checked the library?”
Now, in my group almost everyone read about 2-4 books a week. No lie. I wasn’t that heavy of a reader, I was known as ‘the writer,’ so when I started to feel left out of the book conversations I asked the librarian for a recommendation and she handed me a book by McDaniel. I don’t remember which book she handed me, but what I do remember, for the first time I found a book from a Christian perspective that I could relate to.
Most of McDaniel’s books relate to teens and young adults facing life-altering situations and how they overcome/work through their situations by either finding God or holding onto God/hope. For someone who felt trapped and drowning in depression, seeing the silver lining so obviously or quickly gave me hope.
I’m no longer in that dark place where I was when I first started reading her books, they’re no longer part of my life-line. But now years later, I still find hope and inspiration in McDaniel’s books. I love the way McDaniel can take different circumstances and turn them into a beautiful and inspiring story.
So, whenever I go to the book store and I’m looking for a good read I always head to the young adult section and look in the M’s. This last time I found
‘Heart to Heart,’ one of McDaniel’s newer books.
I have kind of been on a book spree lately. That happens time to time, where all of my free time goes to reading and nothing else. I have been neglecting my New Year’s Resolution of reading eight (8) books. I know that’s not a whole lot of books and that I still have a lot of time. But I feel like I’m really falling behind on the resolutions that I wanted to do this year, I can’t keep getting distracted and sidetracked by my goals. I need become more focused!
