Looking For Salvation At The Dairy Queen

Do you ever just pick up a book just because of the cover? I do, all the time. What about the title? Well, until recently titles weren't my thing, but I just couldn't resist this one...Looking For Salvation At The Dairy Queen. Isn't it a great title?

Let's just get something clear. I didn't buy the book, I'm not that reckless, okay maybe reckless is not the right word but I do watch what I spend on books. And I simply refuse to pay $25 (CAD) for a hardcover by author I do not know. I even have problems buying hardcover books by authors that I know and enjoy. Yes, I am cheap! I took it out of the library, instead.

Cahterine Grace is a girl growing up in a small town, and wanting to leave asap. Unlike the girls in her town she wants different things in her life, she just doesn't want to marry (right after high school) and tend her garden. She wants bigger things than what a small town can deliver, she wants excitement of the city lights. She wants a promising future.

Like any other good character she has issues, layers, if you will. In each layer, we see her try to fit in. Trying to be a good daughter, a sister, looking for a mother figure, and not really fitting in anywhere. She thinks that once she's out of her small town she can find her place in the world, where she truly belongs.

But it takes a tragedy and twist of events to make her realize that maybe, just maybe, she has it all wrong.

What a wonderful book! I loved every little morsel of it!

The author sucked me in right from the beginning. I couldn't (and wouldn't) put the book down until it was all done. I loved the setting, and the circumstances of the story. I identified myself with the heroine, wanting to belong and thinking that leaing is her only solution. I loved her relationship her father, sister and next door neighbour.

But what was really touching and emotional was her journey of discovery, her salvation. You see her grow from a little girl trying to fit to a woman comfortable with admitting that she was wrong, and trying to amends for it.

Looking For Salvation At The Dairy Quenn by Susan Gregg Gilmore (5/5) General Fiction; Published: Shaye Areheart Books (2008); New Author; 100 + Reading Challenge (4); Library book; Added to shopping list;