To the Moon and Back by Karen Kingsbury

Cover Art Courtesy of Goodreads

I've mentioned on this blog before that hard hitting contemporaries really get to me. And man, does this book fall into that category. To the Moon and Back by Karen Kingsbury is about Brady and Jenna, who had parents killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. Having met only once at the memorial site for the attack, the two went their separate ways, but Brady has been desperate to find Jenna once again. Years later, enter Ashley Baxter Blake, who meets Brady at the memorial site and believes she can help him locate Jenna.

Turns out this is actually part of a series of sorts, all following members of the Baxter family. While it is not necessary to have read these others in order to understand this book, I did want to mention that.

It was easy to relate to the characters in this story, having been the same age during the Oklahoma City bombing. I don't see a lot of books with characters my age so I really enjoyed that aspect. The story is told from three different points of view, but never once got confusing. I appreciated the strong message of working through a tragedy and finding the silver lining and themes of survival. It was sweetly romantic and magical, tugging at your heartstrings all the way.

While this definitely crossed off the hard hitting check box for me, it was more religious than I would have liked. Nothing against Christian fiction by any means, but it's not really my cup of tea, and this book came off as preachy on more than one occasion. I didn't know it had religious intonations going into it, but if you are a fan of Christian fiction be sure to check this one out!

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Thanks so much to Howard Books/Simon and Schuster for sending me an early copy of this read! To the Moon and Back by Karen Kingsbury is out today, March 29th, so be sure to pick up a copy!