Home - Ginny Yttrup

Melanie Vander has an approaching deadline for her sixteenth book, but she can't seem to find the same sort of escape in her characters this time.  Rather, her characters seem to be pulling her in a direction she doesn't want to go, forcing her to examine not only their lives and backstory, but her own.  Meanwhile, her husband, Craig, is trying to keep his business and family financials above water, while watching his wife run away yet again, and Melanie's friend and neighbor, Jill, is facing her own rising issues.  Where can these folks find safety?  What does it take to find one's way home?

I have read a lot of books where the main character is writing a story, and the "story" turns out to be the book the main character is a part of.  This book sort of did that, but with the twist of the main character (and author?) using her main character to work through emotions and grief that she'd been unable to process in real life in real time.  The other characters in the book, however, who surround Melanie in her real-life are suffering their own emotional crises, and as she works through her character's problems, she is able to begin coming out of her hole to help them.  As she says in a phone call to her friend, Jill, "New is good, I think.  Let's do new."  There was a good balance of Melanie understanding her own problems through Chloe, but then working them out in her real-life relationships.

I loved how this book worked its characters through their problems; even though the easy thing was to run away, to ignore the things that kept coming to the surface, each character was eventually able to confront the hard things in their lives.  Nothing was glossed over, sometimes the only solution to the problem was not a fun one, and I appreciated that.  Usually, there's a conveniently timed rich uncle, or promotion, or romance waiting in the wings, but these characters faced everything in their own way, eventually together, and together, they made real-life choices with real-feel consequences.  My only complaint might be that I want to see where they all go from here!

I give this book 3.5 stars.  It's never easy to be vulnerable in fiction, and a lot of readers probably want their fiction to turn out like a fairy tale, but there's not a lot of truth or growth in that.  Sometimes, we need to see that faith holds true even when the world around us does not.

You can find Home HERE.
You can find the author HERE.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.