Being as I am a long-standing-volunteering-attending member of a Lutheran Church, this book took on a special interest for me. Do the people in the story relate at all to the people I encounter at church? I have to say, there were a few characters whom I could easily rename to someone who attends my church. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, I am just saying I now definitely have an image in my head of what Lorena, Ellie, and Vera look like. When I now read their name in the text, I am picturing a specific woman of the congregation.

 

I do have to be honest right from the get-go, this story has one thing that I absolutely cannot stand. Say it with me people. “Too many characters”. This is my pet peeve; having so many characters (and usually storylines to match) that you cannot keep them straight, let alone determine if they are relevant to the story or not. With that being said, I am about halfway through the story, and am starting to get the correct pattern worked out to whom belongs with who, whose children are being talked about when no reference to their parents are mentioned, etc. As the author stated in her forward that she has herself encountered some of these types of people at church, I am guessing that it was easy for her to write because she knew all along in her mind that Ellie was Mrs. Y, and Vera was Mrs. Z, etc. She did not need to fill in the blanks on who these characters were, because she could see them already in her mind’s eye.

 

So enough of that. It is a good story, and I will read more in the series (I am guessing there is a series as this book says it is #1). I am getting comfortable with the who’s-who, and am feeling a connection to these characters enough that I already want to know how their stories continue on past this book. I am trying to be better about the spoilers, so I will just say that their Pastor died unexpectedly, to be replaced by someone younger, someone looking to change some things. Vera is the widow of said previous pastor, and feels she is slowly getting pushed out of her “always involved in everything even though it is not my job” situations.

 

We also get a birds-eye view of bickering amongst the women at their weekly-monthly meetings, and this has be wondering exactly how much bickering is going on at my church meetings. Expecting to be finished with this sooner rather than I will let you know if there is anything off the wall that happens at the end that I never even saw coming, otherwise I am moving along to the next story.