"Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars, points of light and reason. ...And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn’t see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason, for anything."

~ Edward Cullen

Friday, March 20, 2009

Review: The Lit Report

Title: The Lit Report
Author: Sarah n. Harvey
Pages: 197
Rating: 5/5

Julia and Ruth have been unlikely best friends since they first met in Sunday school-Ruth was standing on the Bible-crafts table belting out "Jesus Loves Me." Now that they're a year away from graduation, they're putting the finishing touches on their getaway plans. But their dream of a funky big-city loft and rich, interesting older men is threatened when preacher's daughter Ruth goes to a wild party without studious Julia, and all hell breaks loose. Ruth gets pregnant; Julia gets creative. Determined to support her friend and stay on track for life after high school, Julia comes up with a plan that will require all her intelligence, compassion, ingenuity and patience. Drawing on some great (and some not-so-great) works of literature, Julia proves that you can learn a lot just by opening up a book (Orca Publishing).

I’m a member of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program and this book came up a few months ago for review. At that time, I wasn’t able to get an ARC copy but put the book on my wishlist at Paperbackswap.com instead. The book arrived in the mail last week, and I started it shortly after finishing Marked last night. It was a super fast read but I absolutely adored the book.

Julia, a nerdy, book loving teenager, is the narrator of the story and she is so easy to connect to. She’s a lover of classic literature and each chapter of the book starts with a quote from some of the greats (To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Eyre, Little Woman, and Charlotte’s Web just to name a few). Julia is a junior in high school and she and her best friend Ruth have big plans for the future. But Ruth, after only having sex one time, finds herself pregnant. Ruth’s parents are not the accepting type when it comes to this type of thing, so Julia finds herself planning to hide Ruth’s pregnancy and to deliver the baby herself. As the months progress, we see the relationship between Julia and Ruth change. This baby changes both girls lives, bringing everything full circle.

It’s been a long time since I read a book and really had the characters touch me in such a poignant way. Harvey’s hand at writing is an extremely talented one and she takes the reader on quite an emotional journey in a very short amount of time. This book means something. It brings something to the reader. It is a wonderful, wonderful story. I will definitely be keeping Sarah Harvey on my future book buying radar


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