Moon Over Edisto

Book description:  "The past has come knocking on Julia's door. Can she summon the courage to answer betrayal with love?

Julia’s best friend, Marney, broke up her parents' marriage years ago. Now Marney shows up at her Manhattan apartment, asking the impossible—come home to Edisto Island to care for the half-sisters and half-brother she has never known. Marney, recently widowed, has lung cancer. There's no other family to care for the children while she’s in the hospital following surgery.

Julia loathes Marney. But if she doesn’t step in, her own mother—who has never gotten over the divorce—will be called upon to take care of the children. So she heads to South Carolina to keep the peace.

On Edisto, she begins to reconnect with the place and the people and she’s been running from her whole adult life. There’s the local doctor who once stole a kiss from her on that very beach, and the siblings she’s never known—especially the sister with selective mutism named Etta who’s the keeper of nearly every family secret . . . including the very one that just might bind-up Julia’s long-since shattered heart."

My review:  When I read the book description for Moon Over Edisto I was very intrigued.  It promised to be a very unusual plot, and that's exactly what it was.  This was a book that I couldn't put down, and I was drawn immediately into the lives of the characters.  I think I was drawn quickly into their lives because of the way the author wrote each chapter from the perspective of one of six different characters in the story.  That was an unusual aspect that I really enjoyed.  While the conclusion is expected, the path to getting there keeps the reader guessing.  I was disappointed, however; in the lack of spiritual growth in the lives of the characters, but especially in Julia.  I feel that the author, Beth Webb Hart, did not take the opportunity she had to really develop the spiritual lives of her characters.  I received a complimentary e-copy from Thomas Nelson Publishers through their Booksneeze Blogger Program in exchange for an honest review.  All opinions are my own.