Karen Kingsbury

This story entertained and pointed to the kind of life that matters … one built on God’s Word and full dependence on Him. It’s filled with love and illustrated by lives anchored in a deep desire to trust God through the hardest chapters of life.

There’s something special about a book that doesn’t rush the healing or force the joy but gently reminds you where to look for both. I loved how the family unit was honored and upheld in this story, not just in word but in every quiet act of show more care, sacrifice, and remembrance. The heart of this book beats with love across generations, through loss, and into unexpected second chances.

One of the most touching aspects was how Scripture was woven into the story with tenderness and reverence. Vanessa viewed the Bible not as a distant book, but as God’s personal love letter present and alive. Every time she opened it, it wasn’t just for reading; it was a meeting with the God who saw her, held her, and guided her through. That quiet, unwavering faith was one of my favorite parts.

That said, there were two moments that stopped me. One line: “Even if He could’ve prevented it” That phrase, in reference to God and the death of a loved one, implies uncertainty about His sovereignty. As believers, we may not understand His ways, but we know He is all-powerful. We do not serve a God who might have been able to intervene. We serve the Almighty who holds every breath and every moment in His hands. Anything less diminishes His character.

Later, a conversation about Walt Whitman felt like it validated his views. But Whitman denied core Christian doctrines, including the atonement, the deity of Christ, and the need for a Savior. I couldn’t help but feel another deep, quiet ache because even a short scene like that, especially in a Christian novel, can be misleading and when left unchallenged, eternally dangerous.

This book offered warmth, love, and glimpses of faith. And it reminded me why I love Christian fiction—not because it’s perfect, but because it can plant something eternal in a reader’s heart. I know it’s fiction—but fiction reaches us in quiet, lasting ways. And when a story carries Jesus’ name, truth matters all the more. Not to condemn, but to guide. Not to win arguments, but to point to the One who never fails. Grace and truth were always meant to walk together—and when they do, hearts are changed.

I received a digital version of this book from the publisher and NetGalley. I am not required to write a positive review nor paid to do so. This is my honest and unbiased review. My thoughts and opinions expressed in this book review are my own. My review focuses on writing and story’s content, ensuring transparency and reliability. show less

**SPOILER ALERT** I read this book a few years after it was published in the 90s, and of all the true crime I read as a teenager, this is the only one I can remember. At the time, I thought the writing was uneven, but the subject matter was very compelling--a friendship undermined by jealousy, unchecked mental illness, and the inherent Machiavellian qualities of angry teenaged girls. It is this last topic, the teenaged girl element, that makes this book particularly chilling. Girls at this show more age are volatile and hyper-focused on hierarchy, appearances, and behavior, and they are especially sensitive to any threat--perceived or imagined--that may undermine social status or self-esteem. They tend to run in packs--just like the characters in Mean Girls and Heathers--and they feed off each other's insecurities. If you haven't seen a girl squad in action, its much worse than in the movies because girls employ complete psychological arsenals against their targets, taking cues from each other to up the ante. It's frightening to watch and even more frightening to be a recipient. I once earned the ire of a girl group in high school, and the abuse, while never violent, was constant.

I remember thinking at the time that if a girl was willing to harass a person with the distinct purpose of causing mental breakdown, she was probably capable of even more sinister behavior. My fears that such a thing was possible were confirmed when I read Missy's Murder. In this book, Kingsbury not only examines a murder perpetuated by teenaged girls, but she explains the context--the time period (mid 80s) and the setting (a middling California neighborhood).

Into this mix, she introduces Michele Avila, the "Missy" of the title, and her best friend Karen Severson. Missy is pretty and popular. She has a close family and significant freedom, and she moves effortlessly through this confined world, enjoying the attention of her peers. She brings her best friend, Karen, along for the ride, but life isn't as easy for her as it is for Missy. Karen is adopted, an only child, and she is overweight, acting out sexually for attention. She has a child at fourteen, and she has to attend an alternative high school, an event that further contributes to her negative sense of self.

I completely understand that Karen is resentful of Missy, that she wants something of her very own devoid of her friend, but instead of simply ending the relationship as she should, she enjoys her friend's adoration too much. Missy genuinely cares for Karen, and Karen enjoys the privileges this connection affords. She has access to the Avila family, unconditional support, and she appreciates vicarious popularity. Behind the scenes though, Karen actively manipulates situations to damage Missy's reputation, even sparking an incident of violence. She is so obsessed with Missy's sexuality that she pursues one of Missy's former partners. When that boy displays his preference for Missy, Karen is threatened. She cannot abide this slight, interpreting the evidence as an intrusion.

Kingsbury successfully unpacks this troubled friendship on the page so well that Missy's murder seems inevitable. Karen, along with another Missy hater, Laura Doyle, lure Missy into a remote wooded area where they encourage each other to engage in cruelty, working in tandem to humiliate their victim. They accuse her of promiscuity, and they catalogue her alleged predatory behavior, holding her responsible for numerous wrongs. This is a very female way of enacting revenge--provoking embarrassment, particularly sexual embarrassment--and they cut Missy's long hair, a source of pride, to demean and demoralize her. Then they torture her, striking her before forcing her facedown into a puddle of water six-to-eight inches deep. In a blatant instance of overkill, the two girls then place a log across Missy's back, needlessly ensuring that she won't get up.

This murder is so very personal, so hateful, that even now, I wonder at the investigators' initial confusion over the details. Karen was so visible after the event, moving in with the Avilas, sleeping in Missy's bed, collecting newspaper articles of the murder, and even leading informal tours to the murder site that she seems the most obvious suspect, yet it wasn't until an eyewitness provided indisputable details of the event--the hair cutting--that Karen was really scrutinized.

That these details are still very clear to me decades after my initial read, speaks to the clarity of Kingsbury's writing. Her prose isn't art, but it is adequate in portraying this crime and the subsequent fallout. This book is also dark--as is most true crime--and I'm not sure how it holds up to more current offerings in the genre as my preferences tend in other directions. But it is a quick read--I read it during a road trip across Texas--and it doesn't demand a lot of effort. Readers not familiar with the existence of female violence may recoil at the ugliness here, but Kingsbury's portrait of Karen's malignant personality is still apt, especially considering that she wrote her own version of the events after she was paroled in 2011.

There was understandable backlash. Readers protested the book's publication across several platforms, and a law was passed because of it. show less

While I can happily suspend disbelief for fantastical story elements, like elves and magic spells and talking trees and, yes, even miracles from God, I have very little tolerance for illogical or grossly improbable plot points in a story that is supposedly set in a realistic world and peopled by functioning adults. This, unfortunately, is one of those books.

More than one character is expected to take over a successful family business from their supposedly business-savvy parent, but is show more actively discouraged from learning basic business skills at university. A character who resists learning how to run a business is magically able to run a charitable foundation, which seems to consist of just approving scholarship applications and manning the adoptions desk at a pet shelter. I can get behind a miracle from God causing someone with massive brain injuries to suddenly wake from a coma with no neuro deficits, but all my sensibilities cry out at the notion that his visitors were allowed to store 9 boxes full of books in his ICU room alongside his ventilator and other medical equipment. That same ICU room also held an entire choir of carolers who came in to sing him awake. I’m not sure where those carolers were all standing. I imagined them perched on top of his ventilator, clinging to his IV poles, balancing on boxes of books, and sitting on each other’s laps along both sides of his bed.

Then there’s the thought processes employed by the characters, especially the main protagonists. The entire plot of lovers wrongfully separated for years hinges on the guy just accepting that the woman he desperately loves is planning to marry another, just because her overbearing father calls him up out of the blue and says so, and despite her already having explicitly told him she won’t. He doesn’t even ask her about it, and she doesn’t ask him why he’s suddenly turned cold. This goes on for years, and continues when they meet up again. Finally, after 5 minutes conversation, the misunderstanding is all cleared up and they’re going to live happily ever after, because of course they’re suddenly capable of having a mature and adult relationship.

Ugh.

Audiobook version, borrowed from my public library via Overdrive. January LaVoy’s performance was the best thing about this book.

I read this for the 2017 Romance Bingo reading challenge. This book clearly fits the square for TSTL (too stupid to live). show less

I used to enjoy reading Karen Kingsbury's books, but right now, I kind of feel like she's written the Bloomington, IN group to death and is now flogging them. I don't enjoy them much anymore.

Andi Ellison doesn't seem to have learned anything from her previous experiences. She still seems to think she missed out on something growing up with such "strict parents" and she wants to experience life--never mind that trying to experience life almost got her raped in the past. She also wants the show more fame of being a movie star without putting in the work and the time. She seems to feel that she should get a shortcut because her father is in the process of becoming a movie producer--that he should give her roles--and when he wants her to wait, she figures she'll get the roles elsewhere. She uses this to rationalize a lot of her poor choices. She's flattered to be asked to star in a student film (and who wouldn't be) and she rationalizes her choice of partial nudity by saying things like "it wouldn't be any worse than being filmed wearing a bathing suit" or "it's true to the artistic process".

From the start, I wondered about this student film. I thought that Taz (the student film maker) had heard about Andi's fraternity incident and was going to use this film to exact a sort of revenge on her since she was able to escape being raped.

I understand Andi's disappointment that Cody Coleman didn't want more of a relationship with her, but instead of getting more involved with church or Cru or even theater where she might meet a nice guy with a similar belief system, she chooses Taz.

Bailey Flanigan doesn't seem to try to understand her roommate Andi's draw to this. She just pronounces "you're not going to do it". I think there are some off-writing attempts for Bailey to talk to Andi but it sounds like Andi thinks Bailey is a stick-in-the-mud and that Bailey talks everything to death. So rather than having a dialogue, it seems like the two just go their separate ways.

I was kind of surprised that Bailey's family took Tim along to New York with them when they visited and paid for him to go to so many Broadway shows. It seems like if Bailey really wanted to reach out to Andi she could have seen if her family would have included Andi in the trip.

Bailey's going out with Tim Reed, but she also keeps thinking about Cody. I do agree with Bailey's attempts to not bad-mouth Tim to Cody or to discuss the problems in their relationship with him (especially not before discussing them with Tim). It seems Bailey is starting to change her mind about what she wants out of life. Tim wants to go to New York City and seems enchanted by everything he sees in their visit there, but for Bailey, the city has lost some of it's allure.

Cody seems to avoid dealing with issues rather than confront them.

In the first book of this series, I thought that Tim might decide to date Andi though that never materialized. I still wonder if it might happen since both Tim and Andi seem to have goals of being in the entertainment industry moreso than Bailey seems to late in the book.

Meanwhile, Andi's dad Keith and his friend Chase Ryan are trying to edit their first film and get it into theaters rather than direct to DVD. This takes them away from their homes often. Keith and his wife's children seem to be older where Chase and Kelly's girls are young. I'm sure it is difficult for Kelly to raise the girls and keep the house mostly by herself, but Kelly seems to expect Chase to read her mind to know what she needs and wants rather than communicating to him how she's feeling and what she needs. Kelly's also turning to food rather than to God to cope with her problems. Keith and his wife seem to communicate better with each other.

However, both Keith and Chase seem to feel that their "mission from God movie producing career" comes first (well maybe second behind God)--even before their families. I was especially disappointed that Chase chose to stay in L.A. because he had meetings related to the movie even while his daughter was having surgery. Does he not trust Keith and/or Luke to take the meetings and make the deals? Certainly Keith and Luke would understand him saying "I have to leave for home due to a family emergency" even if the Hollywood-types didn't. I also didn't like the implied love triangle between Kendall-Chase-Kelly where Chase is drawn to Kendall because of her confidence and her support of their career. Though truthfully, I can't imagine Kendall making a play for Chase when she knows he's married--her character doesn't seem like it would allow that. show less