This was an amazing book. It's considered Christian fiction, but stands on its own as general fiction. It's about a 17 year old girl that decides on a whim to go on a mission trip to Indonesia to help build a church. She's on a team with five other teenagers and two adult leaders.As they progress through their mission and the building of the church they have no idea that they are about to see the beginnings of a religious based civil war. They're forced to flee when their village is viciously attacked and have to find ways to survive in the dense rainforest, and figure out how to get off the island and home again.
The Christian theme is a good one. People are always asking "why does God let bad things happen to good people?" Terrible things happen to good people in this book, and that question comes up a lot. Also, while many Christian books are extremely anti-Muslim, this book brings the mission team into close contact and terms of understanding with those of other faiths.
The only thing I can say against this book is that the dialog is bad, at times downright embarrassing to read. It's very obvious that the writer is trying very hard to think like a teenager, but hasn't been one or even on the same planet as one for a very long time. I think it would have been better written as a team of adults, if only for the sake of better dialog. It was bad enough that I had to dock a star for this reason alone.
Otherwise this was a great read, very hard to put down, and I recommend it.
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Sounds good! I'll be adding it to my to-be-read list.
ReplyDeleteThis book sounds very familiar, as does the author. I also like the part that she isn't anti-Muslim, because I think that is very important as far as missions work goes. You can't win people over by dissing their faith!
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