None of the books I chose were the traditional "beach reads" that I sometimes find pointless. One of the books I read was far from it: Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I still do not know what to think of this book. It's shocking, but it's also romantic. Tess is a young adult in the beginning, and she manages to get herself into a big problem. Her mother wants to marry her off, but she goes to the manor of the D'urbervilles, a rich family she could be related to. She gets a job there that pays well, and makes friends with her male "cousin". Her cousin takes advantage of her, and she returns home immediately. She's pregnant. She undergoes about 200 pages of being a milkmaid, and meets Angel Clare, a man who she falls in love with. The plot continues to get more and more twisted. I liked the plot, but Tess was not my favorite character. It did make me think, and in the end, I liked the book on the whole (despite the 300 pages I was unsure about).
One of the other books I remember the most was a haunting book called Willow, by Julia Hoban. It's definitely not for the fainthearted, and I admit to crying multiple times while reading it. I thoroughly recommend it, though. It's about a girl, named Willow, who accidentally killed her parents. She falls into a strange state where she doesn't want to feel emotion. Her only escape is cutting. She meets a teenage boy named Guy, who wants to be her friend no matter how many times she says no. They fall in love. Willow tells Guy about cutting, and Guy tries to get her to stop. It's an amazing book, but I won't reveal the end. I think I will remember that book for the next twenty years. The story is so believable, and so real.
Christy by Catherine Marshall is a book that I have decided I'll read every summer. It's (once again) about a young woman - Christy. She hears a sermon at church on a missionary school in the Appalachian mountains that need school teachers. It's during the Prohibition. She goes to teach in the rural town of Cutter Gap, where the locals don't want her there - at first. She teaches a huge class in a one room schoolhouse, and faces a series of troubles. She falls in love with the minister, David, but the county doctor also wants to be closer to Christy. Strange things keep happening at the school: finding drunk pigs under the schoolhouse, books and maps ripped, and then there's the McAllan murder. Somehow, someway, it all connects to the illegal distillery. David and Christy get more serious in their relationship. Everything seems to be going well - but then, typhoid breaks out. Christy is an amazing book. If you're going to read it, though, be warned that it is religious (Christian).
These are three of the most memorable books from my summer. I wish I could share all of them, but then there would be about 50 books on this list.
Happy reading.
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