Book #32: Gravity vs. The Girl (Whitney Book 12)

Title: Gravity vs. The Girl
Author: Riley Noehren

Over the last month, I've read a lot of books I would have passed by on a library or bookstore shelf without giving it a second glance. While I'm not disappointed to have read those books, I've finished most of the books thinking that they hadn't really penetrated or changed me in the way that I like to be transformed by the books I read. Without this Whitney experience, I doubt I ever would have read Gravity vs. The Girl, and I would have missed out.

While it's not a perfect book (Noehren tends to be a little heavy-handed with the metaphors and the love story is fairly predictable, for example), Gravity vs. The Girl is the first Whitney Book that showed quite a bit of imagination in the premise. It's the story of Samantha Green, who has spent the last year in bed after deciding that the big-time life of a corporate lawyer leaves her feeling impossibly empty. The ghost of her six-year-old self finally helps her rise from her bed, and they escape to her childhood home, where three other ghosts from Samantha's past (the lawyer, the student and the teenager) join forces to help Samantha get well. In doing so, Samantha has to confront the way she's lived over the last 30 years, and set things to right so the ghosts can go away.

At the beginning of the book, Samantha has been in a deep depression. And Noehren seems to imply that a change of scenery, a purpose, and a few ghosts can cure mental illness. I would have liked her to show Samantha taking anti-depressants or talking to a mental health professional, along with working with her ghosts. That's my major criticism of the book. But after reading about characters' shiny blond locks and dazzling smiles in the last 11 books, it was a relief to read about outfits made out of the castoffs of a lawyer's professional wear and old running t-shirts, about greasy hair, about characters who know what's right and still choose the wrong.

So far, all of the books I've read have fallen into one of a few categories: they have LDS characters and take place in our current society or they don't have LDS characters and take place in the past (Tribunal, with LDS characters and a historical setting is the main exception). Gravity vs. the Girl is unique in that it takes place in modern times, and the characters aren't LDS. Samantha lives with guys and hangs out in bars, she steals her best friend's boyfriend. She's a good person, but she often makes dumb choices. But Noehren's Mormon background comes through when she talks about things like funeral potatoes and modest dresses. I don't have a lot to say about this phenomenon, and I'm not passing judgment about it, I just think it's kind of curious.