Quaker Summer by Lisa Samson

Heather has it all-a heart surgeon for a husband, the perfect boy for a son, a spacious house, an extensive property complete with a swimming pool and tennis courts, popularity in the community-yet she still yearns for something. She yearns to be as thin and to look as beautiful as all her friends. She tries to fill the void by giving hefty pledges to charities, yet the next day she spends twice the amount at the department store. She and her husband are still church shopping-they still haven't settled down.

But then an encounter with two ancient Quaker sisters and an old nun begins to point her in the right direction. She spends the summer with these three women while working at a homeless shelter. Slowly, she begins to learn what she needs to do.

What Samson has done with this book is she has taken one of her typical crazy female leads and has given her a lot of money. This equals a dangerous yet comedic combination.

As usual, all her characters are up to par. They are all realistic and imperfect; they are just believable people. Samson seems to be able to capture that with her plots.

Heather spends most of the book musing and analyzing life during her wanderings. This becomes very intriguing because it makes the reader think. I've heard people say that this is depressing, but life isn't all cream puffs. You have to think about the tough stuff sometimes.

Samson finds creative ways to keep the book interesting. This seems like a hard task since the theme of the book is not very appealing to some people. Yet she found a way to make the issue comedic yet thought provoking.

The only thing keeping this book from being five stars is a highly unnecessary scene that makes one of the characters stereotypical, even though he was beginning to not look so clear cut. This scene could have been easily cut and not missed by the reader, because following the scene, the characters make no mention of it.

I regret that Samson put this scene in the book because I wanted it to be five stars. Yet Samson did not let other things turn out perfectly that could have been that way. That is why it is rated what it is.

All in all, Lisa Samson is one of the best authors on the market.

4.5 stars