Like Dandelion Dust by Karen Kingsbury

In a quiet Florida town, life is idyllic for Jack and Molly Campbell and their 4-year-old son, Joey. But one day a phone call shatters their peace. A social worker reports that Joey's biological father, newly released from prison, wants his son back. Can Jack devise a plan to circumvent a judge's devastating decision?

 A Book Club Discussion:

Our newly formed book club met last night to discuss this book.  Our overall feelings were that it was an easy, uncomplicated read that was also one-dimensional character driven and plot predictable.

This was my first Karen Kingsbury reading experience and it took me a little time to get into the story.  I read the first few chapters and then left it sitting on the table for a week before I picked it up again.  It's a great premise, the custody battle between the perfect adoptive parents and not-so-perfect biological parents who have more or less tricked the system into returning their child after the father is released from prison after serving a five-year prison sentence for domestic violence. 

The one thing that stuck out in this novel more than anything else was the author's view of her faith and she used it all the way through to guide her readers.  However, we all agreed that it came off as pointedly preachy.  From our discussion last night and reading other reviews on this book, it turned a lot of people off.  As a Christian, I am all for a good Christian story but when the dust cover on a book says nothing about it being a Christian book and you've never heard of the author, it is quite a surprise when you dive in.  The story was not what any of us were expecting.

There were also a lot of punctuation errors and confusion with uses of the wrong character names throughout the book.  We wondered if the editor's had taken a vacation. 

They have made a movie based on this story which came in 2010.  After reading the novel, I don't feel a need to rush out and rent it.  For those of you that are Karen Kingsbury fans, I'm not trying to rain on your parade but I don't think that I'll be reading another of her stories, at least for a while.  I would however, like to hear your comments.  If you are an author fan or if you've read this book in particular, please let me know how you felt about it.