Advent for Authors: HOPE with The Edge of Over There
For December, I am reviving my book review blog posts with a four-part #AdventforAuthors book review series.
There are seasons for writing. Seasons for reading. And seasons for giving. I want to make December a season for giving back.
Advent, in Latin, means “Coming”. For some Christians, the four Sundays leading up to Christmas are used to celebrate the coming of Jesus into the world. Often, an evergreen wreath is used to symbolizes eternal life and four candles are lit leading up to Christmas to remind us of our struggle against darkness. The four candles have varying themes depending on your church background, but for the sake of my book reviews, I’ve selected four YA novels that inspire Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.
This week's novel is The Edge of Over There by Shawn Smucker.
This novel is a continuation of the fantastical story based around the lives of Sam Chambers and Abra Miller started in The Day the Angels Fell (Read my review here). I read this story in quick succession after the first novel and then listened to it a second time on audiobook this past fall. I actually preferred reading this one over the narrated version.
What’s it About:
This story focuses on Abra’s life after her first encounter with the Tree of Life. Four years later, her friendship with Sam has grown distant, and her memories of the events from that night seem less and less believable. Then she encounters a woman on the road who reopens her curiosity and sends her on a quest to find and destroy the new Tree of Life. This tree, though, requires her to travel through a gate in a New Orleans Cemetery. A gate that takes her to the edge of Over There.