A vague review of ‘Christy Miller’ by Robin Jones Gunn.

My daughter has been hassling me to read the Christy Miller collection for a couple of months, but I had lots of good excuses: a research project to write, lots of books to read and review, Board papers to go through, bathrooms to clean, sudokus to complete… You get the picture, I really didn't want to read this.

My issues were many and complex: its Christian fiction for teens.

Having grown up in a non-Christian home, I have an inbuilt monitor for cheesy, moralistic fiction. I have deliberately avoided fiction written for Christians in this blog. It is not that I doubt the talent of Christian authors out there. I think though that when you write for a particular market, often the material becomes fairly formulaic.

The author of this series is very prolific. Robin Jones Gunn is multi-award winning, been writing for more than 25 years, has 70 books published and sold over four million books worldwide! She is responsible for the Katie Weldon, Sisterchicks and Glenbrooke series as well.

The Christy series began when Gunn was leading a youth group. She asked the young teenage girls in her group what they were reading and was pretty shocked at the content of the material. Her group challenged her to write something more suitable for them. They helped critique the first novel: Christy Miller, Summer Promise, in the two years it took to write.

As I began reading that book I was pleasantly surprised. There are some different perspectives and beliefs presented in ways that show respect. Christy feels quite real (if a little boy obsessed), and her friend Todd, though unbelievably nice and gorgeous, is natural in expressing his faith.

However, the thing that has really touched me is the impact on my daughter. She has devoured the first six books and enjoyed that they are easy to read and have simple but wise messages. It has also been nice for her to read about some kids prepared to be strong in their faith and stand against the tide of peer pressure, without looking like dorks!

It has made her think about how self-conscious girls can get when guys are influencing their life. On the other hand, she sees them as less interesting and more predictable than some of her non-Christian favourites such as John Marsden's The Tomorrow Series.

It's clear that the books do strike a chord with the target market: girls 13 years and up. Readers on blogsites have been challenged by their clear evangelistic message, and like that there are so many of them: twelve books in the first series, and then more in Christy and Todd: The College Years!

There are some usual Christian novel techniques, such as killing off a non-Christian main character due to drug use and risk-taking behaviour (good for everyone to face up to the reality of their mortality) and a popular but wild-living girl finding that she doesn't have friends who respect her (good for questioning moral decisions and source of true worth).

In spite of such literary shortcomings, these are worth checking out.