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To be completely honest, I picked this book up without knowing what it was about because Emery Lord has become an auto-buy author, apparently, without me actually realising. I loved her debut, and the other books of hers that I’ve read have been pretty solid, so I had to give this one a go.
For those of you who are wondering, The Names They Gave Us is about a girl called Lucy who goes to a different summer camp than usual because her mum has cancer and it’s what her mum wants. Lucy and her parents are Christians, so Lucy was all set to go to Christian camp, but instead she goes off to a camp for kids who are struggling with all sorts of things.
I haven’t read too many books about characters who actively practise a religion or who question their faith. I avoid Christian fiction, and off the top of my head I can count less than ten YA books that feature religious characters. I think Lord did a good job of balancing the faith aspect of the book with the rest of the story. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was still both prominent and respectful.
I really liked Lucy. She struggled a lot, and it was quite nice to see her doing that. Which sounds super weird, I know, but I guess it was nice to see that she didn’t have everything too easy? Her relationship with her parents was lovely to read about, as was her relationship with the kids at the camp. I didn’t care for the romance, but that’s nothing new. It didn’t offend me, and the love interest was an okay guy so *shrugs*. It’ll do.
The only thing I didn’t like was the ending. So much so that I can’t rate this book higher than 3.5 stars. The ending was too open-ended for my liking. It introduced a few things without wrapping them up or providing any closure. It felt like the publisher just left out the last fifty pages. That was really disappointing.
I loved the book overall but I agree with you about the ending. Great review!
I love the cover, it’s beautiful.
I hadn’t heard of this book before and I was all set to give it a go, until I read about the ending. It really bugs me when books don’t have a proper conclusion, so I might give it a miss for now. Thanks for mentioning it 🙂
I know it was probably an intentional choice to leave the book as open-ended as it was but I agree with you, I needed more. It felt like it had stopped and was unfinished. That was the most frustrating part of the book because as a whole it was a wonderful rea.d I agree that Emery Lord became an auto-buy author without me noticing but she does write good books. I enjoyed reading about a religious character whose faith came into question. It was interesting without being too much and I liked that element to the story.