Shape of Mercy

You know I review books on the old blog every once in awhile. I like to do this because…well, I like free books. And I like to read. And I like to give books away, too. So, about 5 weeks ago, Random House emailed me to review Shape of Mercy by Susan Meissner. And I said, “Oh sure! That will be perfect because I’ll have a new baby. It will give me something to post.” Uhm. So I guess I wasn’t thinking that I’d actually need to, you know, READ the book by the time I posted.

Because reading a book? Not even crossed my mind in the last four weeks.

And it stinks because I really wanted to write about this one. It’s about a modern day college student who is transcribing the journal of a girl in the 17th century who was a victim of a witch trial. (Witch trials are so interesting to me. Did you see The Crucible with Daniel Day Lewis? One of my favorite movies. The ending? SO. GOOD. Did the play justice.)

Anyway, Random House didn’t give me a book to give away. So, I was going to  give mine away. But now I don’t want to give it away because I haven’t read it. (Selfish much?)

And all this rambling is to just fulfill my promise to Random House. And maybe in a couple of weeks after I read the book I’ll give it away. So, just in case, leave me a comment about how you’d love to own a book that I read, dog-eared and dropped food on.

Oh, and here’s a better recap in case you want to Paperback Swap buy it:

Lauren Durough is a college student longing to break free of family expectations when she stumbles into a project for eighty year old Abigail Boyles—transcribing the journals of Mercy Hayworth, a seventeenth-century victim of the Massachusetts witch trials. Almost immediately, Lauren finds herself drawn to this girl who lived and died four centuries ago. The strength of her affinity with Mercy forces Lauren to take a startling new look at her own life, including her relationships with the mysterious Abigail, her college roommate, and a young man named Raul.  But on the way to discovering the candid truth, Lauren must earnestly ask if she is playing the role of helpless defendant or the misguided judge?  Can she break free from her own perceptions and recognize who she really is? In our high-pressure, success-oriented culture, readers will identify with Lauren’s struggle to forge her own identity separate from the plan her family designed for her. Offering intrigue, romance, and heartbreaking drama, this contemporary novel with a historical twist conveys the intense beauty that emerges when we see how our stories affect the lives of others.