At the start of this uneven story of a mother-daughter relationship, diabetic Anne becomes a mother to Faith, a strong-willed but beautiful baby. Ball (The Breaking Point
) chronicles Faith's childhood, her subsequent tapioca-bland rebellion, her hot-and-cold commitment to Christianity and her coming to terms with Anne's death. The early pages are the strongest, dealing with the love and resentment uniting and dividing mother and daughter, but the story soon disintegrates as Ball slips into preachiness, weak teen slang and unnecessary switches in point of view. There are enough uses of "honey," "sweetie" and "punkin" throughout to sweeten lemon juice. Some of the teen-year segments are pure YA romance ("She liked the way he moved, like a tiger, restless but in control"). The last quarter of the novel includes multiple e-mails chronicling Faith's need for support from her prayer group as her mother is dying (faint echoes of The Yada Yada Prayer Group
). In her acknowledgments, Ball mentions her mother's death and the prayer group that supported her, and indeed, the novel feels autobiographical in many places. But real life does not always make for good fiction, and the novel's end lacks the momentum of the earlier pages. (Sept.)
