Review: The Art of Losing Yourself by Katie Ganshert

Genre: Women's Fiction
Publisher: Waterbrook Press
Released: April 21, 2015
322 pages

About the Book:

Just like in my dream, I was drowning and nobody even noticed.

Every morning, Carmen Hart pastes on her made-for-TV smile and broadcasts the weather. She’s the Florida panhandle’s favorite meteorologist, married to everyone’s favorite high school football coach. They’re the perfect-looking couple, live in a nice house, and attend church on Sundays. From the outside, she’s a woman who has it all together. But on the inside, Carmen Hart struggles with doubt. She wonders if she made a mistake when she married her husband. She wonders if God is as powerful as she once believed. Sometimes she wonders if He exists at all. After years of secret losses and empty arms, she’s not so sure anymore.

Until Carmen’s sister—seventeen year old runaway, Gracie Fisher—steps in and changes everything. Gracie is caught squatting at a boarded-up motel that belongs to Carmen’s aunt, and their mother is off on another one of her benders, which means Carmen has no other option but to take Gracie in. Is it possible for God to use a broken teenager and an abandoned motel to bring a woman’s faith and marriage back to life? Can two half-sisters make each other whole?

My Rating & Thoughts:    ⭐⭐⭐

Gracie and Carmen are estranged half sisters that reconnect through life circumstances when Gracie runs away from her mom's. Gracie has always seen Carmen's life as being perfect and felt abandoned by Carmen, but Carmen's life isn't as smooth as it appears from the outside. She is struggling, she wants a baby but has had 6 miscarriages. They are trying to adopt, but the waiting is hard and Carmen isn't handling it well. Real life struggles are depicted. At times story felt young, but that's probably because Gracie is 17 and her high school days are a big part of the story. I really liked the guy characters of Eli and Ben. Eli was a great witness to Gracie and Ben was a loving husband to Carmen and was patient and supporting to her, even when she tried to push him away. I was surprised that 17-year-old Gracie was my favorite sister, Carmen got on my nerves at times. The ending ruined this book for me, it felt abrupt and unfinished. 

Favourite Quote: 

“You souldn't let something that happened in the past stop you from having something that could be great in the present.”

(I purchased my copy of this book; opinions expressed 

in this review are my honest opinion and completely my own.)