If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t . . . sign up on the right! Today I’m reviewing I Always Cry at Weddings, the debut novel from New York author Sara Goff.

I Always Cry at Weddings by Sara Goff

Ava Larson is a lapsed Christian who’s about to marry her long-term boyfriend in what his family hope will be the New York wedding of the year when she realises the relationship is over. That you can’t marry someone “for the guests and the gifts”. Or for his mother. But disestablishing an over-the-top wedding is expensive, and Ava is left with bills even her high-end fashion job can’t pay for.

Now alone, Ava has to decide what she wants out of life, which leads to her making new choices, some good and some bad. It’s an edgier plot—Ava hasn’t lived the perfect Christian life—but that’s what makes it real. She’s an excellent character because she doesn’t make all the best choices and she doesn’t know all the answers. It isn’t “typical” Christian fiction. There are no Amish, no almost-perfect characters, no people living in happy-happy land, and the only church is the home base of a soup kitchen ministering to Manhattan’s down-and-out, not more pot-luck dinner in a small-town family fellowship.

But it’s real. Excellent characters with plenty of growth, a strong plot from an author who brings the location and the people alive, and an understated Christian message. Excellent reading, recommended for fans of Sally Bradley, Beth Moran and other authors of atypical Christian fiction. I’ll be watching for Sara’s next novel.

You can find out more about Sara Goff at her website (www.saragoff.com), and you can read the beginning of I Always Cry at Weddings here: