God Spare The Girls – Kelsey McKinney

18-year-old Caroline is looking towards her last summer at home, culminating with her sister’s wedding, when the bombshell of her father’s affair drops.  With her faith in her father (and her Father) rattled, she and her sister move in to their grandmother’s old ranch, where they grow closer together and look towards their individual future plans.  When her father’s affair is swept under the rug, both at church and at home, Caroline tries to decide if she can forgive him or it she’s ready to blaze her own path.

I was familiar with Kelsey McKinney’s non-fiction writing as a blogger at Defector.com, so I decided to dive in to God Spare The Girls, her debut novel without much advance information as to its subject matter.  I’m not sure what I expected, but a coming-of-age story about the daughter of a megachurch pastor was certainly not it.  I did find myself rooting for the characters to get their happy endings, which I would say one did and one didn’t, and it was certainly well-written, but this really didn’t fall into my wheelhouse.  Maybe next time I’ll take a closer look at the subject matter before checking the book out of the library.