When I am overloaded mentally, sometimes I just want to find an easy, fun, book to read. Most of the time I go for middle-grade books because they’re usually well written with great descriptions and roll through your head like a movie as you read them.

So, on Saturday, I picked up this book, Take My Hand, by Robin Jones Gunn. I think I have every book that Robin has ever written. I love her writing style and she is great at capturing, and writing about real emotions that we experience in life. She frequently includes wisdom from scripture and side characters, that can actually be applied to our own lives.

In Take My Hand, the main character, Sierra Jensen, is moving from home for the first time to attend college at Rancho Corona University in California. She is also meeting up with a boy, Paul, whom she has corresponded with for several years. He has been attending college in Scotland, but has come back to the States to finish up. She met him on a mission trip to England several years ago, and they have had a mostly long-distance, slow-mail, correspondence going on ever since.

Now for the first time, they will be on the same side of the world, while Sierra will be on her own, making her own independent decisions about life. When you add the fact that Sierra has a personality where everything that pops in her head usually pops right back out of her mouth, you know the book will be good. Do you know anyone in real life like that?

Now, to complicate the storyline, Robin brings on every emotion that us girls can ever experience in our teen years. But it doesn’t stop there. I sometimes have the same type emotional angst over my life problems. I think most every girl, or woman, can feel Sierra’s pain, as she jumps to wrong conclusions about Paul and shares them with her older friends at college, Christy Miller, and Katie Weldon.

Christy is the calming influence. Katie is the in-your-face, get everything out in the open personality. Do you have friends like that? Which one would you listen to?

The story takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride as you shout at Sierra—don’t do that. But then she does. You think she can never fix things with Paul, until you find out—he jumped to the wrong conclusions too😉.

That puts them back on even ground of apologizing, forgiving, and seeing if they can move forward, or if the relationship over. The only problem with it all is that Sierra still has to see Paul, no matter how it ends. Her sister is marrying Paul’s brother, and they will soon all be one happy family. Maybe.

The book is recommended for ages 12 and Up along with Young Adults on the back cover. It was copyrighted in 1999, but is still relevant today because it covers the same emotions and angst we all feel when we’ve done something stupid and have to get ourselves out of the situation with the least trauma to ourselves and others.

I had a very relaxing weekend reading it again and enjoying a bad situation that I could observe as an outsider instead of being entrenched in the drama myself. I usually learn ways to get myself out of similar circumstances from reading Robin’s books.

If you want to have a fun escape, try— Take My Hand.