Adelaide Piper

April 3, 2006
Debutante Adelaide Piper grows up in the small industrial community of Williamstown, S.C., with dreams of attending a faraway prestigious college and honing her poetry skills. She soon arrives at Nathaniel Buxton University, an elite liberal arts school in the mountains of Virginia, only to discover it to be more about fraternity parties and fashion than learning. When a hazing incident goes awry, one promising life is snuffed out and another ruined. Then, a casual date turns ugly, and Adelaide loses her moorings. Her parents aren't helpful: Dad is obsessed with an Amway-type pyramid scheme; her mother with her failing marriage and two difficult younger daughters. There's more fodder for tragedy—perhaps too much—as one of Adelaide's best friends grapples with an eating disorder and another grieves an abortion. As she discovers religious faith—in a conversion scene that is expected, but nicely done— Adelaide begins to recover the core of who she is. Hart's faith-based debut is intelligent and promising.

June 1, 2006
A talented poet, Adelaide Piper seeks to escape her humdrum, stifling, small South Carolina town and sets her sights on the prestigious Nathaniel Buxton University in Virginia. But her excitement is crushed after she is date-raped. Although Hart's ambitious and promising first novel is rich with descriptive prose, the plot is not developed fully enough to create a compelling coming-of-age story. Nor is the character of Adelaide sufficiently fleshed out for readers to share her pain fully or understand her actions. At times, the proselytizing is obvious, and Adelaide's conversion to Christian belief seems strangely out of place. Readers who crave high-quality small-town drama would be better off with such authors as Ann Tatlock or Linda Nichols. Hart lives in South Carolina.

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2006
Adelaide Piper, precocious and overconfident, leaves her little South Carolina town for a fancy liberal-arts school. She seems to be taking the place by storm when she is date-raped. Of course, this being Christian fiction, Adelaide is a virgin and a bit of a prude, too, but, anyhow, all her world comes crashing down. Her grades fall, and she fights depression. She tries on feminist politics but remains troubled. Maybe there is no cure, unless that boring little town she thought she escaped has some merit after all. Hart, with humor and a nice southern accent, has written a fine follow-up to her highly praised first novel, " Grace at Low Tide" (2005). (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)