A Broken Kind of Beautiful by Katie Ganshert is a novel that truly touches an individuals heart and helps them realize that God does indeed give beauty for ashes. Just the title alone can convey two separate meanings. A person can be beautiful on the outside but broken and hurting on the inside. It can also be interpretted as God taking our brokenness and making it beautiful. Both interpretations are demonstrated in this story.
We meet Ivy, a women that is as beautiful as any model out there. She has, what the world would consider, to be “it all”; a beautiful body, a modeling career that most girls only dream of having, an apartment in New York City, and dozens of men lining up hoping that she would even cast a single glance in their direction. She was good at doing the only thing that she had known how to do since she was 14 and thought she had the best life had to offer as well. Then one day her uncle and manager, Bruce, informs her that she’s too old for modeling. On the brink of 25, most magazines want younger girls and her time is almost up; however, much to Ivy’s chargin, he is able to snag her a job modeling wedding dresses in Southern Brides for her step-mother’s boutique. Ivy cringes at the idea as she was the illegitamite love child of her step-mother Marilyn’s husband and her own mother, and personally, even though her father is deceased, she would rather not deal with either but stay in her content world. Knowing that this could be the only thing to revive her career, Ivy agrees to model.
Getting to Greenbrier, Ivy finds the men of this little town are like most other men that she’s ever known and willing to submit to her at the bat of an eye. Every man, that is, except for Davis, and unfortunately Davis is the man she is strangely attracted to and the only one that she can not seduce. Ivy finds that she will have a very close working relationship with Davis as he is also what Ivy would classify as the amaetuer photographer for the wedding dress fashion show- however Davis has some secrets of his own.
As Ivy and Davis subtlely grow closer and Ivy develops a friendship with Davis’ blind sister Sara, the attraction grows and secrets come out of a life before. Davis and Sara also realize that Ivy virtually had no childhood between modeling and her depressed mother so they try their best to try to make up for one that she lost and Ivy finds herself realizing how lonely she has been and reaching out for the faith and friendship that Sara and Davis offer, as well as opening up to Marilyn a little more and realizing she means more to Marilyn than a child born out of an adulterous act.
Acting out of passion one night, Ivy tries to take things with Davis a little too far which only sets back their relationship as Davis has blocked out a life before her that would have succuumed to her whims. Out of hurt Ivy goes to drown her sorrows in booze on a night which turns out to be a life changing evening for her and through association, Davis.
This novel will have you flipping pages until the end in a tender story that is laced with messages of God’s grace and forgiveness and an invitation to broken hearts to come to Him and be made whole and let their beauty shine even with their past faults.
To check out a preview of this book or order a copy, you can click here
WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group provided this book to me for free in exchange for this honest review as part of their Blogging for Books program
jenifersinspiration 