Rating: 
Summary: A GOOD read
Review: Leota's Garden was one of the best Christian novels I have read to date. Rivers does a good job of telling the story of a reunion between a grandaughter and grandmother without too much syrupy emotion. It's a near-realistic tale of family tensions and misunderstandings. The story is anything but sweet, but it is anything but vulgar, either. The main character's naivety is meaningful and believable, as is the grandmother's irritability. Rivers has the strength to not let the book become a morality play or an evangelistic utopia in which all the character's problems are solved through easy faith, even though you hope they will. Though it plainly portrays moral and emotional trials of life, it doesn't quite reach deep enough into the emotions or processes behind the behaviors of the characters. If Rivers had reached a little deeper into the soul and psyche of each character, the story would have been transformed from a good read into a truly great novel. But over all, a very good book. I really cared about the characters in the end, even if they weren't quite developed enough.
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