Something magical happens when you’re eleven.

Something magical, and something ordinary.

What happens is that you pick up a book and you vanish inside it. The world becomes your world and the characters become your closest friends.

At least, that’s what happened to me.

But I’d forgotten that feeling. That wonder. That closeness with something that only exists as pen on paper, and pictures in my head.

Until now.

What’s that one book…?

What’s that one book you were obsessed with as a kid? The book you read over and over and over again because you just couldn’t get enough of it?

I had a few repeating favorites. A Question of Magic by E. D. Baker was waaaay up there for a loooong time. The Cobble Street Cousins series, too.

But high high high on my list of childhood favorites, was Eleven Birthdays by Wendy Mass.

I read that book OBSESSIVELY. It was about two best friends who share a birthday, and always have a party together every year. Then they have a falling out right before their eleventh birthday and get stuck in a Groundhog Day situation.

It was set in the real world, with a magical twist, and was full of characters I related deeply to.

Now, I’m sure it’s not that well-written of a book. I was eleven when I read it, and though I read it many many times back then, I haven’t read it since.

And I don’t know about you, but our childhood loves tend to get buried under all the grown-up-ness of life.

Something happened to me in high school, I guess. I stopped reading whimsical, fun books that involved the real world. I stopped reading altogether, mostly–for a while, anyway.

I got knee-deep in gritty fantasy and old horror classics. And that’s fine–there’s nothing wrong with those, and I’m certainly not saying that genres like fantasy can’t show truths about the real world.

But I so often live with my head in the clouds… I so often wish I was anywhere else but the Real World.

I’d forgotten how nice it is to experience the real world in a fictional story. To see the world through someone else’s eyes. To be grounded to something real, even if it involves a Groundhog Day or, for example, teleportation.

I am crotchety…

Especially when it comes to books. I’m a total mood reader, which means I’m either in the mood for something so specific that it can’t possibly be named, or I’m not in the mood to read at all. (There is, I’ll admit, a middle ground in there somewhere, but I’ll skip that today in honor of The Bit.)

And so whenever I do read something, I read very, very, very, very, very slowly.

But I promised my friend Vella I’d read her book. And it just came out, so I had to read it.

And let me be honest: I had every excuse to not read it.

I’m reading two other things right now, I told myself. It’s not my genre and I’d rather do anything else. I’m sure it’s great but…I’ve got work to do.

But let me be EVEN more honest: the other two books I’m reading? I haven’t touched them in weeks. Everything in my typical “genre” clearly wasn’t exciting me at the moment.

Vella’d given me a copy of Beyond the Mirage before the release. It sat on my shelf for weeks before I even cracked the spine.

But on one Sunday afternoon, I thought Might as well and took it with me on a car trip to a friend’s house (fitting, given the plot of the story).

I couldn’t put it down. It was like a big hug around my waist from my eleven-year-old self.

I read and read and read–I read half of the whole novel in one day. I never do that. I’ve been reading the same sequel (which I love, to a book that I also love) since SEPTEMBER.

But something about Beyond the Mirage struck a chord in me.

Reading for fun.

At the core of the wonders of being a little kid is this: You do things for fun.

I mean, actually for fun.

It’s the most ordinary of wonders. The most mundane of phenomena: doing something for the simple love of doing it.

There’s a purity in that. A simplicity. It’s not double-minded–it’s impossible for it to be so.

I think I’m more duplicitous than I think, when it comes to “doing things I like.”

I lie to myself. I always have a secret agenda, somehow. I want to be cool, or liked–or I want to prove to somebody, somewhere, that I’m bettering myself and spending time wisely. There’s a baggage with doing things I like, sometimes. An expectation that I’ll come out of it with a product. A proof.

But that’s not what eleven-year-old me did.

She never read books because someone told her to. To a fault, honestly–she refused to read Percy Jackson back then because her friend wouldn’t stop talking about it (but I digress).

But with Beyond the Mirage…somehow I was reminded that there doesn’t need to be strings attached. I don’t have to read in my genre all the time, just because that’s the expectation I’ve put on myself. I don’t need to go into things with the expectation that I’ll either hate it or love it with nothing in between.

I don’t need to be so safe all the time.

And that’s funny to say, right? Because this is a piece of clean Christian fiction I’m talking about–how much safer can you get?

But what I mean is this: My mood-reading habits were actually killing my joy of reading.

How counterproductive is that?

And I don’t wanna knock mood-reading as a “way of life” or whatever you’d call it. It’s not bad as a whole–who doesn’t want to just read things they feel like reading?

But I was putting my personal comfort way too high. I was being overly sensitive–nearly snobby–about reading things that wouldn’t be perfectly what I wanted in that moment. I liked my genre bubble. I liked my box. It was an excuse to say no without needing to explain why.

And the side effect of that?

Eleven-year-old me didn’t get to read anything she liked.

Eleven-year-old me didn’t get to read new books that were ten-times better than her favorites.

I wasn’t having fun. Reading was a chore, not a pleasure, and certainly not anything life-giving.

So shoutout to Vella Karman, for reminding me once again that my comfort zone is overrated.

Beyond the Mirage!

Beyond the Mirage is a BRAND-NEW release! It’s available worldwide from pretty much wherever you like to buy books.

It’s about a teenage girl, Lauren, who is trying desperately to get herself (and a carful of people) to her sister’s wedding in California.

I kid you not–I was SO excited when I first realized it was set in California. The wildfires are a big part of the plot, and I’ve lived through those plenty of times.

Oh but guess what? Lauren has the ability to teleport the entire car, with all her friends inside, to anywhere in the country.

It’s called “quodeshing.” It’s awesome–it’s written to be an extra gifting of the Holy Spirit.

Want the official blurb? Want to buy your own copy of this breath of fresh air?

Here you go:

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Have you read it already?

Let me know in the comments!

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