Peculiar Treasures

Katie Weldon is just finishing her junior year at Bible College. As she juggles finals, maid-of-honor duties at her best friend's wedding, work and an almost-romance with her boss, she finds herself contemplating other big questions, such as whether to take a resident advisor position her senior year, and what to do about her undeclared major. Gunn has been writing about Katie and her friends for years, most notably in the popular Christy Miller series, and this is first in Gunn's Katie Weldon series. f Katie's dilemmas may seem like the stuff of unabashedly light fiction, but they aren't without gravity and intrigue. Gunn is adept at denuding light fiction of its usual tics\x97mediocre prose, clichéd characters and predictable plots\x97and imbuing it with the hallmarks of literary fiction. The characters are multidimensional and ring true at nearly every turn. The dialogue that ensues is at once heartbreaking and utterly familiar to anyone who has ever been in Katie's shoes. Moreover, Katie's religious faith never feels sentimentalized or tacked on, but is integrated beautifully into the charming plot. (Apr.)