"In Every Heartbeat" by Kim Vogel Sawyer

Alright .. brief synopsis: three friends, Libby, Pete and Bennett, all grow up together at an orphanage school in Missouri in the early 1900's. Pete's parents kicked him out when he was seven, Libby's parents died when she was young, and Bennett never knew his parents. They all get scholarships to the University of Southern Missouri and go away to college. This is where the story begins. Libby dreams of becoming a journalist at a time in history when apparently women writers were not accepted in the news world, Pete wants to become a preacher and feels it's his calling from God, and Bennett goes in to the engineering program, though I am not really sure if that would be his first choice. The story switches between the three characters so we as the reader get to see each viewpoint. This book takes us from September 1914 until about Christmas of the same year, and details the struggles the three young people have in learning who they are and where they fit in the world.

I really quite enjoyed this book. It was well written, I loved being able to look through each characters eyes, and it had a happy ending. =) Libby was feisty, Pete honorable, and Bennett the resident "bad boy" (every book needs one!). There was enough romance to keep me interested, but it wasn't over-done, and it was done modestly (except for Libby's writing, but it works for that and gets resolved at the end). This book is apparently the sequel to "My Heart Remembers" which I haven't read, but I didn't feel like I was missing any back story and wouldn't have known there was a story before the story if I hadn't read other reviews. I would recommend this to anyone looking for an uplifting story with good characters. I liked it enough to find more of Kim Vogel Sawyer's books for next week. =) Definite read.