Life is Beautiful: How a Lost Girl Became a True, Confident Child of God takes you on a full journey of trauma, loss, and finally resilience. While on a mission’s trip in Guatemala, a small Cessna Caravan’s engine blows while carrying fourteen passengers. Unfortunately, the Cessna crashes in a remote village, leaving eleven of the fourteen passengers dead. One passenger, Sarah, shares her story in “Life is Beautiful”, about the deaths of her father and brother; her mother’s extreme physical and emotional injuries, and Sarah’s self-discovery to accept this new life. –Goodreads

I thought this book was very well written. It sucked me in and I kept wanting more. I also kept forgetting that it was a true story (that’s a good thing for me. I love Fiction). When I would remember that I was reading the true story of Sarah’s life, my heart would break all over again. Sarah’s memoir is more than just the story of her crash. It covers her father’s drug addiction and how he overcomes it with little to no help, her aunt’s death due to uterine cancer, and her own struggle with alcohol and depression (I didn’t really spoil anything. All of this is revealed the back cover).

Sarah’s story is a story of redemption. She was already heading down a path to destruction and experiencing such a tragedy threw a wrench in her life that sent her down that path faster. Eventually, she starts going to therapy and with the help of her therapist/mentor she starts to slowly turn her life around. It’s not until she truly turns her life to God that she can heal and learn to live with the grief of her loss.

I cried. A lot. I learned a lot about how different people cope with loss differently. My heart broke for Sarah over and over again. Why should a 19 year old have to bare this weight all on her own? I got mad at Sarah as I read about how she kept going back to that destructive life. And I rejoiced with her when she took the small steps to turn her life around.

I highly recommend this book to anybody but especially to anybody who has lost loved ones. You’ll learn the importance of learning to live with the loss (but not forgetting it) and how Sarah does that. It’s a very inspiring story about how, even after the most tragic of losses, life is beautiful.

As you can see from the excerpt above, the full title of this book is Life is Beautiful: How a Lost Child Became a True, Confident Child of God. Honestly, I was expecting there to be a lot more content in the book about God and Christianity. Sarah did find God. And she attends church and has a relationship with Him. But there were a few things she said about God that I didn’t agree with religiously. And, for me, God is my whole life and that’s what I was expecting from this. I guess what I’m trying to say is I wanted to read more about how Sarah’s doing after the healing process. How she’s living her Christian life now. But that’s just my preference.

• Have you read Life is Beautiful? What did you think?
• Have you suffered a terrible tragedy? Are you struggling to move on with your life after loss? This book is for you!
• Be sure to enter the giveaway below for a free copy of the kindle version!
• Or go ahead and purchase your copy here (affiliate link).

Thanks for reading!