Fun Reads Friday: The Christy Miller Series

I know this series isn’t new, but it’s the series that launched my writing career.

Robin Jones Gunn crafted an amazing world when she wrote about Christy Miller. It started years ago, with stories about Christy as a fifteen-year-old spending a summer on the beach in California and meeting a dreamy surfer boy named Todd. That sprung into a coming-of-age series, where readers get to follow Christy all through high school, learning from her mistakes and feeling understood as Christy navigates the same emotions and sticky situations that many girls in high school face.

And then Ms. Gunn did something brilliant; she wrote about Christy in college. The overarching love story that started on that beach grew into something real for Christy, and the readers got to watch that relationship that had been steadily growing begin to mature.

But that’s not the only brilliance of Robin Jones Gunn. Ms. Gunn actually has quite a few other series, and you’ll find elements of Christy Miller in all of them. And, if you’ve read the others, you’ll see elements of her other series in the Christy Miller stories.

I long to be a writer on the same level as Robin Jones Gunn. I’m clumsily adding in elements from all my stories into each other, in hopes that I’ll create an entire world the same way she did.

I highly recommend these books. The Christy Miller series spans over a decade of her life, and as she grows the themes of her stories mature, so you might want to check with your parents to see if they think you’re ready to read all of them. (Don’t worry…they’re all super clean!) And all these stories point to Truth, so you’ll be encouraged while you’re being entertained.

Have you ever read anything by Robin Jones Gunn? What is your favorite?