Review of A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle

A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle is the fourth book in the Austin Family series. This is a hard summer for Vicky and her family. They are spending an extended vacation with her grandfather who is dying of leukemia, but as if that wasn't enough to deal with, one tragedy after another strikes the community. Vicky tries to keep herself busy helping out with a dolphin communications experiment, but all of the horrible things that are happening definitely take their toll on her. On top of the various tragedies, she's also got three different guys vying for her attention and she has to figure out who she really wants to be with. She spends a lot of time with her grandfather and in his illness he imparts a great deal of wisdom to her. Even that isn't enough to heal her soul though, and she can only find comfort and solace in the dolphins that she has come to know and care for.

This is a very sad book, but it's also probably my favorite in this series and I'd highly recommend it. I just love reading about the spiritual connection that the main character has with the dolphins and with the guy leading the experiment. This book can probably be read as a standalone, but would be a good idea to read the previous books in the series plus The Arm of the Starfish for background story.

Review of The Moon by Night by Madeleine L'Engle

The Moon by Night by Madeleine L'Engle is the second book in the Austin Family series and takes place a couple of years after Meet the Austins. The father of the family gets a new job and they have to move, but they decide to take a road trip/camping vacation all across the country first to bond as a family. I'd say that a lot of the book was fairly dull and just described the various places they visited, though some of the scenery descriptions were quite nice. Things did get more interesting when the main character met a guy at one of the campsites and they seemed to become instantly fascinated with each other and he actually followed/stalked her around the country much to her delight and her family's dismay. There was still a lot of dull filler type stuff after that with a few exciting events here and there, but I did enjoy reading about the budding relationship which had a lot of ups and downs. Overall I'd say that I enjoyed this book a bit more than Meet the Austins, but I probably wouldn't rate it as more than three stars. There was one brief reference to A Wrinkle in Time which really made me smile.

Review of Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle

Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle is an episodic type book about events in the lives of the Austin family. The book starts off with them being informed of the death of a close family friend and then shortly afterward they take in a little girl who was orphaned due to the same accident that killed their friend. The child turns out to be a difficult spoiled brat and it takes the family a long time to adjust to her living with them. Each chapter tells of different random events in the lives of this family until the future of the orphan can be decided. For the most part I found this book to be rather dull and I was glad that it was a fairly short read so it didn't take me too long to get through it.  I probably would have rated this book as two stars, but there were some parts of the book that were really quite funny and made me laugh, so I gave it an extra star for that. I doubt I'll be reading it again though. I still plan to read the other books in this series because there are some character's that overlap with the author's Time Quintet series which I love, and I recall reading other books in this series as a child and enjoying them much more than I did this book. I probably wouldn't recommend this book unless you are a big fan of the author or a completionist as far as series go.

I also have some additional thoughts on this book. I found a lot of similarities between the family in this book and the family in the author's other book, A Wrinkle in Time. Both families have four children and multiple pets and they both live in similar types of houses. They both live in small towns and both live in the same part of the country. The main character in both books is the eldest daughter and both of them are rather plain looking and insecure about their appearance. I also noticed at least three character names that were used in both books, though there were some variations in two of the names. I'm not saying that all of this is a bad thing necessarily, but it did give me the impression that the author had some creative difficulties. I can overlook most of the similarities, but I found the name thing a bit annoying and feel it shouldn't have been too difficult for the author to come up with more original character names.