The next book up from my recommended Summer reading series is The Song of David by Amy Harmon.
I’ll be honest, I finished this book a month ago and have waited until I was in the right head space to write my review. You see, it’s the type of unconventional story that makes you think. It makes you ponder, and it takes a minute to actually put your feelings together (and oh, there are so many).
The Song of David follows The Law of Moses, and I highly recommend you read that first. This story is about David ‘Tag’ Taggert, whom we met as a supporting character in The Law of Moses.
I won my first fight when I was eleven years old, and I’ve been throwing punches ever since. Fighting is the purest, truest, most elemental thing there is. Some people describe heaven as a sea of unending white. Where choirs sing and loved ones await. But for me, heaven was something else. It sounded like the bell at the beginning of a round, it tasted like adrenaline, it burned like sweat in my eyes and fire in my belly. It looked like the blur of screaming crowds and an opponent who wanted my blood. For me, heaven was the octagon.
Until I met Millie, and heaven became something different. I became something different. I knew I loved her when I watched her stand perfectly still in the middle of a crowded room, people swarming, buzzing, slipping around her, her straight dancer’s posture unyielding, her chin high, her hands loose at her sides.
No one seemed to see her at all, except for the few who squeezed past her, tossing exasperated looks at her unsmiling face. When they realized she wasn’t normal, they hurried away. Why was it that no one saw her, yet she was the first thing I saw? If heaven was the octagon, then she was my angel at the center of it all, the girl with the power to take me down and lift me up again. The girl I wanted to fight for, the girl I wanted to claim. The girl who taught me that sometimes the biggest heroes go unsung and the most important battles are the ones we don’t think we can win.
This story opens from Moses’ point of view. Tag is missing and sadly, everyone expects the worst, especially knowing his mental health history from The Law of Moses. The novel takes the readers backwards, and we hear from Tag’s point of view his beautiful and heartbreaking love story between himself and Millie. The story does progress until we come full circle back to the beginning of the novel and Moses narration, and then even past that where we hear from Moses and Millie. It’s an out-of-the-box timeline, but not difficult to follow.
Without telling you exactly why (no spoilers) trust me that Millie is a very unique character, but a perfect match for Tag, who is quite unique in his own way. And honestly, any character who is set in a story with Moses himself has to stand strong. Once you read about 10% into the story, it picks up into a smooth and fast paced book, and it will keep you on the edge. Don’t even try to figure out what’s going to happen, just let it happen. Let yourself be drawn in, the emotional roller coaster is worth it.
And all I will say about the end epilogue is it’s unbelievable. It brings The Law of Moses and The Song of David full circle, and will leave you in tears.
Amy Harmon is an amazing, amazing author and one of my favorites in the NA genre. She’s the author that I impatiently await for the release her next novel. While I wouldn’t tell someone who only reads Christian fiction to read her novels (because she likes to include “heat” between her characters, and often they use language some readers won’t like), she does include a spiritual element in everything she writes, and they all have strong moral and even spiritual lessons to learn. You know you can count on her to spin the story into one you’ve never read before.
