I am a bookworm that will read and give a chance to every book that will fall on my hands. The truth is Christian-fiction is a hit and miss, and for me, 'The Beginning' felt like a miss. I understand the grief of the main characters of the short story is understandable. The idea of opening the bookstore with a fantastic name, 'The Bridge,' is very accurate.
The concept of a bookstore where minds are expanded, and souls healed appealed to me immensely. However... As much as I wanted The Beginning and The Bridge to be good, I could not help thinking her writing fell short of her usual excellence.
Even though the premise of the first novel of the series has many potentials, I don't connect so much with the premise and the theme of the book; even if it is about a bookstore, and I felt the religious elements overshadow the plot. ( )

This short piece was included at the back of the book "The Bridge". It tells the story of Donna and Charlie--briefly explaining how they met, their pregnancy and loss of the baby, and how it drove them to open the bookstore. It also tells the story of Edna and Tom--well, mostly of Edna because she's a widow by the time she meets Donna. Edna is one of the early customers of the bookstore and also the person who gifted Donna and Charlie the scrapbook that features in the book "The Bridge"--in fact, Edna's picture is the first one put in the book.

It's not the best writing. There's a lot of telling rather than showing and a lot of summary narration. ( )

I have read the Karen Kingsbury story, The Bridge, last year and loved it. So I was excited to get the short story, The Beginning, because it is a prequel to The Bridge. It was so good to remember Donna and Charlie Barton, the owners of the bookstore called The Bridge. It was good to go back and read how each of them came to find one another, fall in love and start their dream of a bookstore. This is a very short story, but full of warm memories and precious moments in their life. Charlie made Donna laugh, I liked that about him; and they both loved to read, so starting a bookstore seemed the right thing to do. They will suffer a great loss in their marriage, but they were hoping that through the bookstore they could be a part of changing and helping others and that then their pain would start to grow dim. God would begin to heal them and then use them. As Charlie prayed that "the Lord might bring people who needed something to get them from the pain of yesterday to the possibility of tomorrow. People who needed God and the two of them." You will also meet Edna from the book The Bridge and see how the scrapbook got started that will tell and show people down through the years how much of a difference The Barton's made in the lifes of so many. This was so good, it makes me want to get out "The Bridge" and read it all over again! ( )

The Bridge was my first Karen Kingsbury book, and I loved it so much, I was so happy to find out that there was a prequel story, because I didn't get enough from the Bridge, I didn't want it to end. I really hope and pray she makes this a series, I could read about these characters forever, I loved them all, and what book lover dosent love a book about books!!

As far as this being a prequel story, You can definitely read this after reading The Bridge as well. It does dig a little deeper into the characters that are in The Bridge but there's nothing you'd need to know from this book that would ruin The Bridge for you without having read it beforehand.

I know Karen Kingsbury is a huge name in Literature, and I'm extremely late to the party, but if her other books are as compelling as this short story, and book combined, then I definitely will be reading a lot more from her. ( )