I’ve never spent the night in a Wal-Mart let alone had a child. I had never heard of Sequoyah, Oklahoma or had superstitions of the number seven. Yet I felt completely different after reading “Where the Heart Is”. Billie Letts took me on a reader’s journey that I never would have expected from looking at the cover of the book. Growing up isn’t the same for everyone and seventeen year old Novalee Nation found this out first hand. Yet she made the best of her situations and cherished each new thing she gained.

As I started to read the book, I pictured Novalee as a young, innocent girl still living at home with her parents. Letts portrayed her innocence very well, yet Novalee handled the pregnancy with an amazing maturity. By the end, I could see her transformation and knew that she had grown up and finally found herself.

This romantic comedy kept my attention throughout the whole thing and I read it in nearly a day. It was an easy read but was still so detailed that you could feel the characters' emotions running through you, from laughing at its humorous parts to crying at the serious ones. After finishing it, I felt like I grew right up with Novalee and was part of her life.

Billie Letts will lead you through this engaging novel with more than you expect. She got the idea for the book by shopping in Wal-Mart and thinking you could live there and have everything you need. I recommend it to anyone who is ready for an emotional journey that will make you believe in friendship and the power of love. Read this book to find out the lives of these amazing characters and more importantly, where the heart is.