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It's My Life is the second Diary of a Teenage Girl novel from Melody Carlson, with the protagonist Caitlin O'Connor moving from the conversion experience of the first book into the lived complications of being a 17-year-old Christian girl in a contemporary American high school. The diary form structures the book; Caitlin writes her way through her senior year, her relationships, and the gradually accumulating crisis of her parents' marriage.
Carlson's strength in It's My Life is the patience with which she handles Caitlin's interior life. The Christian-YA form often treats teenage faith as either uncomplicated or as crisis material, and Carlson refuses both reductions. Fans of Christian fiction by writers like Robin Jones Gunn or Sarah Mae will recognize the careful evangelical YA register operating at its more thoughtful level.
The closing chapters earn their faith-and-family weight.
Three stars. Recommended to Christian YA readers and to teen readers interested in faith-perspective fiction. The It's My Life Melody Carlson novel works best as part of the Diary of a Teenage Girl series read in order. New readers should start with the first book, Becoming Me.
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