A seat at a better table

When Elita Brown enters seventh grade, she finds her friends passing her by—chasing TikTok followers, boyfriends, and designer clothes. But Elita is still who she always was, a girl in a T-shirt and jeans who likes playing school with her stuffed animals and exploring the Pennsylvania woods. She’s not even allowed to have social media.

When her best friend Margo denies her a seat at the popular lunch table, Elita plummets into the pained questions and doubts of adolescence: What’s happening to her friends? Why doesn’t she fit in anymore? How can she reinvent herself? Elita decides she needs money for makeup and clothes—something not in mom and dad’s budget.

This leads her to do yardwork for the Burgleys, an elderly ­couple in her neighborhood. Mrs. Burgley affirms the good in Elita—her beauty, industriousness, and budding ability as a ­naturalist. Most importantly, she shows Elita that she can be “seated with Christ in the heavenly places.”

“For the rest of your life,” Mrs. Burgley urges, “no matter what classroom, no matter what happens at a friend’s house, no matter where you work or where you go, remember you are already seated with Christ. … So you never have to worry if you have a seat.”

This Seat’s Saved by Heather Holleman (Moody Publishers 2023) will draw in girls in the 8 to 12 range with its warmth and interiority. Young readers will feel Elita’s hurt and mom readers will remember their own comings of age—crushes, mean girls, meeting God. Holleman gives readers both a relatable tale to grasp and a spiritual blossoming to emulate.

Normally a writer of nonfiction Christian living books for adults (including Seated With Christ: Living Freely in a Culture of Comparison), Holleman treads into tenuous territory by constructing a “teaching novel.” Toward the end some of the book’s pacing feels a little off, but a young reader will forgive this. That Holleman finds the adolescent ache and applies the right salve—security in Christ—makes This Seat’s Saved a valuable book for girls facing a middle school world of TikTok and cliques.