Becoming Bayley
by Susan Auten
ebook
Published May 9, 2012
by Deseret Book Company
A SIN B008224CBQ
Book Source: Publisher
5 Stars
Book Summary From Goodreads: Bayley Albrecht’s dream is to play soccer on BYU’s South Field. When she is invited to soccer camp the summer before her senior year in high school, she just knows she’s one step closer to her dream. Things get even better when she meets Matt Macauley, the star of the men’s soccer team. When they decide to write each other while Matt is on his mission, Bayley figures her life can’t get any better. But it certainly can get worse…
After she receives a minor concussion from playing soccer, Bayley discovers she had a disease called alopecia which causes her to lose her hair. As Bayley struggles to deal with the reality of her baldness she finds herself having to make some tough decisions. Can she still play soccer? Does she even want to? More importantly, should she tell Matt? And will he still want her when she does? Becoming Bayley is the story of one girl’s journey through self-discovery, of the definition of true love, and of the realization that as a daughter of God, she is of infinite worth.
Cathy’s Review: Bayley is a 17 year-old-girl. She loves to play soccer and she’s kind of a tomboy, much to the dismay of her younger sister Fin. Fin is always trying to get Bayley to wear things like mascara and lip gloss and to do something different with her hair, but Bayley wants nothing to do with it, until she goes to soccer camp at BYU and sees the awesome BYU soccer player, Matt Macauley. When her roommates at the camp realize that she really likes Matt, they convince her that she’s going to need to look her very best to get him to look her way. They trim help her with her hair and makeup, and just when Bayley thinks that it was all for naught and he’s not going to see her anyway, he catches her on South Field. She’s not supposed to be there, but the gate was open and she thought that no one would ever know. Matt challenges her to a game of PIG and then insists on walking her home, but he doesn’t ask for her address so he can write her while he’s on his mission. Fate steps in and allows her to see his car on her way back to Wyoming, and she decides to be brave and leave her address there. Just when she thinks it must have blown away, she receives a letter from him, and is surprised to learn that he felt the same connection to her that she felt to him. Soon, however, Bayley’s life will change forever with the onset of alopecia, a disease that causes her to lose her hair. Bayley can’t see how anyone, especially Matt, will ever love her in spite of her baldness.
I LOVED this book! Bayley was such an amazingly strong girl. I loved her at the beginning and I loved her character even more as the book progressed. I was amazed at the way that her “friends” from her high school treated her after she lost her hair. I can’t even imagine being treated the way she was. I loved Matt, his character was amazing, he was the perfect boyfriend for this book. I can’t believe how real the characters seemed to me in this one. I finished this one yesterday, but I kind of still feel like I’m in Bayley’s world, thinking about soccer and alopecia. I loved the way that Bayley relates the women with the issue of blood from the New Testament to herself and her own situation, it made me think of this familiar story in a different way than I ever have before, I love it when that happens.
Content: clean
Author Bio: I’ve always loved telling stories. My favorite is the one where I sent the wrong letter to the right missionary. We were married the next summer. I attended LDS Business College where I earned an Associate’s in Computer Technology and Brigham Young University where I should have majored in English. I live in a small town nestled in the heart of the Appalachians. When I’m not busy writing, I can be found baking cookies, going to the movies, helping with the homework or catching fireflies with my handsome husband and four adorable children.
Shane
I love football, or soccer as they call it here, so this book and its cover grabbed my attention