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shelfreflectionofficial's reviews
816 reviews
The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
“‘For Camden. Time Brings All Things To Pass.’ And as I drive away from the new life that I’d built for myself, heading back towards my past, I wonder if those words were supposed to be an encouragement or a warning. Or a threat.”
“You should have stayed away, Camden. I think you’ll be sorry that you didn’t.”
This is my second Rachel Hawkins book— last year I read The Villa. I think I’m going to be done with this author. Both books had 100 f-words so I’m assuming that’s the norm for her and it’s gonna be a dealbreaker for me. Not to mention I don’t really find her characters very likeable either.
Her writing has the twisty dysfunctional families vibe and there’s just not enough interesting or quality suspense/mystery to make the rest worth it.
I’m disappointed because I had this book on my list of Most Anticipated Books of this year, but so was The Villa the year before so I think I need to finally learn my lesson.
Basic Premise
The heiress is Ruby McTavish Kellmore, kidnapped for 8 months at age three but then found and grew up to inherit the family fortune instead of her sister (Nelle); receiver of the nickname Ruby Kill-more due to the deaths of her four husbands; suspected to not actually be Ruby; and dead for ten years now yet still pulling the strings with her money.
Camden is the son she adopted later in her life and the subsequent heir and current holder of the family fortune. He tried to escape that life and family but has been called back home to deal with some pressing matters.
Nelle and her descendants want the money they believe is rightfully theirs. When Cam and his wife get back to the family estate so begins a game of legal discoveries, threats, and such that leads to at least one other death.
People aren’t who they say they are and the money may destroy them all before anyone can even spend it.
The formatting of the book is a mixture of first person POV chapters of Camden and his wife, Jules, with a variety of newspaper and magazine articles, and a series of letters written at the hand of Ruby before she died telling us what really happened to all of her husbands.
I’m not always a fan of the letter trope because the writer always narrates in an unnatural manner and gives details they would never normally give. They are needed for us readers to understand more of the story, but that’s not my preferred method of obtaining information.
I was intrigued by the plot and the mystery of the heiress and her husbands, but I didn’t really like any of the characters. I feel neutral about Cam but that’s because he’s the ‘hero’ character who is kinda flat and uninteresting. And really the swearing kinda ruined my ability to be invested in the story. At least it had a mostly satisfying ending.
Recommendation
If you don’t care about swearing and you like soap opera-type mysteries, you may like this, but overall I feel like there are better books than this to read.
I would probably instead recommend the book The Rosewood Hunt. It’s also about a rich matriarch who basically owns a town and everyone wants a piece of the pie. The difference is that when she dies, though there are heirs, the money is missing and there is a hunt to figure out what she did with it.
It’s a YA book (though I would still say more for adult audience), but I found that book a lot more likeable than this one. It still has swearing, but probably about half of what is in The Heiress.
[Content Advisory: 94 f-words, 65 s-words; sexual references but nothing too graphic; trigger warning for (a little bit of) domestic abuse]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
“You should have stayed away, Camden. I think you’ll be sorry that you didn’t.”
This is my second Rachel Hawkins book— last year I read The Villa. I think I’m going to be done with this author. Both books had 100 f-words so I’m assuming that’s the norm for her and it’s gonna be a dealbreaker for me. Not to mention I don’t really find her characters very likeable either.
Her writing has the twisty dysfunctional families vibe and there’s just not enough interesting or quality suspense/mystery to make the rest worth it.
I’m disappointed because I had this book on my list of Most Anticipated Books of this year, but so was The Villa the year before so I think I need to finally learn my lesson.
Basic Premise
The heiress is Ruby McTavish Kellmore, kidnapped for 8 months at age three but then found and grew up to inherit the family fortune instead of her sister (Nelle); receiver of the nickname Ruby Kill-more due to the deaths of her four husbands; suspected to not actually be Ruby; and dead for ten years now yet still pulling the strings with her money.
Camden is the son she adopted later in her life and the subsequent heir and current holder of the family fortune. He tried to escape that life and family but has been called back home to deal with some pressing matters.
Nelle and her descendants want the money they believe is rightfully theirs. When Cam and his wife get back to the family estate so begins a game of legal discoveries, threats, and such that leads to at least one other death.
People aren’t who they say they are and the money may destroy them all before anyone can even spend it.
The formatting of the book is a mixture of first person POV chapters of Camden and his wife, Jules, with a variety of newspaper and magazine articles, and a series of letters written at the hand of Ruby before she died telling us what really happened to all of her husbands.
I’m not always a fan of the letter trope because the writer always narrates in an unnatural manner and gives details they would never normally give. They are needed for us readers to understand more of the story, but that’s not my preferred method of obtaining information.
I was intrigued by the plot and the mystery of the heiress and her husbands, but I didn’t really like any of the characters. I feel neutral about Cam but that’s because he’s the ‘hero’ character who is kinda flat and uninteresting. And really the swearing kinda ruined my ability to be invested in the story. At least it had a mostly satisfying ending.
Recommendation
If you don’t care about swearing and you like soap opera-type mysteries, you may like this, but overall I feel like there are better books than this to read.
I would probably instead recommend the book The Rosewood Hunt. It’s also about a rich matriarch who basically owns a town and everyone wants a piece of the pie. The difference is that when she dies, though there are heirs, the money is missing and there is a hunt to figure out what she did with it.
It’s a YA book (though I would still say more for adult audience), but I found that book a lot more likeable than this one. It still has swearing, but probably about half of what is in The Heiress.
[Content Advisory: 94 f-words, 65 s-words; sexual references but nothing too graphic; trigger warning for (a little bit of) domestic abuse]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing
Minor: Domestic abuse
Simply Lies by David Baldacci
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
4.0
“Life was a shell game. The winners could just hide the truth better than everybody else.”
This was a bit of a slow start for me. Probably because I started the book at the tail end of holiday activities so I was only able to read a little bit here and there. But once I got into it, it was more engaging.
I’m a fan of Baldacci’s books and apparently I haven’t read one in awhile. I don’t remember what kind of swearing his other books had— because I read him before I was really writing regular reviews—but this one had more swearing than I would like.
Simply Lies is the story of an ex-cop, cyber-sleuth, single-mom (Mick) being roped into a ‘treasure hunt’ by an unidentified caller (aka Arlene) who wants her to find the pile of money that was stolen from the mob years ago and whose owner has just been found murdered in one of his homes.
Mick has to maneuver the cryptic and manipulative Arlene, the cagey, hard-to-figure-out cop on the case, and the other mob-related players that want back what was taken. But which players are really out to harm her and which ones can she trust? Not everyone is who they say they are.
While this wasn’t the best Baldacci book I’ve ever read, I did enjoy it. It got a bit technical when talking crypto-currency and other cyber-sleuthing Mickey did, but I found it fairly easy to follow and it added in some extra layers to the complexity of the case.
I think I’d be interested in continuing the series to see what else Mickey gets up to.
Some reviewers have commented on Mick’s ‘stupidity’ in working on this case when she has two kids at home. That she’s selfishly looking for the thrill from her days as a cop instead of protecting her family from danger.
However, I would argue that I read it in the sense that working this case was really the only way to protect her family. She tried to get out of it, but the corrupt and powerful players in the hunt needed her expertise and would have continued to threaten her family until she helped them. And then she knew too much to just fade into the background. Plus her job was riding on proving her innocence and then her value to keep her job which provided for her family.
To me, both options were dangerous. That’s what made the stakes so high.
Other reviewers also seemed to get tired of the single-mom stuff in the book, but as a mom I found those parts relatable. Of course in real life you don’t typically find single-moms in dangerous and investigative roles for obvious reasons, but it was a unique type of character for a thriller and I liked it. While I can agree that the references to vomit were perhaps overdone, for the most part I felt like there was a good balance of showing her nurturing mother side and her joy in being a mom while also keeping the primary focus on the case and the dogged work she was doing to get herself out of the mess.
I was more bothered by a few other things. The writing on the wall that was found at the scene of the first murder said ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ Firstly, this didn’t really fit for me for a phrase a corrupt man would use as a mantra. And for what I believe it means, I don’t know if it really fit with the whole treasure hunt thing either. It just seemed out of place.
Secondly, Mick figured out the phrase was written by two different people because of handwriting analysis. Which is a significant plot point and clue for her, but why would two murderers make sure they both wrote half of the phrase on the wall? The only way that makes sense to me is if they were intentionally wanting to leave a clue, but they weren’t the ones who had placed riddles or puzzles for the money— the murdered man did.
Which leads me to another thing that bothered me- the murdered man really turned out to be quite a terrible and corrupt person. The whole, using substitution ciphers or planting clues and puzzles around just doesn’t jive with that type of character. It seems like if he can’t have his money, he wouldn’t want anyone else to either. Sure, he may have thought he was taunting people from the grave but then it would be an unsolvable cryptic message letting the people they had been ripped off and would never find it.
I know the Saw movies and the book A Killer’s Game show criminals who use puzzles to terrorize, but to me that’s a different kind of criminal than what the murdered man in this book was made out to be. It seems like two different personalities.
Lastly, I was bothered by the word ‘blouse’ at the end of the book. Because only grandmas say blouse instead of shirt. And even if someone did use the term blouse, they wouldn’t employ it when they are recounting the memory of when they were almost raped.
All that to say, other than the swearing, I think this is a pretty good thriller with a likable main character, a complex plot, and a satisfying ending.
It reminded me that I should go back and read more of Baldacci’s other series that I only read a couple books from. He’s written so many books that some may throw him into the James Patterson camp, but from what I’ve read so far, I think he’s elevated above Patterson and I’ll probably keep reading his books.
[Content Advisory: 10 f-words, 96 s-words; some sexual innuendo but in a detached sex-for-money kind of thing; trigger warning for child sexual abuse described while telling a memory and not in detail as the acts were happening, but still hard to read]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This was a bit of a slow start for me. Probably because I started the book at the tail end of holiday activities so I was only able to read a little bit here and there. But once I got into it, it was more engaging.
I’m a fan of Baldacci’s books and apparently I haven’t read one in awhile. I don’t remember what kind of swearing his other books had— because I read him before I was really writing regular reviews—but this one had more swearing than I would like.
Simply Lies is the story of an ex-cop, cyber-sleuth, single-mom (Mick) being roped into a ‘treasure hunt’ by an unidentified caller (aka Arlene) who wants her to find the pile of money that was stolen from the mob years ago and whose owner has just been found murdered in one of his homes.
Mick has to maneuver the cryptic and manipulative Arlene, the cagey, hard-to-figure-out cop on the case, and the other mob-related players that want back what was taken. But which players are really out to harm her and which ones can she trust? Not everyone is who they say they are.
While this wasn’t the best Baldacci book I’ve ever read, I did enjoy it. It got a bit technical when talking crypto-currency and other cyber-sleuthing Mickey did, but I found it fairly easy to follow and it added in some extra layers to the complexity of the case.
I think I’d be interested in continuing the series to see what else Mickey gets up to.
Some reviewers have commented on Mick’s ‘stupidity’ in working on this case when she has two kids at home. That she’s selfishly looking for the thrill from her days as a cop instead of protecting her family from danger.
However, I would argue that I read it in the sense that working this case was really the only way to protect her family. She tried to get out of it, but the corrupt and powerful players in the hunt needed her expertise and would have continued to threaten her family until she helped them. And then she knew too much to just fade into the background. Plus her job was riding on proving her innocence and then her value to keep her job which provided for her family.
To me, both options were dangerous. That’s what made the stakes so high.
Other reviewers also seemed to get tired of the single-mom stuff in the book, but as a mom I found those parts relatable. Of course in real life you don’t typically find single-moms in dangerous and investigative roles for obvious reasons, but it was a unique type of character for a thriller and I liked it. While I can agree that the references to vomit were perhaps overdone, for the most part I felt like there was a good balance of showing her nurturing mother side and her joy in being a mom while also keeping the primary focus on the case and the dogged work she was doing to get herself out of the mess.
I was more bothered by a few other things. The writing on the wall that was found at the scene of the first murder said ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ Firstly, this didn’t really fit for me for a phrase a corrupt man would use as a mantra. And for what I believe it means, I don’t know if it really fit with the whole treasure hunt thing either. It just seemed out of place.
Secondly, Mick figured out the phrase was written by two different people because of handwriting analysis. Which is a significant plot point and clue for her, but why would two murderers make sure they both wrote half of the phrase on the wall? The only way that makes sense to me is if they were intentionally wanting to leave a clue, but they weren’t the ones who had placed riddles or puzzles for the money— the murdered man did.
Which leads me to another thing that bothered me- the murdered man really turned out to be quite a terrible and corrupt person. The whole, using substitution ciphers or planting clues and puzzles around just doesn’t jive with that type of character. It seems like if he can’t have his money, he wouldn’t want anyone else to either. Sure, he may have thought he was taunting people from the grave but then it would be an unsolvable cryptic message letting the people they had been ripped off and would never find it.
I know the Saw movies and the book A Killer’s Game show criminals who use puzzles to terrorize, but to me that’s a different kind of criminal than what the murdered man in this book was made out to be. It seems like two different personalities.
Lastly, I was bothered by the word ‘blouse’ at the end of the book. Because only grandmas say blouse instead of shirt. And even if someone did use the term blouse, they wouldn’t employ it when they are recounting the memory of when they were almost raped.
All that to say, other than the swearing, I think this is a pretty good thriller with a likable main character, a complex plot, and a satisfying ending.
It reminded me that I should go back and read more of Baldacci’s other series that I only read a couple books from. He’s written so many books that some may throw him into the James Patterson camp, but from what I’ve read so far, I think he’s elevated above Patterson and I’ll probably keep reading his books.
[Content Advisory: 10 f-words, 96 s-words; some sexual innuendo but in a detached sex-for-money kind of thing; trigger warning for child sexual abuse described while telling a memory and not in detail as the acts were happening, but still hard to read]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Gifts of Grace: 25 Advent Devotions by Jared C. Wilson
challenging
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
5.0
“Christmas is not about warm fuzzies; it is about the one who finally delivers on the promise of everything we acknowledge as good and true.”
Jared Wilson is one of the most encouraging authors. He is honest and transparent in his struggles yet always points us back to the gospel message that God is great in our weakness and our dependence and need for him is what qualifies us to come.
I loved his book The Imperfect Disciple and this devotional book is written with the same conversational, relatable, and hopeful tone.
As you can see from the cover, each of this book’s 25 reflections is an opening of a gift just like an advent calendar.
“Every day, we will open up a little door to rediscover one of the myriad gifts Christians receive through the coming of Christ and belief in his gospel… one amazing grace after another.”
These gifts range from faith, love, and hope to justification, expiation, sanctification, vindication, and more. I thought this was a really great and effective way to structure his book. It kept every day easy to understand but also deep in theology.
I also loved that each reflection was titled with a line from a Christmas carol. Christmas carols are some of the most theologically rich hymns. Because we are familiar with them and associate them with Christmas they can become rote and we don’t really take in the words we are singing.
This book not only reveals the gifts of grace we have in Christ, but also reminds us that the songs we sing at Christmas contain deep truths. It would be a great way to do additional study while reading it— to go through the corresponding hymn verse by verse and see the meanings we miss.
Yes, this book would be a great option to read through the month of December, but I also think it’s a good book to read AFTER Christmas. If it’s just going to be another ‘Christmas thing’ to mark off in anticipation of Christmas, I would say wait on it. Hold off on reading it until January or February.
Because, really, we’re still in advent— in anticipation— of Christ’s coming. He has come and he will come again. This book is not just relevant in December. It’s relevant every day as we await the return of our King.
And perhaps the truths of this book will hit differently when you’re not in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. It may help get your heart re-centered for the new year where you can look for the gifts of grace that we open every day we wake up.
A Few Quotes
“When the world hopes, there is the prospect of unfulfillment. The world “hopes” something will happen, but they know it might not. That’s not how God’s people hope. Our hope comes with assurance (Heb 11:1), our hope abides (1 Cor 13:13), and our hope will “not put us to shame” or disappoint us (ROM 5:5)… Our hope is in God! In fact, our hope is God!”
“We must be honest about the severity of our condemnation apart from God’s grace, because the good news will only be as good as the bad news is bad.”
“Our justification takes something slightly more out of reach than human ingenuity. It takes faith. And this is one reason why I know Christianity is true—we wouldn’t have made this up! Salvation by faith makes too little of us and so much of God.”
“The Christmas story holds the promise of glorification out to us because it tells us that God took on our image, that we might someday take on his. We will reflect him beautifully and eternally on a new earth restored according to his glory.”
“The Christmas Eve gospel is that while all the stuff and the experiences and the feelings might go away moment by moment, the incarnate Christ is real, he is alive, and he is doing work inside of our hearts that will make us thrive when we’re weary, hope when we’re grieving, and even rejoice when we’re suffering.”
Jared Wilson is one of the most encouraging authors. He is honest and transparent in his struggles yet always points us back to the gospel message that God is great in our weakness and our dependence and need for him is what qualifies us to come.
I loved his book The Imperfect Disciple and this devotional book is written with the same conversational, relatable, and hopeful tone.
As you can see from the cover, each of this book’s 25 reflections is an opening of a gift just like an advent calendar.
“Every day, we will open up a little door to rediscover one of the myriad gifts Christians receive through the coming of Christ and belief in his gospel… one amazing grace after another.”
These gifts range from faith, love, and hope to justification, expiation, sanctification, vindication, and more. I thought this was a really great and effective way to structure his book. It kept every day easy to understand but also deep in theology.
I also loved that each reflection was titled with a line from a Christmas carol. Christmas carols are some of the most theologically rich hymns. Because we are familiar with them and associate them with Christmas they can become rote and we don’t really take in the words we are singing.
This book not only reveals the gifts of grace we have in Christ, but also reminds us that the songs we sing at Christmas contain deep truths. It would be a great way to do additional study while reading it— to go through the corresponding hymn verse by verse and see the meanings we miss.
Yes, this book would be a great option to read through the month of December, but I also think it’s a good book to read AFTER Christmas. If it’s just going to be another ‘Christmas thing’ to mark off in anticipation of Christmas, I would say wait on it. Hold off on reading it until January or February.
Because, really, we’re still in advent— in anticipation— of Christ’s coming. He has come and he will come again. This book is not just relevant in December. It’s relevant every day as we await the return of our King.
And perhaps the truths of this book will hit differently when you’re not in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. It may help get your heart re-centered for the new year where you can look for the gifts of grace that we open every day we wake up.
A Few Quotes
“When the world hopes, there is the prospect of unfulfillment. The world “hopes” something will happen, but they know it might not. That’s not how God’s people hope. Our hope comes with assurance (Heb 11:1), our hope abides (1 Cor 13:13), and our hope will “not put us to shame” or disappoint us (ROM 5:5)… Our hope is in God! In fact, our hope is God!”
“We must be honest about the severity of our condemnation apart from God’s grace, because the good news will only be as good as the bad news is bad.”
“Our justification takes something slightly more out of reach than human ingenuity. It takes faith. And this is one reason why I know Christianity is true—we wouldn’t have made this up! Salvation by faith makes too little of us and so much of God.”
“The Christmas story holds the promise of glorification out to us because it tells us that God took on our image, that we might someday take on his. We will reflect him beautifully and eternally on a new earth restored according to his glory.”
“The Christmas Eve gospel is that while all the stuff and the experiences and the feelings might go away moment by moment, the incarnate Christ is real, he is alive, and he is doing work inside of our hearts that will make us thrive when we’re weary, hope when we’re grieving, and even rejoice when we’re suffering.”
Still Life by Louise Penny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.5
“Life is change. If you aren’t growing and evolving you’re standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead. Most of these people are very immature. They lead ‘still’ lives, waiting… for what?… waiting for someone to save them.”
This has been on my to-read list for a long time. And then it got made into a series so I knew I needed to push this up on the list!
I’ve heard many people recommend this series and I’m not sure my first impression lived up to the hype. But after reading some other reviews it appears a lot of people recommend skipping the first few books in the series.
I’m not ready to give up on it yet and plan to read another but I may skip to book four.
I liked the main character and it seems like a series where you get to see a lot of different characters and relationships develop.
I also liked the setting. Of course realistically a ton of crime and murder wouldn’t all happen in the same small town, but I think part of the charm of the series is the small town setting and so you just accept that point of non-realism for the sake of the community the author builds.
The plot itself was good and I’m not sure I guessed the murderer. I love what a friend put in their review quoting from The Office- “It was the person I most medium suspected.” Ha- it is accurate.
It’s hard to articulate what exactly I didn’t like, but it was definitely related to the writing style and the flow, which often felt disjointed.
The basic premise is this:
In small town Three Pines, Canada, an older woman— Jane— is found dead in the woods, apparently shot by an arrow. She had just had her first piece of artwork accepted into the local art show. Art she hadn’t shared with anyone before that moment.
Is her death related? Who would want her dead? In a small town where everyone knows everyone, someone is lying.
Chief Armand Gamache, our protagonist for the series, is called on to investigate.
It was a cozy mystery where we get to hear the thoughts of several characters, some cheekier than others. It is also set near Quebec and Montreal so there is some French language crossover.
The art component was interesting but hard to picture. It sounded like art that I wouldn’t really be a fan of.
It often felt like there should have been more dialogue to explain things.
I was also confused by the Nichol character. The way her character was handled was just… weird. I don’t know how to explain it. Armand did not think much of her at all and was not afraid to tell her. But it wasn’t always clear what she did wrong, or that she was a screw-up to the degree Gamache’s inner thoughts rendered her. And then he told her to get out of town and that was it for her. I’m guessing she comes back at some point, but it was just a weird character.
There were some parts of the plot that were played up more than needed to be. Like when they finally went into Jane’s house and were confused by the decor. I knew immediately what had occurred and they should have considered it at first as well.
I did find some of it humorous but the writing style made some of the humor not land very well or was too buried in the context.
I guess I was expecting more on this series and was a little disappointed. But I do want to stick with it. This was Louise Penny’s debut book and the first in the series, so I’m inclined to believe it does indeed continue to get better. Stay tuned to see what other books I read in this series and how they compare.
I trust the people who recommended this series to me so I feel like there’s more to be read.
If I watch the series, I’ll be sure to update with my thoughts on it as well!
Here’s my little Canadian learning section that I’m sure I’ll include with future books since there is some different vernacular like UK books:
- francophone: French-speaking person
- leotards: tights
- tabernacle: a French swear word
[Content Advisory: some swearing; no sexual content; an LGBTQ couple that continues throughout the series]
This has been on my to-read list for a long time. And then it got made into a series so I knew I needed to push this up on the list!
I’ve heard many people recommend this series and I’m not sure my first impression lived up to the hype. But after reading some other reviews it appears a lot of people recommend skipping the first few books in the series.
I’m not ready to give up on it yet and plan to read another but I may skip to book four.
I liked the main character and it seems like a series where you get to see a lot of different characters and relationships develop.
I also liked the setting. Of course realistically a ton of crime and murder wouldn’t all happen in the same small town, but I think part of the charm of the series is the small town setting and so you just accept that point of non-realism for the sake of the community the author builds.
The plot itself was good and I’m not sure I guessed the murderer. I love what a friend put in their review quoting from The Office- “It was the person I most medium suspected.” Ha- it is accurate.
It’s hard to articulate what exactly I didn’t like, but it was definitely related to the writing style and the flow, which often felt disjointed.
The basic premise is this:
In small town Three Pines, Canada, an older woman— Jane— is found dead in the woods, apparently shot by an arrow. She had just had her first piece of artwork accepted into the local art show. Art she hadn’t shared with anyone before that moment.
Is her death related? Who would want her dead? In a small town where everyone knows everyone, someone is lying.
Chief Armand Gamache, our protagonist for the series, is called on to investigate.
It was a cozy mystery where we get to hear the thoughts of several characters, some cheekier than others. It is also set near Quebec and Montreal so there is some French language crossover.
The art component was interesting but hard to picture. It sounded like art that I wouldn’t really be a fan of.
It often felt like there should have been more dialogue to explain things.
I was also confused by the Nichol character. The way her character was handled was just… weird. I don’t know how to explain it. Armand did not think much of her at all and was not afraid to tell her. But it wasn’t always clear what she did wrong, or that she was a screw-up to the degree Gamache’s inner thoughts rendered her. And then he told her to get out of town and that was it for her. I’m guessing she comes back at some point, but it was just a weird character.
There were some parts of the plot that were played up more than needed to be. Like when they finally went into Jane’s house and were confused by the decor. I knew immediately what had occurred and they should have considered it at first as well.
I did find some of it humorous but the writing style made some of the humor not land very well or was too buried in the context.
I guess I was expecting more on this series and was a little disappointed. But I do want to stick with it. This was Louise Penny’s debut book and the first in the series, so I’m inclined to believe it does indeed continue to get better. Stay tuned to see what other books I read in this series and how they compare.
I trust the people who recommended this series to me so I feel like there’s more to be read.
If I watch the series, I’ll be sure to update with my thoughts on it as well!
Here’s my little Canadian learning section that I’m sure I’ll include with future books since there is some different vernacular like UK books:
- francophone: French-speaking person
- leotards: tights
- tabernacle: a French swear word
[Content Advisory: some swearing; no sexual content; an LGBTQ couple that continues throughout the series]
Held: 31 Biblical Reflections on God's Comfort and Care in the Sorrow of Miscarriage by Abbey Wedgeworth
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
“Suffering tempts us to believe that God is absent, cruel, manipulative, or unconcerned, but the Bible offers us the truth.”
I very much wish I had had this book when I experienced my miscarriage. This will be my top book recommendation for anyone grieving miscarriage or infant loss.
Abbey talks about every struggle I remember wrestling with— the complex and conflicting thoughts about myself and God, doubting God, feeling prayer is pointless, frustration with others’ responses to my pain, feeling responsible for my suffering, having a hard time being happy for other mothers, feeling like my body is broken and unable to do the very thing God commanded us to do, and just feeling like my faith had faltered.
It is written with such validation and compassion and gently helps us see God for who he is and helps us lift our eyes to He who can comfort us and give us peace in an impossible time.
I know most women going through miscarriage or infant loss probably aren’t looking for a book to read. It may feel too daunting. But this book is meant to be read just a couple pages at a time. It’s very manageable, comforting, and will speak to the very grief we struggle with.
Each chapter is just a few pages and concludes with some verses to read, reflection questions, a response, and a place to journal.
Right out of the gate Abbey hits on the most important thing we need to think about when we go through trials and suffering: who is God?
“You can choose to allow your circumstances to shape your understanding of who God is, or you can allow what the Bible says about who God is to inform how you respond to your grief. What you believe about God…will have everything to do with the way that you heal and move forward.”
I eventually got to this point in my grief journey, but this book would have made that process a lot faster.
If there is a single most important thing that helped me heal, it was this realization. I had to stop asking why and start looking at who— who God says he is. What is his character? Because we most likely won’t get the answers we seek (and there is a chapter devoted to this thought as well) but if we know Who is sovereign and Who loves us, we can trust him in the ‘withholding’ of the answers we think we need.
This book is written around Psalm 139. I memorized this Psalm when I was in high school, before I had ever really experienced grief or pain. And this book opened up this Psalm even more for me and showed me how each verse is a comfort in our trials. It provides a framework for sadness but also for hope and for trusting in the One who knows all and sees all.
I love how this is the focus because even if we forget some of what we read in the book, any time I read Psalm 139, now, I think it will be a re-centering and a reminder for handling hardship.
I specifically remember that in my pain, I did not want to pray. I didn’t even know how to pray. Sometimes I think I still wrestle with that. But I love what Abbey encourages us with in the chapter on prayer:
“Prayer will make a difference in your suffering, even if it doesn’t make a difference in your circumstances, because it will undoubtedly make a difference in you.”
“Disappointment is inevitable in a fallen world, but the way to stop it from growing into bitterness is through thanksgiving: trusting God’s commitment to our good, reminding ourselves of all he has done for us in Christ, and then specifically noticing and praising him for every little thing he gives us as grace upon grace.”
There are many reasons to pray, but one is because it is our communication line to the our heavenly Father who wants to hear from us. Prayer isn’t always for the results, but it changes us as we depend on the Lord.
It made me think of Benjamin Hastings song ‘That’s the Thing About Praise’. The lyrics say:
‘There's what I want, and then there's where I'm at
Every one step forward, it got me five steps back
And I cried, I called, God knows I prayed
But most days, faith is climbing up a mountain that stayed
It don't always fix your problems, but it'll tell ya how small they are
That's the thing about praise
It won't always move the mountain, but it's good for the heart
That's the thing about praise
You'll never know what it's gonna change, but it'll always leave a mark
That's the thing about praise
Yeah, I might see walls start falling, or it might just change my heart
That's the thing about praise’
And as we think about singing that praise, it struck me in her chapter on going back to church how being around other believers helps us.
“When we join in singing with other saints, or let tears flow as we simply listen to their voices, we are prompted to praise God and to remember the truth of the gospel. Sometimes those voices carry our weary, doubting hearts, declaring over us the words we desperately need to hear and are struggling to sing—or believe—ourselves.”
This is exactly as it was for me. When I miscarried, the song ‘Good, Good Father’ had just become popular and was sung all the time. I couldn’t bring myself to sing the words. They didn’t feel true to me. Yet I knew they were. I think God was healing my heart even if I didn’t know it by listening to others sing those words around me until I could believe them again. ‘Your Word says you are good, God,’ I would say, ‘Help me believe it because I can’t sing this right now.’
Every chapter was a balm. Even for me, being almost a decade past my miscarriage, it was still healing to read this, to reflect on how I felt years ago and see where I am at now. To see God’s faithfulness. And to heal some parts that I didn’t know still needed healing.
Recommendation
I highly recommend this book and am so thankful for Abbey’s compassion and transparency in writing it. She includes short stories written by other women (and one man) who also experienced grief.
Even though miscarriage is common, no two experiences are ever the same. And common or not, the pain is real and often debilitating.
I believe this book will offer so much to those going through this heartache. Not just to survive, but to draw us back to our life source and the only true place of comfort.
“As we walk forward into a future that is unknown to us, we can embrace with certainty the comfort that comes from the knowledge of who God is, the fact that he is with us, and the assurance that he is leading us by his grace toward a new heaven and a new earth, where there will be no more sorrow, no more pain, and no more babies that die too young.”"
“Hope in the current and coming glory of God without fear or shame, because in the death and resurrection of Jesus, you and I find the absolute certainty that God’s plan of redemption can never be miscarried.”
[Note on the book: The cover shown in these pictures is the hardcover version I purchased. It has an elastic yellow band that closes the book. It gives it a journal-like look and feel. It would make a great gift if you know someone going through loss to add to a care package.]
Quotes
To give you a better idea of the encouragement you’ll find in this book, here are some more quotes:
“You may long to feel strong, capable, and unencumbered by sadness after your miscarriage—you may want to be out of this season and on to another—but the value of suffering is discovered in the midst of it as well as after it, for it is while we are walking through it that our frailty and weakness can convince us of our need for God’s power and sufficiency.”
“Scripture tethers our hearts to what is true when we feel ungrounded and uncertain. In it we hear him speak and are assured that he hears us when we cry out to him. As his truth informs our feelings and our hearts draw near to him in prayer, he comforts us with a peace that surpasses all understanding—an unshakeable confidence that he is with us and for us, and that our souls are secure.”
“Your trials are not opportunities to discover how strong you are but rather for you to learn to depend on the strength of the Lord. (Eph 3:20)”
“In that spiritual darkness in a time when nothing makes sense and when our doubts seem to be speaking louder than our faith, we must remember that believing is not a matter of strength. Faith is not something we conjure up; it is a gift we receive.”
“You may doubt or falter but that doesn’t mean your faith has failed or your soul is lost… even as we lie awake with all of that heartache, weakness, bitter disappointment, and fear—even as we sit in the darkness, riddled with confusion and doubt, wondering if we will make it out of this with our faith intact—we can say with the writer of Psalm 16:7-8 ‘I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.’”
“However perplexing the question may be of how a good and loving God could allow suffering, his control is a comfort to us in hardship because we know his character and his promises to us. (Rom 8:28-30) Miscarriage is not good, no, not good at all, but according to the Bible, God’s purposes for you within it most certainly are… when God’s word tells us that he works all things together for our good, that good isn’t necessarily our material or physical good—the growth of our families, for example. He is committed to our spiritual good.”
“I don’t pretend to understand exactly how this works, but somehow, God’s redemptive purposes for your life are being accomplished through the suffering you’re currently enduring. He’s getting glory from it, and you’re being prepared for glory by it.”
“When you feel bitterness and confusion over the mystery of suffering, you can give God glory by trusting that his plans are perfect and his ways are higher than yours, even if they are incomprehensible to you. And when you feel despondent and sorrowful, you can give God glory by hoping in Christ.”
“When your body can’t hold on to a baby, what other hope do you have than to cling to the God who will hold on to you?”
“When we see that God did not withhold his own Son, we can believe that anything he does withhold, he withholds in love.”
“If our sense of purpose lies solely in motherhood, the loss of an unborn baby can lead to a feeling of worthlessness. But if we believe that our chief end or highest calling is ‘to glorify God and enjoy him forever,’ then we can be filled with purpose and satisfaction in any season and any role.”
[Visit my original review for a list of further reading books.]
I very much wish I had had this book when I experienced my miscarriage. This will be my top book recommendation for anyone grieving miscarriage or infant loss.
Abbey talks about every struggle I remember wrestling with— the complex and conflicting thoughts about myself and God, doubting God, feeling prayer is pointless, frustration with others’ responses to my pain, feeling responsible for my suffering, having a hard time being happy for other mothers, feeling like my body is broken and unable to do the very thing God commanded us to do, and just feeling like my faith had faltered.
It is written with such validation and compassion and gently helps us see God for who he is and helps us lift our eyes to He who can comfort us and give us peace in an impossible time.
I know most women going through miscarriage or infant loss probably aren’t looking for a book to read. It may feel too daunting. But this book is meant to be read just a couple pages at a time. It’s very manageable, comforting, and will speak to the very grief we struggle with.
Each chapter is just a few pages and concludes with some verses to read, reflection questions, a response, and a place to journal.
Right out of the gate Abbey hits on the most important thing we need to think about when we go through trials and suffering: who is God?
“You can choose to allow your circumstances to shape your understanding of who God is, or you can allow what the Bible says about who God is to inform how you respond to your grief. What you believe about God…will have everything to do with the way that you heal and move forward.”
I eventually got to this point in my grief journey, but this book would have made that process a lot faster.
If there is a single most important thing that helped me heal, it was this realization. I had to stop asking why and start looking at who— who God says he is. What is his character? Because we most likely won’t get the answers we seek (and there is a chapter devoted to this thought as well) but if we know Who is sovereign and Who loves us, we can trust him in the ‘withholding’ of the answers we think we need.
This book is written around Psalm 139. I memorized this Psalm when I was in high school, before I had ever really experienced grief or pain. And this book opened up this Psalm even more for me and showed me how each verse is a comfort in our trials. It provides a framework for sadness but also for hope and for trusting in the One who knows all and sees all.
I love how this is the focus because even if we forget some of what we read in the book, any time I read Psalm 139, now, I think it will be a re-centering and a reminder for handling hardship.
I specifically remember that in my pain, I did not want to pray. I didn’t even know how to pray. Sometimes I think I still wrestle with that. But I love what Abbey encourages us with in the chapter on prayer:
“Prayer will make a difference in your suffering, even if it doesn’t make a difference in your circumstances, because it will undoubtedly make a difference in you.”
“Disappointment is inevitable in a fallen world, but the way to stop it from growing into bitterness is through thanksgiving: trusting God’s commitment to our good, reminding ourselves of all he has done for us in Christ, and then specifically noticing and praising him for every little thing he gives us as grace upon grace.”
There are many reasons to pray, but one is because it is our communication line to the our heavenly Father who wants to hear from us. Prayer isn’t always for the results, but it changes us as we depend on the Lord.
It made me think of Benjamin Hastings song ‘That’s the Thing About Praise’. The lyrics say:
‘There's what I want, and then there's where I'm at
Every one step forward, it got me five steps back
And I cried, I called, God knows I prayed
But most days, faith is climbing up a mountain that stayed
It don't always fix your problems, but it'll tell ya how small they are
That's the thing about praise
It won't always move the mountain, but it's good for the heart
That's the thing about praise
You'll never know what it's gonna change, but it'll always leave a mark
That's the thing about praise
Yeah, I might see walls start falling, or it might just change my heart
That's the thing about praise’
And as we think about singing that praise, it struck me in her chapter on going back to church how being around other believers helps us.
“When we join in singing with other saints, or let tears flow as we simply listen to their voices, we are prompted to praise God and to remember the truth of the gospel. Sometimes those voices carry our weary, doubting hearts, declaring over us the words we desperately need to hear and are struggling to sing—or believe—ourselves.”
This is exactly as it was for me. When I miscarried, the song ‘Good, Good Father’ had just become popular and was sung all the time. I couldn’t bring myself to sing the words. They didn’t feel true to me. Yet I knew they were. I think God was healing my heart even if I didn’t know it by listening to others sing those words around me until I could believe them again. ‘Your Word says you are good, God,’ I would say, ‘Help me believe it because I can’t sing this right now.’
Every chapter was a balm. Even for me, being almost a decade past my miscarriage, it was still healing to read this, to reflect on how I felt years ago and see where I am at now. To see God’s faithfulness. And to heal some parts that I didn’t know still needed healing.
Recommendation
I highly recommend this book and am so thankful for Abbey’s compassion and transparency in writing it. She includes short stories written by other women (and one man) who also experienced grief.
Even though miscarriage is common, no two experiences are ever the same. And common or not, the pain is real and often debilitating.
I believe this book will offer so much to those going through this heartache. Not just to survive, but to draw us back to our life source and the only true place of comfort.
“As we walk forward into a future that is unknown to us, we can embrace with certainty the comfort that comes from the knowledge of who God is, the fact that he is with us, and the assurance that he is leading us by his grace toward a new heaven and a new earth, where there will be no more sorrow, no more pain, and no more babies that die too young.”"
“Hope in the current and coming glory of God without fear or shame, because in the death and resurrection of Jesus, you and I find the absolute certainty that God’s plan of redemption can never be miscarried.”
[Note on the book: The cover shown in these pictures is the hardcover version I purchased. It has an elastic yellow band that closes the book. It gives it a journal-like look and feel. It would make a great gift if you know someone going through loss to add to a care package.]
Quotes
To give you a better idea of the encouragement you’ll find in this book, here are some more quotes:
“You may long to feel strong, capable, and unencumbered by sadness after your miscarriage—you may want to be out of this season and on to another—but the value of suffering is discovered in the midst of it as well as after it, for it is while we are walking through it that our frailty and weakness can convince us of our need for God’s power and sufficiency.”
“Scripture tethers our hearts to what is true when we feel ungrounded and uncertain. In it we hear him speak and are assured that he hears us when we cry out to him. As his truth informs our feelings and our hearts draw near to him in prayer, he comforts us with a peace that surpasses all understanding—an unshakeable confidence that he is with us and for us, and that our souls are secure.”
“Your trials are not opportunities to discover how strong you are but rather for you to learn to depend on the strength of the Lord. (Eph 3:20)”
“In that spiritual darkness in a time when nothing makes sense and when our doubts seem to be speaking louder than our faith, we must remember that believing is not a matter of strength. Faith is not something we conjure up; it is a gift we receive.”
“You may doubt or falter but that doesn’t mean your faith has failed or your soul is lost… even as we lie awake with all of that heartache, weakness, bitter disappointment, and fear—even as we sit in the darkness, riddled with confusion and doubt, wondering if we will make it out of this with our faith intact—we can say with the writer of Psalm 16:7-8 ‘I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.’”
“However perplexing the question may be of how a good and loving God could allow suffering, his control is a comfort to us in hardship because we know his character and his promises to us. (Rom 8:28-30) Miscarriage is not good, no, not good at all, but according to the Bible, God’s purposes for you within it most certainly are… when God’s word tells us that he works all things together for our good, that good isn’t necessarily our material or physical good—the growth of our families, for example. He is committed to our spiritual good.”
“I don’t pretend to understand exactly how this works, but somehow, God’s redemptive purposes for your life are being accomplished through the suffering you’re currently enduring. He’s getting glory from it, and you’re being prepared for glory by it.”
“When you feel bitterness and confusion over the mystery of suffering, you can give God glory by trusting that his plans are perfect and his ways are higher than yours, even if they are incomprehensible to you. And when you feel despondent and sorrowful, you can give God glory by hoping in Christ.”
“When your body can’t hold on to a baby, what other hope do you have than to cling to the God who will hold on to you?”
“When we see that God did not withhold his own Son, we can believe that anything he does withhold, he withholds in love.”
“If our sense of purpose lies solely in motherhood, the loss of an unborn baby can lead to a feeling of worthlessness. But if we believe that our chief end or highest calling is ‘to glorify God and enjoy him forever,’ then we can be filled with purpose and satisfaction in any season and any role.”
[Visit my original review for a list of further reading books.]
Christmas Presents by Lisa Unger
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
“Everybody knows everything about you in this stupid town. And they know nothing.”
I didn’t realize this was a novella when I first started this book. I don’t usually have much luck with novellas because there never seems to be enough space to do what the author needs to do.
I didn’t feel like that with this book.
The whole ‘thrills and chills’ thing worked pretty well! There was enough mystery and suspense to the plot that kept you reading and the setting gave it the Christmas vibes that made it a great, short read around the holidays.
Novellas can’t be too complex because of their length, so it’s not the most complicated thriller, but it also didn’t feel like it wrapped up (pun!) too fast either. I’m not sure if I really had it figured out until the end so that was nice too. It wasn’t shocking but it wasn’t boring either.
The premise is:
A true crime podcaster, Harley Granger, has decided to investigate the years old murder and possibly related disappearance cases of a group of friends.
Madeline Martin, owner of a bookshop (nice Hallmark movie type of touch), lost 3 of her best friends that fateful night and almost didn’t survive herself. She doesn’t remember much about that night but her testimony put away their supposed friend Evan for the murder. (Not the disappearances because there was not enough evidence to link them)
But Granger has come around with some interesting theories, including that the murderer had an accomplice that is still at large. This is alarming because Madeline has been getting a Christmas present every year on the anniversary of the crime. She thought they were from the guy in prison (which apparently didn’t bother her that much because she never told anyone about them) but now she’s wondering who is actually sending them.
Another girl goes missing and the investigation is hot again. Will it melt the snow and ruin Christmas? But like, metaphorically…
The book is told from Madeline’s first person POV, Harley Granger’s third person POV, and the abducted woman’s first person POV. We also get flashbacks to the night of the crime. My advanced reader’s copy’s formatting was a little disjointed jumping around but I’m guessing in the finished product things will be more clear.
One thing that bothered me:
When Granger gets Maddie to talk to him about the case he shows her pictures of all the missing girls and says one thing they all had in common:
“‘Five young women missing in ten years in the same fifty-mile radius… They all look like you, Maddie.’”
But this line of thinking is never continued or brought up again.
I read an advanced reader’s copy so it’s possible this was changed before the book’s publishing, but if not, it feels like a very loose end that either should have been removed or should have been followed through on. It’s a pretty significant plot point to drop it.
One thing I found pretty funny:
At the beginning of the book Maddie comments on Granger buying a book from her at her shop: “the latest runaway bestseller with foil embossed type, the author’s name in a bigger, bolder font than the title. The dark, foreboding image just a sliver of a girl’s face.”
The fictional author in the book was ‘John Henderson.’ And I’m 99.9% sure Unger was referencing James Patterson here haha. I don’t really read his books anymore for the reasons stated— too aggressive and run-of-the-mill. The author’s name bigger than the title is one of my book pet peeves. Sell your books, not your name.
Recommendation
I think if you’re looking for a Christmas thriller this is a great option. It’s like a murderous Christmas hallmark movie.
There was some swearing, and a lot for such a short book, so wasn’t a fan of that.
But overall, it was a good read for a novella. Probably at the top of the list for novellas that I’ve read. Which may or may not be saying a lot.
The only other Lisa Unger book I’ve read so far has been The Red Hunter (which was four years ago) and from my review I really liked it but it had a lot of f-words. I think I may still give one of her full length books another shot and see if she’s one for me to continue to read.
If you’re already a fan of Lisa Unger, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this book.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
[Content Advisory: 23 f-words, 7 s-words; the abducted girl works as a pole dancer at a topless bar so there’s some comments about that, nothing too graphic]
I didn’t realize this was a novella when I first started this book. I don’t usually have much luck with novellas because there never seems to be enough space to do what the author needs to do.
I didn’t feel like that with this book.
The whole ‘thrills and chills’ thing worked pretty well! There was enough mystery and suspense to the plot that kept you reading and the setting gave it the Christmas vibes that made it a great, short read around the holidays.
Novellas can’t be too complex because of their length, so it’s not the most complicated thriller, but it also didn’t feel like it wrapped up (pun!) too fast either. I’m not sure if I really had it figured out until the end so that was nice too. It wasn’t shocking but it wasn’t boring either.
The premise is:
A true crime podcaster, Harley Granger, has decided to investigate the years old murder and possibly related disappearance cases of a group of friends.
Madeline Martin, owner of a bookshop (nice Hallmark movie type of touch), lost 3 of her best friends that fateful night and almost didn’t survive herself. She doesn’t remember much about that night but her testimony put away their supposed friend Evan for the murder. (Not the disappearances because there was not enough evidence to link them)
But Granger has come around with some interesting theories, including that the murderer had an accomplice that is still at large. This is alarming because Madeline has been getting a Christmas present every year on the anniversary of the crime. She thought they were from the guy in prison (which apparently didn’t bother her that much because she never told anyone about them) but now she’s wondering who is actually sending them.
Another girl goes missing and the investigation is hot again. Will it melt the snow and ruin Christmas? But like, metaphorically…
The book is told from Madeline’s first person POV, Harley Granger’s third person POV, and the abducted woman’s first person POV. We also get flashbacks to the night of the crime. My advanced reader’s copy’s formatting was a little disjointed jumping around but I’m guessing in the finished product things will be more clear.
One thing that bothered me:
When Granger gets Maddie to talk to him about the case he shows her pictures of all the missing girls and says one thing they all had in common:
“‘Five young women missing in ten years in the same fifty-mile radius… They all look like you, Maddie.’”
But this line of thinking is never continued or brought up again.
I read an advanced reader’s copy so it’s possible this was changed before the book’s publishing, but if not, it feels like a very loose end that either should have been removed or should have been followed through on. It’s a pretty significant plot point to drop it.
One thing I found pretty funny:
At the beginning of the book Maddie comments on Granger buying a book from her at her shop: “the latest runaway bestseller with foil embossed type, the author’s name in a bigger, bolder font than the title. The dark, foreboding image just a sliver of a girl’s face.”
The fictional author in the book was ‘John Henderson.’ And I’m 99.9% sure Unger was referencing James Patterson here haha. I don’t really read his books anymore for the reasons stated— too aggressive and run-of-the-mill. The author’s name bigger than the title is one of my book pet peeves. Sell your books, not your name.
Recommendation
I think if you’re looking for a Christmas thriller this is a great option. It’s like a murderous Christmas hallmark movie.
There was some swearing, and a lot for such a short book, so wasn’t a fan of that.
But overall, it was a good read for a novella. Probably at the top of the list for novellas that I’ve read. Which may or may not be saying a lot.
The only other Lisa Unger book I’ve read so far has been The Red Hunter (which was four years ago) and from my review I really liked it but it had a lot of f-words. I think I may still give one of her full length books another shot and see if she’s one for me to continue to read.
If you’re already a fan of Lisa Unger, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this book.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
[Content Advisory: 23 f-words, 7 s-words; the abducted girl works as a pole dancer at a topless bar so there’s some comments about that, nothing too graphic]
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cursing
The September Society by Charles Finch
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
“‘There’s a dead cat in my son’s room at college… that’s the root of all the problems.’”
Having just finished The Dictionary of Lost Words, it was a surprise to be back in the Oxford setting during the 1800s. It was unplanned but fortuitous as my imagination was practiced in this setting and I gained even more knowledge about the university and the Bodleian.
I have read the first book in this series, A Beautiful Blue Death, and the 11th- An Extravagant Death. While I’m not sure if I liked this book better than either of those, it was still a decent read. If you don’t like Victorian England set mysteries with an independent detective who has a doctor friend…. like Sherlock…. then you will probably be bored.
But if you know what kind of read you’re getting into, you settle in and watch the master at work. I do think I waited too long in between books one and two. It’s not necessarily a series I would want to read back to back to back til it’s over, but you don’t want to wait too long in between each one. They’re pretty quick reads to squeeze in.
The main character, Lenox’s personality is not as flamboyant or brash as thee Sherlock, but I’m okay with that. One reviewer called Lenox too needy, but I kind of like that for something different.
It seems more popular to create a main character who is either super needy and mentally unstable, paranoid, etc, or a character who is super self-sufficient who needs nothing and no one and views relationships as a weakness. I think Lenox strikes the right balance of unique skills and independence, but a right desire for a family and companionship.
So about the cat… yes, the cat stabbed through with a letter opener in the college dorm was the primary signpost that something was amiss in George’s disappearance. That is the only animal death, but it was a little less than subtle.
Mr. Charles Lenox, detective, is on the case and happy to be back at Oxford.
“There were only a few things Lenox took special pride in, but as he read the Times he realized that Oxford was one of them, and told himself that if he couldn’t solve this case he might as well retire.”
The author of this book, Charles Finch, went to Oxford and it shows. It reads almost like a tribute to the school and we learn a lot about how things work there. You can’t help but see some of the similarities with Harry Potter (which isn’t surprising, just interesting.)
Lenox, then, is solving the mystery of the two missing boys, and eventually turns into a murder case when a body is found days later. Clues keep turning up pointing to the mysterious September Society and Lenox has to connect the dots before it’s too late.
This book was a little reminiscent of The Maidens by Alex Michaelides. The Maidens is a modern murder mystery of a student at Cambridge that also includes a secret society.
As is typical of Charles Finch books and what I like about historical fiction novels- you learn stuff! Here are a few things from this book:
agony column: a section of the newspaper for personal advertisements seeking advice or writing about missing relatives
swan song: there is some debate on when this originated; swans are said to not make noise until they ‘sing’ right before their death; Finch includes this bit but associates with the old British law that all swans belonged to the Crown and she would round them up at Christmas to serve at her feasts. 1998 was the year it was no longer an act of treason to eat a swan, however, swans are no longer a popular choice of food.
ballistics: Finch brings in a character who studies ballistics, which is a very new thing during this time (looking at a bullet’s grooves to determine which gun shot it, etc) I tried to find more on this during this time period but looks like it was going to take more time than I had, but interesting to think about the origins of the processes we take for granted today
Recommendation
If you like a good cozy mystery or a mystery set in Victorian England, this series is a definite must for you!
If you prefer more intense or darker mysteries, then you may be bored by this.
It pretty much just boils down to that.
[Content Advisory: no swearing or sexual content; death of a pet]
Having just finished The Dictionary of Lost Words, it was a surprise to be back in the Oxford setting during the 1800s. It was unplanned but fortuitous as my imagination was practiced in this setting and I gained even more knowledge about the university and the Bodleian.
I have read the first book in this series, A Beautiful Blue Death, and the 11th- An Extravagant Death. While I’m not sure if I liked this book better than either of those, it was still a decent read. If you don’t like Victorian England set mysteries with an independent detective who has a doctor friend…. like Sherlock…. then you will probably be bored.
But if you know what kind of read you’re getting into, you settle in and watch the master at work. I do think I waited too long in between books one and two. It’s not necessarily a series I would want to read back to back to back til it’s over, but you don’t want to wait too long in between each one. They’re pretty quick reads to squeeze in.
The main character, Lenox’s personality is not as flamboyant or brash as thee Sherlock, but I’m okay with that. One reviewer called Lenox too needy, but I kind of like that for something different.
It seems more popular to create a main character who is either super needy and mentally unstable, paranoid, etc, or a character who is super self-sufficient who needs nothing and no one and views relationships as a weakness. I think Lenox strikes the right balance of unique skills and independence, but a right desire for a family and companionship.
So about the cat… yes, the cat stabbed through with a letter opener in the college dorm was the primary signpost that something was amiss in George’s disappearance. That is the only animal death, but it was a little less than subtle.
Mr. Charles Lenox, detective, is on the case and happy to be back at Oxford.
“There were only a few things Lenox took special pride in, but as he read the Times he realized that Oxford was one of them, and told himself that if he couldn’t solve this case he might as well retire.”
The author of this book, Charles Finch, went to Oxford and it shows. It reads almost like a tribute to the school and we learn a lot about how things work there. You can’t help but see some of the similarities with Harry Potter (which isn’t surprising, just interesting.)
Lenox, then, is solving the mystery of the two missing boys, and eventually turns into a murder case when a body is found days later. Clues keep turning up pointing to the mysterious September Society and Lenox has to connect the dots before it’s too late.
This book was a little reminiscent of The Maidens by Alex Michaelides. The Maidens is a modern murder mystery of a student at Cambridge that also includes a secret society.
As is typical of Charles Finch books and what I like about historical fiction novels- you learn stuff! Here are a few things from this book:
agony column: a section of the newspaper for personal advertisements seeking advice or writing about missing relatives
swan song: there is some debate on when this originated; swans are said to not make noise until they ‘sing’ right before their death; Finch includes this bit but associates with the old British law that all swans belonged to the Crown and she would round them up at Christmas to serve at her feasts. 1998 was the year it was no longer an act of treason to eat a swan, however, swans are no longer a popular choice of food.
ballistics: Finch brings in a character who studies ballistics, which is a very new thing during this time (looking at a bullet’s grooves to determine which gun shot it, etc) I tried to find more on this during this time period but looks like it was going to take more time than I had, but interesting to think about the origins of the processes we take for granted today
Recommendation
If you like a good cozy mystery or a mystery set in Victorian England, this series is a definite must for you!
If you prefer more intense or darker mysteries, then you may be bored by this.
It pretty much just boils down to that.
[Content Advisory: no swearing or sexual content; death of a pet]
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.0
“Some words are more important than others. But it took me a long time to understand why.”
I’m disappointed I didn’t love this one. The cover made it look whimsical and I’ve always loved words. I used to collect words and definitions when I was younger and I still like to point out in my reviews new words or phrases that I read.
But this book has a more serious tone than I was expecting and some of the writing style was frustrating when it came to understanding our main character.
This book chronicles (in historical fiction fashion) how the first Oxford English Dictionary came to be. To liven the story up and explore the role, or lack of thereof, of women in this process, the dictionary’s story is wrapped around our main character— Esme— whose father is part of the decades long process.
Williams incorporates the threads of both women’s suffrage (throughout) and WWI (just the last bit of the book) which historically were happening at the same time as the dictionary project.
This is the kind of book where you kinda need to know WHY the author chose to write the book. What was she exploring and what message was she wanting to send? Here are a couple quotes from the author’s note to help us understand the origin and process of this book:
“This book began as two simple questions: do words mean different things to men and women? And if they do, is it possible that we have lost something in the process of defining them?
“I decided that the absence of women did matter. A lack of representation might mean that the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was biased in favor of the experiences and sensibilities of men… This novel is my attempt to understand how the way we define language might define us.”
My Stream of Consciousness
Even though it wasn’t necessarily a pleasure to read, I suppose this might make a good book club book purely for the discussion topics therein.
One of the things I was unprepared for as I read this book was the types of ‘lost’ words that were being collected.
As a young girl, Esme collects disposed, forgotten, hidden, or dropped words written on slips of paper as she huddles under the sorting tables. But as she grows she comes to think about what makes a word ‘ineligible’ for the dictionary and how that impacts the people who use them.
“‘Words define us, they explain us, and on occasion, they serve to control us or isolate us. But what happens when words that are spoken are not recorded? What effect does that have on the speaker of those words?’”
So she starts collecting words from people who perhaps have no voice. But they are mostly the crass or slang terms. One of her first words is the c-word. She adds to that clitoris, dollymop, shaft, etc. It seemed the more vulgar the more she wanted to document it.
Even in the story this exchange happens:
“‘She collects words.’
’What kind of words?’
’Women’s words. Dirty ones.’”
This made me think. Because my knee-jerk reaction is- why would we want to make sure to include vulgar words in the dictionary. Doesn’t that dignify them?
But the book’s argument would be less about dignifying the words as dignifying the people who use them. That their way of speaking that gives context to their person, their life, their identity, goes unnoticed, ignored, forgotten, if it’s not written down.
One character says, “We are arbiters of the English language, sir. Our job, surely, is to chronicle, not judge.”
And I suppose that’s correct. The dictionary is a book that is supposed to provide people with access to the meaning of words so that they might understand one another. It’s not meant to surmise moral merit on those words.
However, it has to give some sort of context to how the word is used— whether it’s vulgar or meant as an insult— or we won’t be understanding properly.
I know I don’t have the same perspective on vulgarity as many do. I don’t swear or speak crassly and I try to avoid books seeped in it.
A character says, “‘A vulgar word, well-placed and said with just enough vigor, can express far more than its polite equivalent.’”
I’m sure I’m naive to a lot of slang or terminology that is used regularly. And I’m personally glad for it. I don’t feel like it would be God-honoring to immerse myself in that. I’m not sure I’m convinced that even if it’s more expressive that we should use vulgar words. Is there something more important than being able to express our deepest feelings however we want?
I think the language we use can be a sin. Especially if it disrespects God’s name or his image-bearers. THIS ARTICLE and THIS ARTICLE give good biblical insights on the irreverence of profanity and vulgar language.
I’m not sure I would say it disqualifies those words from being defined, but I’m not sure if it’s right or dignifying to make sure we attribute them to people’s identity.
We have to use words to define ourselves because words are our form of communicating and understanding. But I think we can place too much emphasis on the words themselves then what the words tell us.
The Power of Words
One thing that can’t be denied is the power of language and the power of controlling language. I can see how the job of putting together a dictionary and defining words is a powerful position, one that must have accountability and voices heard from multiple places.
I couldn’t help but think of a couple nonfiction books I’ve read that explore this very thing.
First, Cultish by Amanda Montell is all about the ‘language of fanaticism.’ She says,
“With a glimmer of willingness, language can do so much to squash independent thinking, obscure truths, encourage confirmation bias, and emotionally charge experiences such that no other way of life seems possible.”
She specifically looks at the way language powers cults:
“From the crafty redefinition of existing words (and the invention of new ones) to powerful euphemisms, secret codes, renamings, buzzwords, chants and mantras, forced silence, even hashtags, language is the key means by which all degrees of cult-like influence occur.”
Similarly, Rod Dreher in his book, Live Not by Lies, explores how communist countries controlled and redefined words and how we’re seeing a lot of that today. Certain powers that be would like to redefine what a woman is or make hate speech the same as violence. And what about what ‘true’ means, because it seems less and less about reality and more and more about feelings.
It’s telling that Dreher would indicate- “language creates reality.”
He takes it further: “According to Hannah Arendt, the foremost scholar of totalitarianism, a totalitarian society is one in which an ideology seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions, with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under control of that ideology. A totalitarian state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality. Truth is whatever the rulers decide it is.”
If language creates reality then a force may try to control what creates that reality—language.
Another book that speaks a lot about language and power is Cynical Theories. It explores the postmodern thought that the way we talk about things holds a lot of power:
“Theory assumes that objective reality cannot be known, “truth” is socially constructed through language and “language games” and is local to a particular culture, and knowledge functions to protect and advance the interests of the privileged.”
and:
“If knowledge is a construct of power, which functions through ways of talking about things, knowledge can be changed and power structures toppled by changing the way we talk about things.”
The Dictionary of Lost Words looks at the power struggle between men and women in the time of the compiling of the dictionary and how poor or female voices weren’t allowed a big enough influence into what became written.
This is an important aspect of words, but if we were to look at how this book applies to us today, I don’t think it’s about how men vs women define words. I think it’s how progressives vs conservatives use and change language.
Women are no longer kept from virtually any job or standing. We have the vote. We can own businesses and property. We can be homemakers or CEOs. We can write bestselling books, billboard topping songs, or personal blogs that can be seen worldwide. We have a voice.
But progress never stops. It’s always going to find a tradition to tear down, regardless of its merit.
I won’t beat a dead horse, but I think it would be a really good discussion to think about how language is used and redefined today and whether we think that’s a good thing. Are all voices being heard and heard equally? Should they? If not, how does that relate to the time period this novel was written? How can we better separate what some people use a word to mean and what we think it should be used for? Is there an appropriate way to stop a redefining or new usage of a word?
A few other quotes worth a conversation:
- “Words are like stories, don’t you think? They change as they are passed from mouth to mouth; their meanings stretch or truncate to fit what needs to be said.”
- “I realized that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others.”
- “‘Words are meaningless without action.’
'And sometimes action can make a lie of good words.'"
- “If war could change the nature of men, it would surely change the nature of words.”
The Character of Esme
I mentioned earlier that one thing I didn’t like about this book was that it was frustrating understanding the main character. This is because it felt like every time some big life moment was about to happen Williams cuts it off and jumps ahead.
Even after Esme’s father dies we hardly know her thoughts or her grief. It’s like she didn’t want us to get too attached to Esme because the focus of the book was supposed to be about how the dictionary was put together. Esme is just there to point at stuff, we’re not actually supposed to know her.
The most extended feeling and transparency we get is when Esme talks about her baby that she has to give up for adoption. This struggle drew me to her because as a mother I know the bond of a mother to her baby and I can’t imagine what it would take to let go of that baby.
I am also glad for her relief when she finds out she is too far along to abort the baby. I was happy to know that even though she called it ‘an inconvenience’ she still recognized the little life and desired to see her borne and given life outside the womb even if she couldn’t be the one to sustain it. To me, this pain was the most humanizing part of Esme’s character.
At the beginning I wasn’t sure if I was even going to like her. She is described as a scapegrace (a mischievous little person) which is endearing at first. But her mischief and defiance aren’t always used endearingly.
She says of the words she has collected in her trunk:
“My trunk is like the Dictionary. Except it’s full of words that have been lost or neglected.”
Except really it starts as stolen words. A lot of the words she kept she didn’t even give them a chance to be considered in the dictionary. You can’t take a word and then complain that they didn’t care about it enough to put it in.
When she takes the word ‘abandon’ she basically claims that the word belongs to her because it describes her. There is some entitlement here. She feels justified in doing something she knows is wrong because she feels like the act is important to her identity. It’s a symbolic thing because she doesn’t need ‘the word’ to feel what it describes. I don’t like this attitude and it made it harder to like her as a character.
Of course, she grows up and resists her compulsion to take the slips. She goes and starts collecting her own words and finds a more constructive way to find her voice.
A Little Dull
Other reviewers have commented that it could have been a shorter book and I agree the length didn’t do it any favors. It seemed to drag a lot, especially because we weren’t allowed into too much of Esme’s life and we kept getting jerked back to slips and pigeonholes and fascicles and proofs. These words are probably used more than Esme’s name.
I thought it was clever how the author sectioned the book off with words like a dictionary- like the first and last terms in a volume or on a page. That was a unique touch. Some of the words I didn’t know what they meant and I probably should have looked them up to see if both words summarized the vibe or purpose of that section of the book. I’m assuming it did and if it didn’t, that’s a big miss for Williams.
The book covered so many years but it was hard to picture Esme progressing along. The chapters were headed with the year, but I couldn’t keep straight how old Esme was at that time. Sometimes it would eventually be said as you kept reading, but it’s hard to understand her character like we’re supposed to if we don’t know the age at which her actions, behaviors, thoughts, and words are being carried out. Again, it made it seem like we just weren’t supposed to focus on her.
It’s a bold move to write a book where the main character is an inanimate object (a dictionary) and a somewhat dull one at that. Readers need a relatable character they can connect with throughout the book and over and over again it seemed like Williams kept redirecting us from what we actually wanted to read about.
Recommendation
If you like historical fiction and are particularly interested in words or the dictionary, I would say this is a book for you, however, I would have categorized myself that way and I didn’t really enjoy it. So take it for what it’s worth.
It brings up some great conversation topics and touches on important things like the power of words and the people who define them, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the drag of the long book and the bait-and-switch character of Esme that the author uses.
It does provide interesting information on how the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled and historical things like Hart’s Rules, the Bodleian Library, the Esperanto language, the missing ‘bondmaid’ word, etc. I enjoyed learning these things and I’m glad that Ditte is a historical person because her letters to Esme were one of my favorite parts. So if you want to learn that information in a slightly more exciting way than just reading Wikipedia pages, you’ll probably like it.
[Content Advisory: some crass and vulgar language (i.e. the c-word) but from a distanced use; some descriptions when Esme first gets her period]
I’m disappointed I didn’t love this one. The cover made it look whimsical and I’ve always loved words. I used to collect words and definitions when I was younger and I still like to point out in my reviews new words or phrases that I read.
But this book has a more serious tone than I was expecting and some of the writing style was frustrating when it came to understanding our main character.
This book chronicles (in historical fiction fashion) how the first Oxford English Dictionary came to be. To liven the story up and explore the role, or lack of thereof, of women in this process, the dictionary’s story is wrapped around our main character— Esme— whose father is part of the decades long process.
Williams incorporates the threads of both women’s suffrage (throughout) and WWI (just the last bit of the book) which historically were happening at the same time as the dictionary project.
This is the kind of book where you kinda need to know WHY the author chose to write the book. What was she exploring and what message was she wanting to send? Here are a couple quotes from the author’s note to help us understand the origin and process of this book:
“This book began as two simple questions: do words mean different things to men and women? And if they do, is it possible that we have lost something in the process of defining them?
“I decided that the absence of women did matter. A lack of representation might mean that the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was biased in favor of the experiences and sensibilities of men… This novel is my attempt to understand how the way we define language might define us.”
My Stream of Consciousness
Even though it wasn’t necessarily a pleasure to read, I suppose this might make a good book club book purely for the discussion topics therein.
One of the things I was unprepared for as I read this book was the types of ‘lost’ words that were being collected.
As a young girl, Esme collects disposed, forgotten, hidden, or dropped words written on slips of paper as she huddles under the sorting tables. But as she grows she comes to think about what makes a word ‘ineligible’ for the dictionary and how that impacts the people who use them.
“‘Words define us, they explain us, and on occasion, they serve to control us or isolate us. But what happens when words that are spoken are not recorded? What effect does that have on the speaker of those words?’”
So she starts collecting words from people who perhaps have no voice. But they are mostly the crass or slang terms. One of her first words is the c-word. She adds to that clitoris, dollymop, shaft, etc. It seemed the more vulgar the more she wanted to document it.
Even in the story this exchange happens:
“‘She collects words.’
’What kind of words?’
’Women’s words. Dirty ones.’”
This made me think. Because my knee-jerk reaction is- why would we want to make sure to include vulgar words in the dictionary. Doesn’t that dignify them?
But the book’s argument would be less about dignifying the words as dignifying the people who use them. That their way of speaking that gives context to their person, their life, their identity, goes unnoticed, ignored, forgotten, if it’s not written down.
One character says, “We are arbiters of the English language, sir. Our job, surely, is to chronicle, not judge.”
And I suppose that’s correct. The dictionary is a book that is supposed to provide people with access to the meaning of words so that they might understand one another. It’s not meant to surmise moral merit on those words.
However, it has to give some sort of context to how the word is used— whether it’s vulgar or meant as an insult— or we won’t be understanding properly.
I know I don’t have the same perspective on vulgarity as many do. I don’t swear or speak crassly and I try to avoid books seeped in it.
A character says, “‘A vulgar word, well-placed and said with just enough vigor, can express far more than its polite equivalent.’”
I’m sure I’m naive to a lot of slang or terminology that is used regularly. And I’m personally glad for it. I don’t feel like it would be God-honoring to immerse myself in that. I’m not sure I’m convinced that even if it’s more expressive that we should use vulgar words. Is there something more important than being able to express our deepest feelings however we want?
I think the language we use can be a sin. Especially if it disrespects God’s name or his image-bearers. THIS ARTICLE and THIS ARTICLE give good biblical insights on the irreverence of profanity and vulgar language.
I’m not sure I would say it disqualifies those words from being defined, but I’m not sure if it’s right or dignifying to make sure we attribute them to people’s identity.
We have to use words to define ourselves because words are our form of communicating and understanding. But I think we can place too much emphasis on the words themselves then what the words tell us.
The Power of Words
One thing that can’t be denied is the power of language and the power of controlling language. I can see how the job of putting together a dictionary and defining words is a powerful position, one that must have accountability and voices heard from multiple places.
I couldn’t help but think of a couple nonfiction books I’ve read that explore this very thing.
First, Cultish by Amanda Montell is all about the ‘language of fanaticism.’ She says,
“With a glimmer of willingness, language can do so much to squash independent thinking, obscure truths, encourage confirmation bias, and emotionally charge experiences such that no other way of life seems possible.”
She specifically looks at the way language powers cults:
“From the crafty redefinition of existing words (and the invention of new ones) to powerful euphemisms, secret codes, renamings, buzzwords, chants and mantras, forced silence, even hashtags, language is the key means by which all degrees of cult-like influence occur.”
Similarly, Rod Dreher in his book, Live Not by Lies, explores how communist countries controlled and redefined words and how we’re seeing a lot of that today. Certain powers that be would like to redefine what a woman is or make hate speech the same as violence. And what about what ‘true’ means, because it seems less and less about reality and more and more about feelings.
It’s telling that Dreher would indicate- “language creates reality.”
He takes it further: “According to Hannah Arendt, the foremost scholar of totalitarianism, a totalitarian society is one in which an ideology seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions, with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under control of that ideology. A totalitarian state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality. Truth is whatever the rulers decide it is.”
If language creates reality then a force may try to control what creates that reality—language.
Another book that speaks a lot about language and power is Cynical Theories. It explores the postmodern thought that the way we talk about things holds a lot of power:
“Theory assumes that objective reality cannot be known, “truth” is socially constructed through language and “language games” and is local to a particular culture, and knowledge functions to protect and advance the interests of the privileged.”
and:
“If knowledge is a construct of power, which functions through ways of talking about things, knowledge can be changed and power structures toppled by changing the way we talk about things.”
The Dictionary of Lost Words looks at the power struggle between men and women in the time of the compiling of the dictionary and how poor or female voices weren’t allowed a big enough influence into what became written.
This is an important aspect of words, but if we were to look at how this book applies to us today, I don’t think it’s about how men vs women define words. I think it’s how progressives vs conservatives use and change language.
Women are no longer kept from virtually any job or standing. We have the vote. We can own businesses and property. We can be homemakers or CEOs. We can write bestselling books, billboard topping songs, or personal blogs that can be seen worldwide. We have a voice.
But progress never stops. It’s always going to find a tradition to tear down, regardless of its merit.
I won’t beat a dead horse, but I think it would be a really good discussion to think about how language is used and redefined today and whether we think that’s a good thing. Are all voices being heard and heard equally? Should they? If not, how does that relate to the time period this novel was written? How can we better separate what some people use a word to mean and what we think it should be used for? Is there an appropriate way to stop a redefining or new usage of a word?
A few other quotes worth a conversation:
- “Words are like stories, don’t you think? They change as they are passed from mouth to mouth; their meanings stretch or truncate to fit what needs to be said.”
- “I realized that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others.”
- “‘Words are meaningless without action.’
'And sometimes action can make a lie of good words.'"
- “If war could change the nature of men, it would surely change the nature of words.”
The Character of Esme
I mentioned earlier that one thing I didn’t like about this book was that it was frustrating understanding the main character. This is because it felt like every time some big life moment was about to happen Williams cuts it off and jumps ahead.
Even after Esme’s father dies we hardly know her thoughts or her grief. It’s like she didn’t want us to get too attached to Esme because the focus of the book was supposed to be about how the dictionary was put together. Esme is just there to point at stuff, we’re not actually supposed to know her.
The most extended feeling and transparency we get is when Esme talks about her baby that she has to give up for adoption. This struggle drew me to her because as a mother I know the bond of a mother to her baby and I can’t imagine what it would take to let go of that baby.
I am also glad for her relief when she finds out she is too far along to abort the baby. I was happy to know that even though she called it ‘an inconvenience’ she still recognized the little life and desired to see her borne and given life outside the womb even if she couldn’t be the one to sustain it. To me, this pain was the most humanizing part of Esme’s character.
At the beginning I wasn’t sure if I was even going to like her. She is described as a scapegrace (a mischievous little person) which is endearing at first. But her mischief and defiance aren’t always used endearingly.
She says of the words she has collected in her trunk:
“My trunk is like the Dictionary. Except it’s full of words that have been lost or neglected.”
Except really it starts as stolen words. A lot of the words she kept she didn’t even give them a chance to be considered in the dictionary. You can’t take a word and then complain that they didn’t care about it enough to put it in.
When she takes the word ‘abandon’ she basically claims that the word belongs to her because it describes her. There is some entitlement here. She feels justified in doing something she knows is wrong because she feels like the act is important to her identity. It’s a symbolic thing because she doesn’t need ‘the word’ to feel what it describes. I don’t like this attitude and it made it harder to like her as a character.
Of course, she grows up and resists her compulsion to take the slips. She goes and starts collecting her own words and finds a more constructive way to find her voice.
A Little Dull
Other reviewers have commented that it could have been a shorter book and I agree the length didn’t do it any favors. It seemed to drag a lot, especially because we weren’t allowed into too much of Esme’s life and we kept getting jerked back to slips and pigeonholes and fascicles and proofs. These words are probably used more than Esme’s name.
I thought it was clever how the author sectioned the book off with words like a dictionary- like the first and last terms in a volume or on a page. That was a unique touch. Some of the words I didn’t know what they meant and I probably should have looked them up to see if both words summarized the vibe or purpose of that section of the book. I’m assuming it did and if it didn’t, that’s a big miss for Williams.
The book covered so many years but it was hard to picture Esme progressing along. The chapters were headed with the year, but I couldn’t keep straight how old Esme was at that time. Sometimes it would eventually be said as you kept reading, but it’s hard to understand her character like we’re supposed to if we don’t know the age at which her actions, behaviors, thoughts, and words are being carried out. Again, it made it seem like we just weren’t supposed to focus on her.
It’s a bold move to write a book where the main character is an inanimate object (a dictionary) and a somewhat dull one at that. Readers need a relatable character they can connect with throughout the book and over and over again it seemed like Williams kept redirecting us from what we actually wanted to read about.
Recommendation
If you like historical fiction and are particularly interested in words or the dictionary, I would say this is a book for you, however, I would have categorized myself that way and I didn’t really enjoy it. So take it for what it’s worth.
It brings up some great conversation topics and touches on important things like the power of words and the people who define them, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the drag of the long book and the bait-and-switch character of Esme that the author uses.
It does provide interesting information on how the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled and historical things like Hart’s Rules, the Bodleian Library, the Esperanto language, the missing ‘bondmaid’ word, etc. I enjoyed learning these things and I’m glad that Ditte is a historical person because her letters to Esme were one of my favorite parts. So if you want to learn that information in a slightly more exciting way than just reading Wikipedia pages, you’ll probably like it.
[Content Advisory: some crass and vulgar language (i.e. the c-word) but from a distanced use; some descriptions when Esme first gets her period]
Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.0
“How sinister it is to relive your life backward. To see things you hadn’t at the time. To realize the horrible significance of events you had no idea were playing out around you.”
So this book opens with a mom seeing her son stab a guy. And my first thought was- ‘I’m not sure if there is ever a right place or right time for that. But you know what Gillian? I’m gonna hear you out.’
And then the mom wakes up the next day… but it’s actually two days IN THE PAST and the stabbing hadn’t happened yet. And I was like- ‘Ohhhhh. Okay Gillian. I see what you did there.’
And proceeded to read and enjoy this time travel, crime solving novel.
It was a bit reminiscent of the movie Happy Death Day where the main character gets murdered and keeps reliving the day/murder over and over again until she figures out who did it.
In Wrong Place, Wrong Time the murder doesn’t keep happening. Actually, Jen doesn’t keep reliving the same day at all— so is it really a time loop? She just keeps going further and further back in time every time she wakes up.
The goal is still to figure out why her son would stab someone and see if she can stop it. Each day she relives in the past she sees through new eyes, catches new things, chases new leads, and learns more and more about her life and family and what led up to that fateful day.
“‘This isn’t time travel, or science, or maths. Isn’t it just— you have the knowledge—and the love—to stop a crime?’”
How far back does she go? Thousands of days. Each section is titled ‘Day Zero Minus (X Amount of Days)’— aka how many days before stab day. At first it’s fine, but how far back is 540 days, 3876 days? We don’t want to figure it out. It’s like saying your kid is 40 weeks old or 29 months old. IT’S NOT HELPFUL, it’s annoying.
Of course she writes her character saying it the normal way as you read on, but I’m still miffed by the chapter titles. Don’t make us do the math, Gillian, we’re busy solving a mystery.
A lot of people say they didn’t finish the book, that it dragged, or that the ending didn’t redeem the book. I disagree. I didn’t feel like it dragged. The entire concept of the book requires going back in time to various days to find out new information, that’s not dragging, that’s a book doing its job.
For those who didn’t like the ending— what?! I’m a happy ending kind of person. Perhaps it felt a little abrupt when we go back to ‘the day’ but if readers are wanting a different outcome, they must prefer darker books.
I don’t think this is a spoiler to say, but one thing I was worried about but didn’t need to be, was that the mom starts to wonder if her son ultimately made the decision to stab a guy because she was a bad mom. If she had spent more time with him, shown more interest in his interests, done things differently, would he have still stabbed?
I was worried the answer was going to be yes. And then I would have gone on a rampage. But, no, the mom relives her past and rekindles her love of being a mom. She throws off the guilt and knows that she loved her son and whatever choices he made were not because she could have been better.
Yes! Don’t let mom-guilt have a foothold. (Unless you’re blowing smoke in your kids’ faces and dealing drugs in the living room, and forcing them to cheer for the Packers, or some other things you should definitely feel guilty about.)
I thought it was interesting to think about how you could have the knowledge that your kid murdered and then wake up the day before it happened and have to interact with your child. How crazy your emotions must be to see your child in a different light. Would it changed how you saw them, how you loved them, how you treated them?
I suppose if we’re honest with ourselves, history (and the Bible) shows us we are all capable of atrocious things. It leads us to thankfulness for God’s grace in our lives and the lives of our children when he preserves our innocence in certain ways. It also reminds us of our need of a Savior, our children’s need of a Savior. Sin and temptation lurks at the door and we need God’s power to resist and fight against it.
The mom in this book shows us an unconditional love. Would we realistically be able to have that? Maybe, maybe not. But we can know that nothing we do can separate us from the love of God if we come to him. We won’t need time travel, just repentance. God’s love is not predicated on good behavior but in the fact that he’s our heavenly Father and Creator who loves us because we are his. That’s good news!
Anywho, I enjoy books with time travel. Some found it tedious and confusing or boring. I thought it was interesting and there were some surprises. Although I’m still not sure if what she was in could really be considered a time loop. I opted not to take quantum physics in college so now I’m completely in the dark on this stuff. Go figure. I did not need Algebra in life, but I guess I needed quantum physics.
There’s a lot of books and movies with time travel, so I thought it was funny when she included these “five easy tips to escape a time loop”:
1. Find out why
2. Tell a friend and get them in the loop with you
3. Document everything
4. Experiment
5. Try not to die
Feel free to write these down somewhere and save them for later.
I think McAllister did a great job of maintaining consistency with the way the ‘time loop’ worked in this book. A lot of time travel happens when people go to the future and so they are able to send themselves messages in the future.
But when you go to the past, nothing you send or write is there because it hasn’t happened yet. That creates a unique challenge for someone who needs to solve a crime. No one remembers anything because everytime you wake up, essentially everything gets erased. I felt like Jen’s choices and figuring things out fit the context really well.
Other than the f-words, probably my next biggest problem with the book was the scene where Jen is looking through a window and catches a glimpse of a photograph. And she sees what color eyes the person has…. Nah. That’s not how life works.
Nobody notices what color eyes people have. If someone tries to sell me something at my door and then murders my next door neighbor and the police come and ask me what they looked like, eye color will have ZERO impact on my description.
So the fact that she looked THROUGH A WINDOW at a PHOTOGRAPH (and I think it was dark) and then noticed a person’s eye color….. that’s a big no for me.
Authors like to make much of eye color. But besides the few people like Daniel Craig where their eyes literally pierce you with their brightness, let’s just stop making it significant.
I dare you to figure out someone’s eye color… or better yet, from a photograph. You will have to try awkwardly hard. And you will know that I am correct.
Last comments: this book is very British. Some books are partially British where there’s some new words that jump out at you like jumper (sweater) and boot (trunk), etc. But Gillian is full-on Brit here.
“I don’t dob. I’m not a grass.” means I don’t tattletale and inform the police
“I’m doing dogsbody stuff” means I’m doing menial tasks. Definitely had to look this one up because things could have gotten weird real fast.
“Gear” means heroin. How many slang terms for drugs are there in the world? Talking these days is so risky.
“x” at the end of texts does NOT mean kiss. And everybody in the UK ends all their texts with an ‘x’ unless it’s a formal business exchange. Apparently it’s supposed to indicate you’re being friendly rather than cold and sarcastic… Feels like a lot of work to me.
The entire police department drinks tea in the morning. So proper. That would be an interesting study- do tea-drinkers solve more crimes than coffee-drinkers? Let me know the results!
Recommendation
This is hard to know how to recommend. I enjoyed the book, but there is a lot of swearing in it. A lot of f-words. I’m not sure if it’s worth wading through that.
Even though she writes a good story, I doubt I’ll read any more of Gillian’s books because of the swearing.
Swearing aside, I can’t think of a reason not to read the book. Unless you don’t like time travel.
[Content Advisory: like so many f-words]
So this book opens with a mom seeing her son stab a guy. And my first thought was- ‘I’m not sure if there is ever a right place or right time for that. But you know what Gillian? I’m gonna hear you out.’
And then the mom wakes up the next day… but it’s actually two days IN THE PAST and the stabbing hadn’t happened yet. And I was like- ‘Ohhhhh. Okay Gillian. I see what you did there.’
And proceeded to read and enjoy this time travel, crime solving novel.
It was a bit reminiscent of the movie Happy Death Day where the main character gets murdered and keeps reliving the day/murder over and over again until she figures out who did it.
In Wrong Place, Wrong Time the murder doesn’t keep happening. Actually, Jen doesn’t keep reliving the same day at all— so is it really a time loop? She just keeps going further and further back in time every time she wakes up.
The goal is still to figure out why her son would stab someone and see if she can stop it. Each day she relives in the past she sees through new eyes, catches new things, chases new leads, and learns more and more about her life and family and what led up to that fateful day.
“‘This isn’t time travel, or science, or maths. Isn’t it just— you have the knowledge—and the love—to stop a crime?’”
How far back does she go? Thousands of days. Each section is titled ‘Day Zero Minus (X Amount of Days)’— aka how many days before stab day. At first it’s fine, but how far back is 540 days, 3876 days? We don’t want to figure it out. It’s like saying your kid is 40 weeks old or 29 months old. IT’S NOT HELPFUL, it’s annoying.
Of course she writes her character saying it the normal way as you read on, but I’m still miffed by the chapter titles. Don’t make us do the math, Gillian, we’re busy solving a mystery.
A lot of people say they didn’t finish the book, that it dragged, or that the ending didn’t redeem the book. I disagree. I didn’t feel like it dragged. The entire concept of the book requires going back in time to various days to find out new information, that’s not dragging, that’s a book doing its job.
For those who didn’t like the ending— what?! I’m a happy ending kind of person. Perhaps it felt a little abrupt when we go back to ‘the day’ but if readers are wanting a different outcome, they must prefer darker books.
I don’t think this is a spoiler to say, but one thing I was worried about but didn’t need to be, was that the mom starts to wonder if her son ultimately made the decision to stab a guy because she was a bad mom. If she had spent more time with him, shown more interest in his interests, done things differently, would he have still stabbed?
I was worried the answer was going to be yes. And then I would have gone on a rampage. But, no, the mom relives her past and rekindles her love of being a mom. She throws off the guilt and knows that she loved her son and whatever choices he made were not because she could have been better.
Yes! Don’t let mom-guilt have a foothold. (Unless you’re blowing smoke in your kids’ faces and dealing drugs in the living room, and forcing them to cheer for the Packers, or some other things you should definitely feel guilty about.)
I thought it was interesting to think about how you could have the knowledge that your kid murdered and then wake up the day before it happened and have to interact with your child. How crazy your emotions must be to see your child in a different light. Would it changed how you saw them, how you loved them, how you treated them?
I suppose if we’re honest with ourselves, history (and the Bible) shows us we are all capable of atrocious things. It leads us to thankfulness for God’s grace in our lives and the lives of our children when he preserves our innocence in certain ways. It also reminds us of our need of a Savior, our children’s need of a Savior. Sin and temptation lurks at the door and we need God’s power to resist and fight against it.
The mom in this book shows us an unconditional love. Would we realistically be able to have that? Maybe, maybe not. But we can know that nothing we do can separate us from the love of God if we come to him. We won’t need time travel, just repentance. God’s love is not predicated on good behavior but in the fact that he’s our heavenly Father and Creator who loves us because we are his. That’s good news!
Anywho, I enjoy books with time travel. Some found it tedious and confusing or boring. I thought it was interesting and there were some surprises. Although I’m still not sure if what she was in could really be considered a time loop. I opted not to take quantum physics in college so now I’m completely in the dark on this stuff. Go figure. I did not need Algebra in life, but I guess I needed quantum physics.
There’s a lot of books and movies with time travel, so I thought it was funny when she included these “five easy tips to escape a time loop”:
1. Find out why
2. Tell a friend and get them in the loop with you
3. Document everything
4. Experiment
5. Try not to die
Feel free to write these down somewhere and save them for later.
I think McAllister did a great job of maintaining consistency with the way the ‘time loop’ worked in this book. A lot of time travel happens when people go to the future and so they are able to send themselves messages in the future.
But when you go to the past, nothing you send or write is there because it hasn’t happened yet. That creates a unique challenge for someone who needs to solve a crime. No one remembers anything because everytime you wake up, essentially everything gets erased. I felt like Jen’s choices and figuring things out fit the context really well.
Other than the f-words, probably my next biggest problem with the book was the scene where Jen is looking through a window and catches a glimpse of a photograph. And she sees what color eyes the person has…. Nah. That’s not how life works.
Nobody notices what color eyes people have. If someone tries to sell me something at my door and then murders my next door neighbor and the police come and ask me what they looked like, eye color will have ZERO impact on my description.
So the fact that she looked THROUGH A WINDOW at a PHOTOGRAPH (and I think it was dark) and then noticed a person’s eye color….. that’s a big no for me.
Authors like to make much of eye color. But besides the few people like Daniel Craig where their eyes literally pierce you with their brightness, let’s just stop making it significant.
I dare you to figure out someone’s eye color… or better yet, from a photograph. You will have to try awkwardly hard. And you will know that I am correct.
Last comments: this book is very British. Some books are partially British where there’s some new words that jump out at you like jumper (sweater) and boot (trunk), etc. But Gillian is full-on Brit here.
“I don’t dob. I’m not a grass.” means I don’t tattletale and inform the police
“I’m doing dogsbody stuff” means I’m doing menial tasks. Definitely had to look this one up because things could have gotten weird real fast.
“Gear” means heroin. How many slang terms for drugs are there in the world? Talking these days is so risky.
“x” at the end of texts does NOT mean kiss. And everybody in the UK ends all their texts with an ‘x’ unless it’s a formal business exchange. Apparently it’s supposed to indicate you’re being friendly rather than cold and sarcastic… Feels like a lot of work to me.
The entire police department drinks tea in the morning. So proper. That would be an interesting study- do tea-drinkers solve more crimes than coffee-drinkers? Let me know the results!
Recommendation
This is hard to know how to recommend. I enjoyed the book, but there is a lot of swearing in it. A lot of f-words. I’m not sure if it’s worth wading through that.
Even though she writes a good story, I doubt I’ll read any more of Gillian’s books because of the swearing.
Swearing aside, I can’t think of a reason not to read the book. Unless you don’t like time travel.
[Content Advisory: like so many f-words]
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing
Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age by Rosaria Butterfield
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
“The gospel message hurts our pride in life-giving ways, and for that I praise God.”
“God used the offense of God’s word for the good of my soul.”
Rosaria’s newest book is a Bible-saturated and bold truth-telling book that the world needs right now. Her personal experience and background gives her every right to say the things she does.
“This is a book about dismantling the idol of our times— the world of LGBTQ+ that I in my sin helped build.”
“God created men and women in marriage to do different and complementary things: husbands lead, protect, and provide, and wives submit, nurture, and keep the home. Because Satan would like you to think that my previous sentence is conspiratorial hate speech, strong Christian women need to know what the Bible says on this matter rather than what some famous almost-Christian feminist blogger says on Twitter.”
Five Lies is not an op-ed. Fully based on Scripture, Rosaria’s book exposes the ways the church has compromised truth, with good intent or not, and calls us as Christians back to the truth— the full truth— even if it goes against our feelings and what the culture has deemed ‘nice’.
The lies she writes to dispel are:
- Homosexuality is normal.
- Being a spiritual person is kinder than being a biblical Christian.
- Feminism is good for the world and the church.
- Transgenderism is normal.
- Modesty is an outdated burden that serves male dominance and holds women back.
Rosaria is very honest and transparent about her life and beliefs she had when she was a lesbian. She says that when she first attended church, she thought:
“[The church] was patriarchal (and that was bad), and I was a feminist lesbian (and that was good). The Bible was outdated and untrustworthy, and I was progressive and kind… I was confident that the Bible was androcentric (man-centered), heteronormative (promoting heterosexuality, which I thought was a bad thing), and misogynist (woman-hating). And I hated everything to do with the Bible, since I was a women-centered, pacifist, lesbian vegetarian (and this was all very good and moral, in my opinion).”
Throughout the book she shares how God and his Word challenged what she thought to be true and ultimately led her to saving faith.
Her tone may come across as too forthright for some, but I see it as a woman who has walked the path the culture is celebrating. She experienced firsthand what the culture’s lies do. She was saved from that path and her plea and exhortation is out of love for others to escape the life she lived in bondage to her sin.
One reviewer said Rosaria’s introduction was generating fear and that there is no fear in love. I disagree with her— I felt the introduction was written with sadness not to fear-monger. While we may not all encounter those things in our personal lives, they are happening. They are reality. And it is sad. Furthermore, there is a place for fear: fear of the Lord. Reverence for his Word. ‘No fear in love’ is not referring to fearing the holiness of God and delighting to keep his commands.
This book is a controversial one and we can’t discount the courage it took Rosaria to put all of this down on paper. She is sure to get some backlash for sharing these truths and calling the church back from the lines it has crossed, but that does not mean that what she wrote is the problem.
It’s easy to conform to the world and to compromise with the trends of the day. It’s hard to be the dissenting voice especially when the ‘opposing side’ has done such a thorough job of controlling the language in their favor. Those who reject Rosaria’s words do so in the name of love, empathy, grace, and compassion but as Rosaria reveals in her book, their path is a path of lies which is not loving, compassionate, or gracious.
Rosaria caused me to rethink one of my beliefs. I hear it said a lot that we need to stop telling same-sex-attracted people that their sexual desires will go away. We don’t want to set them up for failure when the feelings don’t leave so we tell them it’s something they will have to continue to live with the rest of their lives and that God just calls them not to act on it. That the sin is in the action, not the feeling.
But as Rosaria says, “we can’t domesticate sin.” Scripture tells us that hatred is the same as murder, lust is the same as adultery. Sin is more than just outward behaviors. It’s our thoughts and it’s our hearts. Scripture says that when we trust in Jesus we are dead to sin and alive in Christ. We are to put off our old self and put on our new self.
“Sin is still sin— a transgression against God’s law, an act of moral treason. This definition stands whether we suffer because of our chosen or unchosen sin.”
Are we not in the process of sanctification— the process that we are made to look more and more like Christ? Are we to think sexual desires are too strong for the Holy Spirit to change? Are we to say, come to Jesus, but he can’t change you?
It’s reasonable to say that we can’t expect change overnight or that it could take awhile, but it is wrong for us to tell people to expect to keep their sin. There is grace and forgiveness every day, but there is also power in the Holy Spirit and we have a wrong view of God and his Word if we think we won’t be transformed at all this side of heaven. The Holy Spirit can change our sinful desires and I repent for thinking otherwise.
Some Strengths
I took pages and pages of notes so I’ll just highlight some of the points that stuck out to me:
- She reminds us that we should not normalize sin but should reject anything that seeks to do just that.
“You can’t domesticate sin because sin is predatory. But if you normalize sin (parades, drag-queen story hour at the local library, and other oddities are meant to progress you along in the normalization process), you grow insensitive to its real danger.” - She lists a series of anecdotes on page 150 that should convict Christians that right now we are to call all sin sin; it is not a matter of ‘I can handle this sin because it’s not as bad as this other sin.’ The gradual progression she exposes is jarring and true.
- She critiques intersectionality.
“Intersectionality maintains that who you truly are is measured by how many victim statuses you can claim— with your human dignity accruing through intolerance of all forms of disagreement with your perceptions of self and world.” - She points out the idea of sexual orientation originating with Freud and how the idea of objective truth has deteriorated:
“Romanticism introduced the idea of ‘my personal truth’— and with this concept, we lost all standards by which to measure objective truth. Anyone who disagrees with ‘my truth’ is now a bad actor or an oppressor, not merely someone with whom I disagree.” - She speaks against identifying yourself as a ‘Gay Christian.’
“even if you believe that you are just using the category of gay as a plain way of describing your feelings, you must remember that gay is a keyword, not a neutral one. Gay is no longer just one of the many vocabulary terms. Gay refers to our nation’s reigning idol.” - She warns us about the sin of empathy. Empathy is a good thing in a lot of ways but it needs to be tethered to something. (She quotes Joe Rigney who fleshes this point out very well in THIS VIDEO.)
“Empathy is dangerous because if the highest form of love is standing in someone else’s shoes, no one is left standing in a place of objective truth… Sympathy allows someone to stand on the shore, on the solid ground of objective truth where real help might be found.” - She also takes on Kristin Kobes Du Mez who wrote the controversial book Jesus and John Wayne. Her assessments of Du Mez’s book were very similar to my own. She challenges the critiques Du Mez made of Christians:
“God gave us the full story of Judas Iscariot so that we can understand how people can read the same Bible, or in Judas’s case, be a disciple of Jesus and live with him and other disciples and reject the real Jesus for one you make in your imagination. Judas could live with the Lord and betray him fully. And so can anyone else. The fact that we read the same Bible means nothing except that sin deceives us.” - She exposes how transgenderism is the sin of envy.
“Envy is delusional entitlement masked in a package of victimhood and unbearable pain… Love holds people to the impartial, objective, and safe standard of God’s truth, not the malleability of sinful desires and the posturing of sinful people… Real love confronts the lie that suffering people can’t help but envy others. Real love does not envy.” - She shows how modesty isn’t just about what we wear, but the way we conduct ourselves. Social media has created a hotbed for immodesty in a whole host of ways. This was a convicting truth.
“Making public everything from your current grievances to your lunch blurs the line between public and private such that the category of private sometimes completely disappears from our lives. And when privacy disappears, so does modesty. Indeed, a social media-infused Christian life will always choose exhibitionism over modesty.”
Preston Sprinkle
Preston Sprinkle gets his own little section in this review because he is increasingly one of the most influential voices in the LGBTQ+ conversation. His book Embodied has been very popular and influential.
Christians who disagree with Rosaria may do so because of Sprinkle and so I think it’s important to consider some things.
He is known for his compassion in listening to and engaging with the LGBTQ+ community, seeking to practically help families whose loved ones identify as LGBTQ and being a bridge between the church and the LGBTQ community.
Rosaria has strong things to say about his teachings which will probably be a point of critique for a lot of readers.
So what does Sprinkle actually believe? Because it’s not enough to just be compassionate and helpful.
Sprinkle believes the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin. He believes there are only two sexes and that Scripture doesn’t allow for humans to be identified by anything other than male or female. (THIS seems like a balanced review of his book Embodied.)
However, he has some other concerning beliefs. He co-wrote the book Erasing Hell with Francis Chan back in 2011. Since then he seems to have changed his belief about hell and is now an annhilationist which essentially means he does not believe in hell. (Related article HERE)
He is currently complementarian but his recent Twitter posts regarding his exploration of the term ‘kephale’ suggests he may be rethinking that stance as well. This is significant because virtually all churches who ordained women as pastors also came to say that homosexuality is not a sin.
“Egalitarianism is the highway to LGBTQ+ church leadership, as a faulty interpretation that endorses sin in one context is imported wholesale to another.”
On page 239-240 Rosaria quotes in length a ‘story’ Preston re-tells about two men who have an intimate friendship. He tells of a poem one wrote of the other: “So moving, so intimate, so loving were the words of that poem that some people to this day believe that K.D. and John were gay.”
This is his retelling of King David and Johnathan. I don’t know the whole context of this story within his book Embodied, but the way he portrays it in his own words is irresponsible and misleading of the original text.
He is not willing to say whether or not intersex conditions are a result of the Fall.
In Embodied Preston says, “Maybe using the fall to explain intersex conditions is wrongheaded, to begin with, as many disability theologians have reminded us.”
This is a concerning thing to say, though I don’t have the whole context of this quote. He seems to be affirming teachings of disability theologians. From a brief internet search (because I’m not familiar with disability theologians) it would seem that generally speaking they want to celebrate people with disabilities as if nothing is wrong with them to the point that they will have that disability in heaven.
I would agree with disability theologians in the truth that all people are created in the image of God and should be treated with dignity and respect. Illness and disabilities do not make anyone less of a person.
However, to try to convince someone with severe mental depression, a person who is blind, someone missing limbs, or someone who deals with health issues because of bodily defects that they should be happy to have their disability and that they should be overjoyed to know they will continue to endure it in heaven seems unbiblical.
This quote seems to indicate that disability theologians think it’s wrong to point to the Fall as a reason for an intersex condition and, by extension, other disabilities or illnesses.
Preston said he can’t be sure if we can blame the Fall because “he wasn’t in the garden.”
Rosaria counters: “For Sprinkle, the biblical first principle that sin, death, and illness entered the world with the sin of Adam is not at all clear because he wasn’t in the garden at the time of the fall. In other words, the Bible’s witness as the word of God is not sufficient, but what Sprinkle can see with his own eyes is.”
There is a lot more to unpack here than I have space to, but at first glimpse, this is something to look more into as it concerns Preston and whether or not his teachings should be revered.
He is also a proponent of using preferred pronouns. Rosaria has partly used this book to repent of things she has previously said or believed that she now realizes were sins. Using preferred pronouns was one of them.
She says, “For years, and even as a Christian, I used and defended what are called ‘preferred pronouns.’… I falsely believed that this would aid and abet my ability to bring the gospel to bear on these people’s lives. I failed to distinguish between an illness (gender dysphoria) and an ideology (transgenderism).”
“Not only is it lying to people who are already being lied to by the world, but it also falsifies the gospel imperative of the creation ordinance, with its eternal binary of being created in the image of God as male or female and the command to live out that image-bearing within God-assigned sexual roles.”
While it is not an easy thing to live by, especially if you have a loved one who wishes you to use different pronouns, I agree with Rosaria. If someone is anorexic yet claims they are fat, we don’t also call them fat. We seek to show them reality. Lying to someone by calling them pronouns that do not match their biological sex will not help them see reality but will further impress what they believe.
Again, it’s not an easy choice to make. If I was at risk of losing a relationship with my daughter because of pronouns, I can’t say now what I would do. It’s an impossible choice. I would hope that I would trust God that through truth, he could restore that relationship, but I know it could come at a great cost.
It may seem wrong to some readers that Rosaria would come at Preston and call his book untrustworthy. But that’s really the point of her writing this book. If influential Christians and the church are teaching half-truths, they’re really speaking lies and we need to call them to speak the whole truth even if what they seem to be doing is ‘nice.’
Critiques
Lest anyone see the word ‘critique’ and think it’s a reason to dismiss this book: none of this negates the importance, the relevance, and the truth of this book. Everyone should read this book.
However, there are a few things that I felt would have strengthened certain areas of her book.
We know that it’s important to define our terms so we understand what we are hearing and saying. For the most part Rosaria is clear in her definitions, but there were a few places that lacked clarity.
She doesn’t really define what she means by feminism. She exposes the lie that feminism is good for the world and the church, but I think there are some people that identify themselves as feminists as defined by someone who just believes that women are equal to men and should be treated with dignity and respect and should not be discriminated against. This is not the same definition of feminism as largely held by the culture.
She speaks briefly on the patriarchy and says that biblical patriarchy is not a sin, it’s a blessing, but she doesn’t really explain what she means by biblical patriarchy. She points out that liberal interpretation of biblical patriarchy is wrong but doesn’t clearly refute why.
She makes the point that “a godly woman’s best defense against a potentially abusive husband is church membership in a biblically faithful church.” I agree with this statement but I didn’t feel like she explained the ‘why’ very well. She also could have spoken more on the topic of abuse in general. I feel like that’s a major issue people have when they reject the Bible’s teachings and it would go a long way for her to address that topic and explain how membership should be seen as protection.
In her chapter regarding modesty I really liked how she considered social media’s role in creating a platform for immodesty in the things we post and our attitude when we do it. But based on the title of that lie I wish she would have also addressed how the idea that women revealing their bodies creates empowerment really doesn’t. Relevant here would be the porn industry or platforms like Only Fans where sex work is trying to become a noble occupation. What are the effects of this locally and globally? Other books speak to this and the effects of ‘immodesty’ in the world are great and far-reaching.
Lastly, she spends a lot of space trying to talk about the nuances between ‘accepting’ vs ‘affirming’ which was mostly helpful. However, as she also indicates how some words are not neutral words and should be avoided I wonder if ‘accepting’ is one of them? The way she defines it makes sense but the larger population won’t use or see the distinctions she makes and I wonder if it isn’t so helpful. It’s one of the top words associated with this discussion so maybe she spent so much time on it because it’s a word we just can’t avoid so we might as well define it better?
Recommendation
Rosaria’s book tells the truths everyone’s afraid to commit to. She forces us to recognize that a ‘Christian’ label does not automatically make something true and we need to be diligent in the ideologies we espouse to make sure they align with the whole of Scripture.
Aligned with God’s Word, Five Lies is an essential read to learn how a Christian should understand these topics and respond when/if their loved ones join the LGBTQ community.
I think it will be a hard and challenging book for some, but one I would encourage you to wrestle with. It is not an easy thing to resist the pull of the culture, the pulse of the loudest voice. But we are called to fear God, not man. We are called to love Jesus more than our loved ones. And entrust them into his care because he loves them more than we ever could, and his design and boundaries he calls us to live in are because of that love.
It’s easy to throw this book away, to criticize it and nitpick, but that’s not an honest response. Be willing to consider this even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it means you have a lot of changes to make. Allow his Word to speak to you through Rosaria.
[There are also other books that speak more into what she cumulated here. I have read almost every book she quoted and I list my reviews and other resources below.]
“When it seems like we are living at ground zero of the Tower of Babel, when the whole world seems to have gone mad, we need to cling to Christ with courage, read and memorize our Bible with fervency, be active members of a faithful Bible-believing church with passion, sing psalms of joy, and pray for our enemies with humility.”
“God calls us to live our Christian lives with courage, tell the truth, and fear God and not man.”
More Quotes
“Asking people in pain to define their own problem without stable, objective standards is the height of irresponsibility and cruelty.”
“the world is in chaos, and the church is divided because we have failed to obey God and value his plan for how men and women should live.”
“Our humanity is not in our feelings. Our sense of self is not in our sin. It is in Christ… The only way you can hate your sin without hating yourself is through union with Christ.”
“Lies cannot be tamed. Lies do not coexist with truth but rather corrupt it.”
“Our redemption is from the curse of God’s law, not from our duty to obey it.”
“The law of God is an anchor, and the only way to know if we are anchored to Christ is by our obedience to the word. It is not enough to say that you have a high view of Scripture. Faith is not measured by what you affirm or how you identify. You can affirm that you are a Christian, but if you do not obey God’s requirements as revealed in the Bible, then you are proving your affirmation false. Obedience does not make you a legalistic or a fundamentalist. Obedience to the word of God reveals that you are a Christian.”
“A genuine Christian who experiences the indwelling sin of homosexual desire or transgenderism will find both the world that says, ‘Do what feels good,’ and a church that says, ‘You are a sexual minority and need a voice and platform in the church,’ as equally dangerous.”
“People driven by the sin of envy gather enablers.”
“This problem of assuming that we are in God’s favor because all the other ‘Christians’ around us are equally embracing heresy does not make it safe.”
“God’s people need to care more about what is in the mind of God than what is in the heart of culture.”
“Sometimes we just want someone to say that we are okay just the way we are. But that is not what Jesus offers. Are we willing to be healed on Jesus’s terms? Or are we insisting that Jesus heal us on our own terms?”
“Even when sin clouds the reality of God’s good plan, men are men and women are women, and even for those people who wish that they had a different sexual anatomy, the struggle is with the reality of physical and bodily truth. The struggle is with the sin of envy, not the God who made them.”
“Jesus never encourages us to sin to preserve life.”
“No one told me to pray the gay away. Because every sermon told me to drive a fresh nail into every sin every day, no one needed to.”
(She references Side A and Side B a lot so here’s a brief explanation she makes of them:)
“Side A is ‘gay affirming’ meaning that it invents biblical support for gay marriage and full inclusion of people who identity as LGBTQ in the leadership and membership of the church. Side B is ‘non-affirming’ of gay sex. Additionally, it elevates celibacy and singleness as God’s highest calling while heartily embracing homosexual orientation… Side B redefines gay sin merely as sexual action and denies that sin acts with affections, feelings, attractions, and desire. Both Sides A and B believe that homosexuality is fixed and that the gospel might change people in smaller ways but never in the deep matters of sexual desire.”
Books She References or Quotes from:
Torn by Justin Lee (Justin believes the Bible affirms homosexuality. Rosaria quoted this as an example of the opposing view. She also recommends THIS REVIEW of that book.)
Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen Kobes Du Mez (as mentioned in my review, Rosaria takes several pages to talk about the problems of this book)
Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier (this is a secular book that is super enlightening on the reality of the transgender craze that is manipulating and harming our children.)
Finding the Right Hills to Die On by Gavin Ortlund (I agreed with Rosaria that the the role of women in the church should be a first tier issue because what you believe about that is based on your view of the inerrancy and authority of Scripture which is a top tier issue. Ortlund did not which was basically my only critique of this book)
Transgender to Transformed by (this is on my TBR)
Out of a Far Country by Christopher and Angela Yuan (this is now on my TBR- it’s a mother/son writing team and their journey through the son’s LGBTQ experience)
Other Related Reading:
God, Technology, and the Christian Life by Tony Reinke (she references the Tower of Babel and what that represented and how God’s confusion of language was a protection of the people. This is a prominent point in Reinke’s book that I thought was really interesting and relevant in both conversations of LGBTQ and technology because in both areas humans are attempting to be their own God in a lot of ways)
Mama Bear Apologetics by Hillary Ferrar (Rosaria uses 2 Cor 10:3-6- we destroy arguments… and so does Mama Bear Apologetics. It’s a fantastic resource for parents in navigating the culture with our kids.)
What God Has to Say About Our Bodies by Sam Allberry (this is an excellent book about why our bodies matter and has a very compassionate but truthful tone for those who are in bodies that don’t feel good.)
Cultish by Amanda Montell
Christians in a Cancel Culture by Rod Dreher
(Rosaria talks about the power of language and how controlling the language really gives a group a lot of power. Cultish is about the power of language in cults and Christians in a Cancel Culture reveals how this controlling of language played out in now Communist countries and how we’re seeing growing shadows of that today.
Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (Rosaria talks about intersectionality, language, and a lot of other things that overflow into this secular book that is a great resource on critical theory and all the ways it has invaded our culture without us even knowing it.)
Evangelical Feminism by Wayne Grudem (this book does a great job of fairly presenting all sides of the different issues surrounding feminism and women’s role in the church. It also presents compelling arguments of how feminism is a path to liberalism and the rejection of the inerrancy and authority of Scripture.)
Radical Womanhood by Carolyn McCulley (This book and Eve in Exile both speak to what biblical womanhood looks like. Merkle’s writing tone is similar to Rosaria’s—blunt— which I find refreshing. If that’s not your favorite, Radical Womanhood may be a better fit. Both speak the same truths.)
**Received a copy from Crossway in exchange for an honest review**