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shelfreflectionofficial's Reviews (858)
challenging
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
“In Progressive Christianity there is general unity surrounding three topics: The Bible, the Cross, and the gospel— everything else is built on this foundation… It’s an entirely different religion—with another Jesus—and another gospel.”
I read Alisa Childer’s book Live Your Truth (and Other Lies) and I’ve listened to her podcast quite a bit. Another Gospel? is her first book and tells the story of her crisis of faith.
Alisa Childers grew up in a Christian home and was part of the Christian music group ZOEGirl (2006-2010). But later in life she encountered a pastor that made her question everything she thought she knew about God and the Bible.
As the subtitle of the book notes, this pastor adhered to what is identified as ‘Progressive Christianity.’ Childers shows throughout her book the subtle changes that churches have made to their theology that are sometimes hard to detect but actually really change the gospel.
“Many Christians sit in pews every Sunday completely unaware that their church has adopted progressive theology.”
The cover of the book was designed well, showing the ‘Gospel’ being gradually watered down, which is the natural result of Progressive Christianity.
Perhaps ‘Progressive Christianity’ is a buzzword to you. I would encourage you to read this book and follow along on Alisa’s journey because she is naturally a skeptic. She wasn’t just going to let someone tell her what to believe, she was going to do her own research, to get to the source, to challenge the ideas and see if they held up to scrutiny.
The questions she asks in this book, the ideas she challenges, are not straw men. They are real questions and ideas that I see all over the place. I’ve seen people espouse them and defend them and they are central to the ‘Christianity’ that too many people hold to today.
“Like historic Christians, their beliefs are built around their responses to questions like- Why did Jesus die? What is the Bible? And What is the gospel?”
Her ‘Definition’
She does a careful job in her book of fleshing all of these out, but if you’re wondering about the big picture— what’s so different about Progressive Christianity?— we could boil it down to this:
Progressive Christians tend to…
- deny the inerrancy of Scripture and its authority in their lives, believing that we can’t trust how the Bible was written or canonized or how early Christians interpreted it
“Dr. Walter Bauer had the theory that the New Testament is simply a compilation of books that were picked by the theological ‘winners.’”
- deny Christ’s atonement for sin believing his death on the cross to just be an example of love and forgiveness because it would be cosmic child abuse for God to send his Son to die
“…Jesus was killed by an angry mob for speaking truth to power. God didn’t need his sacrifice, but in some way submitted to it in order to set an example of forgiveness for us all to follow. God didn’t require blood— humans did.”
- champion critical theory ideology as morally superior to Christianity for its emphasis on lived experience and the oppressed, believing that sin is not ultimately what’s wrong with the world
“Progressives reject original sin and believe we were all born beautiful and good.”
- deny that hell exists or that God would send people there, believing that eventually all people will go to heaven (universalism)
“they call the Christian image of God that would send anyone to hell as toxic and unworkable.”
Some of the names she brings up that are associated with these beliefs are: Peter Enns, Richard Rohr, Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans, Brian McLaren, and Nadia Bolz-Weber.
I won’t go into it here because if you’re really questioning things yourselves or you realize you believe the things listed above but don’t see a problem with them, then you just need to read all the information for yourself.
As she points out in the book— none of these beliefs are new and none of these questions are groundbreaking. God, Jesus, the Bible, and the gospel have been challenged for hundreds and hundreds of years with these same arguments. And yet it has stood the test of time. There are answers and explanations for any challenge brought against historic Christianity.
Look up the Bible and you’ll find how we have thousands of original manuscripts and even atheist Bart Ehrman does not believe the differences detected in the manuscripts change the message or theology of the Bible. You’ll find that the canon councils were not to ‘decide’ which books got to be in the Bible but to affirm what was already viewed as the canon. You’ll also find that Jesus and the apostles believe in the trustworthiness, truthfulness, and authority of Scripture.
She goes through the problems of critical theory, the necessity for atonement for sins and how if Jesus didn’t die for our sins we don’t have a solution for our problem.
Same Wrapper, Different Candy
I thought it was really good when she laid it out this way:
“Jesus plus anything is a false gospel.”
She uses the example that was told to her concerning the pastor who had shaken her faith: he was just putting “a new wrapper” on the same candy. Same candy, just a different presentation. But this is an inaccurate comparison and Childers shows how it’s actually the same wrapper, but different candy. It’s called Christianity (same wrapper) but the core and the gospel is different (different candy).
“The progressive gospel is Jesus + social justice.” If sin is not our ultimate problem, and Jesus didn’t need to die for our sins and he is not our Savior, then the gospel is now about just following Jesus’ example of doing good works and forgiving others; social justice becomes the ultimate virtue. Many say that social justice is a gospel issue. But the gospel is good news about what has already been done. Social justice says what still needs to be done. Social justice flows from the gospel but it can’t be the gospel. Salvation is not ours only if we do enough social justice.
“The progressive gospel is Jesus + new knowledge.” Progressives believe that we have new and better ways of interpreting Scripture, that our view is more mature than the people in the Bible. They look at other sources to judge the Bible rather than the Bible being the authority. But just because our culture has united around an idea does not make it true. Plus, every person has a bias; truth has to exist outside of our own judgments. God didn’t preserve a wrong understanding of his Word for thousands of years only to decide that people in the 21st century are finally going to be the ones to ‘get it.’
“The progressive gospel is Jesus - judgment.” In this case, progressives have not added to the gospel, they’ve taken away God’s just judgment, believing they are morally superior to the God of the Bible and have to do some PR work to help his image— ‘God wouldn’t do that… he’s a loving God’. They believe that even though God’s wrath and judgment are all over Scripture, it’s antithetical to God’s love. But God doesn’t need us to polish his reputation. He is a holy God that has to deal with evil (an affront to his holiness) in an ultimate way. He doesn’t need us to protect him from people thinking he’s ‘mean.’ Who are we, created beings, to talk back to our Creator about what he can and can’t or should or shouldn’t do?
It was really interesting to read her recounting of the dialogue she had with the pastor and the others taking the classes that had derailed her faith. I think we can all recognize similar situations where we’ve been taught or told something but felt like something was off about it even though we couldn’t put our finger on it. Some might not know what to do with that niggling feeling and just ignore it, but let Alisa’s example be an encouragement to you to test the teachings you’ve been told and hold them up to Scripture.
It was perceptive of her to realize:
“For the pastor and my classmates, the questions mattered more than the answers. It didn’t really seem like anyone was interested in researching facts or reaching conclusions.”
If you find yourself surrounded by people challenging historic Christianity, listen to what they’re doing. Are the questions more important than the answers? Or they doing the work of looking for truth or are they just slowly aligning their beliefs to the accepted cultural norms of the day?
Alisa found that in her class “to say ‘I don’t know’ or to challenge the accepted opinion of most Christians, you would be regarded as open-minded and intelligent… if you affirmed or defended the historic view, you were dismissed as someone who was just living in fear or wasn’t willing to intellectually engage the hard questions of faith.”
Those are not the actual options.
Let Alisa give you courage that truth can be found and historic Christianity stands up to scrutiny when progressive beliefs cannot. Be vigilant of false teachers and hold every idea up to God’s Word. Most people who defend Christianity are not doing it blindly; we’ve asked the hard questions and we’ve found the answers (with a few exceptions that remain mysteries). Christianity is a reasonable faith.
She speaks of her crisis and what she went through emotionally and spiritually to get to where she is now and how she ‘limps a little.’
“But I’d rather walk with a limp on solid ground than run with strong legs on breaking ice.”
We should all care whether we’re on solid ground or precarious ice.
The Negative Reviews
I looked at some of the negative reviews of this book and noticed a theme of people taking issue with Childers’ definition, or lack of definition, of ‘progressive.’ Many identified themselves as progressive but then said they agreed with most of what she said. Others agree with some of what she said but differ in the extent to which they believe it. Some believe she’s making secondary issues into primary issues.
Definitions are important. So I googled ‘Progressive Christianity’ to see what the general consensus is. And it’s everything she said in her book. Then I looked at a Reddit thread asking the same question to see what the everyday person believes it means. That’s where the trouble lies. People take on labels for themselves that don’t necessarily match or encompass all their beliefs and then get upset when they’re lumped in with people that have differing beliefs.
If you agree with everything she’s saying, then maybe you aren’t as progressive as you think. *shrugs*
Many progressives take the label because they diverge from the biblical teachings of sexuality and God’s design for marriage. Many reviewers believed she made too much of LGBTQ topics in this book. I did not think those topics took up the most space in her book. I also think that what you believe about marriage is important because God created marriage as a representation of Christ and his bride, the church. That paired with the fact that differing opinions require interpretations of Scripture that undermine the authority of God’s Word makes it a top tier issue.
Many progressives take the label because they have a passion for social justice that they think separates them from conservatives. We would need to go into definitions of ‘social justice’ but conservatives are pro-social justice. There are, indeed, differing opinions on what doing social justice should look like. There is no better book that I’ve read to think about this than Thaddeus J. Williams’ book Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth. He goes through twelve questions we should ask of our social justice that really drills down into what biblical social justice is and is not.
Personally, I’m not sure if a strict definition of progressive is necessarily needed to appreciate the book. She is not trying to attack a label. Let’s not argue about the wrong things here. She clearly identifies problematic beliefs, however you choose to label them. She’s not trying to evaluate a group of people who call themselves ‘progressive’, she’s trying to evaluate the ideas that are most associated with the term ‘progressive.’
People identifying themselves by all kinds of different labels without really knowing what they mean is what causes the convolution in terms of definitions, but based on other things I’ve read and what Google puts out there, I don’t think she got off track here.
There also appears to be some disgruntled people challenging her handling of the atonement and penal substitution and I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I fully understand the different facets of that doctrine and what different denominations hold. I’m also not sure if that’s really what she was trying to get into.
The way I understood her point is that if you don’t believe Jesus died to pay the price for our sins, voluntarily out of love becoming the sacrificial lamb in our place, then that’s the problem because it changes the answer to two core worldview questions: What is the problem with the world? What is the solution to that problem?
Since I didn’t understand other reviewers’ positions I did a little more research which helped me see what the different views might be. I found these articles that may be helpful if you want to dig deeper into this central doctrine: 3 Reasons I Changed My Mind About Penal Substitution or In My Place Condemned He Stood: Penal Substitutionary Atonement or Penal Substitution is the Heart of the Gospel and THIS ONE that specifically looks at what N.T. Wright believes about this doctrine.
Some may take issue with her writing style or her confidence, finding her book more polarizing than engaging the other side. Personally, I have always appreciated the way she handles tough subjects. Yes, she speaks with boldness and is not afraid to say what is truth even if it offends someone, but I would also never associate her with arrogance or lack of grace and love. If you listen to her podcast you will see that her writing comes from a place of urgent love to help people find the path of truth.
I think trying to write a book like this where every reader feels warm and fuzzy and completely understood and engaged intellectually and emotionally in a fair but gentle but also real way is just not realistic.
I respect this book. I appreciated her sharing her story. I think there are a lot of people that are going to find this book super helpful and hopeful and life-altering.
And truly, I don’t really see how this is just so far off a ‘correct’ definition of ‘progressive’ that justifies taking away all the stars.
Recommendation
I definitely recommend her books and her podcast. She has done a careful job of digging into hard questions and really seeking what God’s Word says.
Of course there will be push back of this book or reviewers who attack what she brings up because they disagree with what progressive means or disagree that progressive Christianity diverges from what the Bible teaches.
However, I believe Childers is rightfully exposing the hidden lies of false teachers that undermine who God is, how authoritative his Word is, and the atoning work of his son Jesus. These are not small matters and I hope you are a reader who is willing to read this book and others to see why historic Christianity is true.
“We don’t get to completely redefine who God us and how he works in the world and call it Christian. We don’t get to make the rules and do what is right in our own eyes and yet claim to be followers of Jesus. Our only option is to do it his way or not at all. He is love. His name is truth. His gospel is bloody. His way is beautiful. For God so loved the world.”
She has a section at the end of her book for additional resources for further reading. I’ll add links to the books she suggests that I’ve also read and reviewed:
The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
Tactics by Greg Koukl
Surviving Religion 101 by Michael Kruger (she actually lists other books by this author, but I’ve read this one by him and touches on the same information that can be found in his other books including the canonization of the Bible)
Knowing God by J.I. Packer
Critical Dilemma by Neil Shenvi; also he wrote Why Believe? (she lists a different book by Shenvi on Critical Theory but this is his most recent one that also addresses the subject)
Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry
Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age by Rosaria Butterfield (she lists a different one by Rosaria but this book is her latest and is very relevant to this discussion)
A Change of Affection: A Gay Man’s Incredible Story of Redemption by Beckett Cook
What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality? by Kevin DeYoung
I read Alisa Childer’s book Live Your Truth (and Other Lies) and I’ve listened to her podcast quite a bit. Another Gospel? is her first book and tells the story of her crisis of faith.
Alisa Childers grew up in a Christian home and was part of the Christian music group ZOEGirl (2006-2010). But later in life she encountered a pastor that made her question everything she thought she knew about God and the Bible.
As the subtitle of the book notes, this pastor adhered to what is identified as ‘Progressive Christianity.’ Childers shows throughout her book the subtle changes that churches have made to their theology that are sometimes hard to detect but actually really change the gospel.
“Many Christians sit in pews every Sunday completely unaware that their church has adopted progressive theology.”
The cover of the book was designed well, showing the ‘Gospel’ being gradually watered down, which is the natural result of Progressive Christianity.
Perhaps ‘Progressive Christianity’ is a buzzword to you. I would encourage you to read this book and follow along on Alisa’s journey because she is naturally a skeptic. She wasn’t just going to let someone tell her what to believe, she was going to do her own research, to get to the source, to challenge the ideas and see if they held up to scrutiny.
The questions she asks in this book, the ideas she challenges, are not straw men. They are real questions and ideas that I see all over the place. I’ve seen people espouse them and defend them and they are central to the ‘Christianity’ that too many people hold to today.
“Like historic Christians, their beliefs are built around their responses to questions like- Why did Jesus die? What is the Bible? And What is the gospel?”
Her ‘Definition’
She does a careful job in her book of fleshing all of these out, but if you’re wondering about the big picture— what’s so different about Progressive Christianity?— we could boil it down to this:
Progressive Christians tend to…
- deny the inerrancy of Scripture and its authority in their lives, believing that we can’t trust how the Bible was written or canonized or how early Christians interpreted it
“Dr. Walter Bauer had the theory that the New Testament is simply a compilation of books that were picked by the theological ‘winners.’”
- deny Christ’s atonement for sin believing his death on the cross to just be an example of love and forgiveness because it would be cosmic child abuse for God to send his Son to die
“…Jesus was killed by an angry mob for speaking truth to power. God didn’t need his sacrifice, but in some way submitted to it in order to set an example of forgiveness for us all to follow. God didn’t require blood— humans did.”
- champion critical theory ideology as morally superior to Christianity for its emphasis on lived experience and the oppressed, believing that sin is not ultimately what’s wrong with the world
“Progressives reject original sin and believe we were all born beautiful and good.”
- deny that hell exists or that God would send people there, believing that eventually all people will go to heaven (universalism)
“they call the Christian image of God that would send anyone to hell as toxic and unworkable.”
Some of the names she brings up that are associated with these beliefs are: Peter Enns, Richard Rohr, Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans, Brian McLaren, and Nadia Bolz-Weber.
I won’t go into it here because if you’re really questioning things yourselves or you realize you believe the things listed above but don’t see a problem with them, then you just need to read all the information for yourself.
As she points out in the book— none of these beliefs are new and none of these questions are groundbreaking. God, Jesus, the Bible, and the gospel have been challenged for hundreds and hundreds of years with these same arguments. And yet it has stood the test of time. There are answers and explanations for any challenge brought against historic Christianity.
Look up the Bible and you’ll find how we have thousands of original manuscripts and even atheist Bart Ehrman does not believe the differences detected in the manuscripts change the message or theology of the Bible. You’ll find that the canon councils were not to ‘decide’ which books got to be in the Bible but to affirm what was already viewed as the canon. You’ll also find that Jesus and the apostles believe in the trustworthiness, truthfulness, and authority of Scripture.
She goes through the problems of critical theory, the necessity for atonement for sins and how if Jesus didn’t die for our sins we don’t have a solution for our problem.
Same Wrapper, Different Candy
I thought it was really good when she laid it out this way:
“Jesus plus anything is a false gospel.”
She uses the example that was told to her concerning the pastor who had shaken her faith: he was just putting “a new wrapper” on the same candy. Same candy, just a different presentation. But this is an inaccurate comparison and Childers shows how it’s actually the same wrapper, but different candy. It’s called Christianity (same wrapper) but the core and the gospel is different (different candy).
“The progressive gospel is Jesus + social justice.” If sin is not our ultimate problem, and Jesus didn’t need to die for our sins and he is not our Savior, then the gospel is now about just following Jesus’ example of doing good works and forgiving others; social justice becomes the ultimate virtue. Many say that social justice is a gospel issue. But the gospel is good news about what has already been done. Social justice says what still needs to be done. Social justice flows from the gospel but it can’t be the gospel. Salvation is not ours only if we do enough social justice.
“The progressive gospel is Jesus + new knowledge.” Progressives believe that we have new and better ways of interpreting Scripture, that our view is more mature than the people in the Bible. They look at other sources to judge the Bible rather than the Bible being the authority. But just because our culture has united around an idea does not make it true. Plus, every person has a bias; truth has to exist outside of our own judgments. God didn’t preserve a wrong understanding of his Word for thousands of years only to decide that people in the 21st century are finally going to be the ones to ‘get it.’
“The progressive gospel is Jesus - judgment.” In this case, progressives have not added to the gospel, they’ve taken away God’s just judgment, believing they are morally superior to the God of the Bible and have to do some PR work to help his image— ‘God wouldn’t do that… he’s a loving God’. They believe that even though God’s wrath and judgment are all over Scripture, it’s antithetical to God’s love. But God doesn’t need us to polish his reputation. He is a holy God that has to deal with evil (an affront to his holiness) in an ultimate way. He doesn’t need us to protect him from people thinking he’s ‘mean.’ Who are we, created beings, to talk back to our Creator about what he can and can’t or should or shouldn’t do?
It was really interesting to read her recounting of the dialogue she had with the pastor and the others taking the classes that had derailed her faith. I think we can all recognize similar situations where we’ve been taught or told something but felt like something was off about it even though we couldn’t put our finger on it. Some might not know what to do with that niggling feeling and just ignore it, but let Alisa’s example be an encouragement to you to test the teachings you’ve been told and hold them up to Scripture.
It was perceptive of her to realize:
“For the pastor and my classmates, the questions mattered more than the answers. It didn’t really seem like anyone was interested in researching facts or reaching conclusions.”
If you find yourself surrounded by people challenging historic Christianity, listen to what they’re doing. Are the questions more important than the answers? Or they doing the work of looking for truth or are they just slowly aligning their beliefs to the accepted cultural norms of the day?
Alisa found that in her class “to say ‘I don’t know’ or to challenge the accepted opinion of most Christians, you would be regarded as open-minded and intelligent… if you affirmed or defended the historic view, you were dismissed as someone who was just living in fear or wasn’t willing to intellectually engage the hard questions of faith.”
Those are not the actual options.
Let Alisa give you courage that truth can be found and historic Christianity stands up to scrutiny when progressive beliefs cannot. Be vigilant of false teachers and hold every idea up to God’s Word. Most people who defend Christianity are not doing it blindly; we’ve asked the hard questions and we’ve found the answers (with a few exceptions that remain mysteries). Christianity is a reasonable faith.
She speaks of her crisis and what she went through emotionally and spiritually to get to where she is now and how she ‘limps a little.’
“But I’d rather walk with a limp on solid ground than run with strong legs on breaking ice.”
We should all care whether we’re on solid ground or precarious ice.
The Negative Reviews
I looked at some of the negative reviews of this book and noticed a theme of people taking issue with Childers’ definition, or lack of definition, of ‘progressive.’ Many identified themselves as progressive but then said they agreed with most of what she said. Others agree with some of what she said but differ in the extent to which they believe it. Some believe she’s making secondary issues into primary issues.
Definitions are important. So I googled ‘Progressive Christianity’ to see what the general consensus is. And it’s everything she said in her book. Then I looked at a Reddit thread asking the same question to see what the everyday person believes it means. That’s where the trouble lies. People take on labels for themselves that don’t necessarily match or encompass all their beliefs and then get upset when they’re lumped in with people that have differing beliefs.
If you agree with everything she’s saying, then maybe you aren’t as progressive as you think. *shrugs*
Many progressives take the label because they diverge from the biblical teachings of sexuality and God’s design for marriage. Many reviewers believed she made too much of LGBTQ topics in this book. I did not think those topics took up the most space in her book. I also think that what you believe about marriage is important because God created marriage as a representation of Christ and his bride, the church. That paired with the fact that differing opinions require interpretations of Scripture that undermine the authority of God’s Word makes it a top tier issue.
Many progressives take the label because they have a passion for social justice that they think separates them from conservatives. We would need to go into definitions of ‘social justice’ but conservatives are pro-social justice. There are, indeed, differing opinions on what doing social justice should look like. There is no better book that I’ve read to think about this than Thaddeus J. Williams’ book Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth. He goes through twelve questions we should ask of our social justice that really drills down into what biblical social justice is and is not.
Personally, I’m not sure if a strict definition of progressive is necessarily needed to appreciate the book. She is not trying to attack a label. Let’s not argue about the wrong things here. She clearly identifies problematic beliefs, however you choose to label them. She’s not trying to evaluate a group of people who call themselves ‘progressive’, she’s trying to evaluate the ideas that are most associated with the term ‘progressive.’
People identifying themselves by all kinds of different labels without really knowing what they mean is what causes the convolution in terms of definitions, but based on other things I’ve read and what Google puts out there, I don’t think she got off track here.
There also appears to be some disgruntled people challenging her handling of the atonement and penal substitution and I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I fully understand the different facets of that doctrine and what different denominations hold. I’m also not sure if that’s really what she was trying to get into.
The way I understood her point is that if you don’t believe Jesus died to pay the price for our sins, voluntarily out of love becoming the sacrificial lamb in our place, then that’s the problem because it changes the answer to two core worldview questions: What is the problem with the world? What is the solution to that problem?
Since I didn’t understand other reviewers’ positions I did a little more research which helped me see what the different views might be. I found these articles that may be helpful if you want to dig deeper into this central doctrine: 3 Reasons I Changed My Mind About Penal Substitution or In My Place Condemned He Stood: Penal Substitutionary Atonement or Penal Substitution is the Heart of the Gospel and THIS ONE that specifically looks at what N.T. Wright believes about this doctrine.
Some may take issue with her writing style or her confidence, finding her book more polarizing than engaging the other side. Personally, I have always appreciated the way she handles tough subjects. Yes, she speaks with boldness and is not afraid to say what is truth even if it offends someone, but I would also never associate her with arrogance or lack of grace and love. If you listen to her podcast you will see that her writing comes from a place of urgent love to help people find the path of truth.
I think trying to write a book like this where every reader feels warm and fuzzy and completely understood and engaged intellectually and emotionally in a fair but gentle but also real way is just not realistic.
I respect this book. I appreciated her sharing her story. I think there are a lot of people that are going to find this book super helpful and hopeful and life-altering.
And truly, I don’t really see how this is just so far off a ‘correct’ definition of ‘progressive’ that justifies taking away all the stars.
Recommendation
I definitely recommend her books and her podcast. She has done a careful job of digging into hard questions and really seeking what God’s Word says.
Of course there will be push back of this book or reviewers who attack what she brings up because they disagree with what progressive means or disagree that progressive Christianity diverges from what the Bible teaches.
However, I believe Childers is rightfully exposing the hidden lies of false teachers that undermine who God is, how authoritative his Word is, and the atoning work of his son Jesus. These are not small matters and I hope you are a reader who is willing to read this book and others to see why historic Christianity is true.
“We don’t get to completely redefine who God us and how he works in the world and call it Christian. We don’t get to make the rules and do what is right in our own eyes and yet claim to be followers of Jesus. Our only option is to do it his way or not at all. He is love. His name is truth. His gospel is bloody. His way is beautiful. For God so loved the world.”
She has a section at the end of her book for additional resources for further reading. I’ll add links to the books she suggests that I’ve also read and reviewed:
The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
Tactics by Greg Koukl
Surviving Religion 101 by Michael Kruger (she actually lists other books by this author, but I’ve read this one by him and touches on the same information that can be found in his other books including the canonization of the Bible)
Knowing God by J.I. Packer
Critical Dilemma by Neil Shenvi; also he wrote Why Believe? (she lists a different book by Shenvi on Critical Theory but this is his most recent one that also addresses the subject)
Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry
Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age by Rosaria Butterfield (she lists a different one by Rosaria but this book is her latest and is very relevant to this discussion)
A Change of Affection: A Gay Man’s Incredible Story of Redemption by Beckett Cook
What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality? by Kevin DeYoung
challenging
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“Diamonds have witnessed the past, and they will witness a future we can’t begin to imagine.”
At this point I’ve read five of her books and loved them all. Harmel just has a way of storytelling that is so compelling and touches on all your emotions. She has a knack for finding and creating unique WWII stories around regular people doing heroic things to help others.
In the Stolen Life of Colette Marceau Harmel explores how people stole from the Nazis in order to help the Resistance. In this particular story, Colette Marceau is a jewel thief, taught by her mother. In fact, it’s been a ‘family business’ of sorts as they descend from Robin Hood. They live by the code: steal from the bad, give to the poor.
“‘No one who has earned his money or his worldly possessions honestly should be parted from them, even if he’s far richer than anyone should be. But he who has evil in his heart, or has used his fortune to bring harm to others, no longer has a claim on his property. Those are the people Robin stole from then, and they’re the people we steal from now.’”
Side note: if this concept intrigues you, definitely check out Connie Mann’s book The Crown Conspiracy which is an awesome book but instead of a Robin Hood jewel thief, the main character steals previously stolen artwork and replaces them with forgeries, returning the originals to their rightful owners.
I enjoyed the concept of this book. I enjoyed the characters. I liked that we get another taste of WWII from a different angle but it was also nice not to get into the nitty gritty of the war. There were definitely segments that were hard to read— like Colette’s mother’s arrest and torture. At times we need to confront the past in all its realities, but sometimes I prefer a ‘lighter’ book that doesn’t throw you in too deep.
I think I’ve read so many books that the ‘twists’ this book ends up having weren’t really surprising to me, but I wasn’t mad about it.
I also liked the themes Harmel explores: How is right and wrong determined? Is our identity more than what we do or more than our ‘destiny’? Can a lifetime of good wash away a long-ago sin? How and to what extent do we let our history shape our future?
I also love the thread of ‘diamonds are forever’ and what that means historically— that they get passed down from generation to generation and what they’ve ‘seen’ or been through could fill tomes.
It is aptly named— The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau— and has a complex meaning— the actual theft of jewelry but also the ‘theft’ of life, physically and emotionally, the ‘theft’ of an identity, the ‘theft’ of what could have been.
As with a lot of historical fiction novels, we have a dual timeline.
The historic timeline takes place during WWII where a young Colette is experiencing the hardships of the war. When their Jewish friends are rounded up and their jewels stolen, Colette’s mother steals them back from the Nazi who took them. This puts their whole family in danger. Colette experiences a lot of loss, including the kidnapping and death of her younger sister.
The modern day timeline (2018) follows 89-year-old Colette who now lives in the states and continues to steal from Neo-Nazis to help fund the Boston Center for Holocaust Education and other charities. All these years she has still wondered what happened to her sister and who betrayed her mother, leading to her arrest.
What ultimately ties these two timelines together is a very special set of bracelets. Handcrafted with hundreds of diamonds, these interlocking bracelets were designed for Colette’s mother’s friend Helene Rosman by her husband in honor of her newly born twins. Separate they look like lilies; together it’s a beautiful butterfly.
“‘It’s perfect… Helene and I will give our children wings and they will soar.’”
These bracelets are what Colette’s mom steals back and sews into the hem of Colette and her sister’s gowns for safe-keeping and bargaining power if they ever get into a bind.
Colette kept her bracelet her whole life, searching for the other half and the answers regarding her sister. The bracelet shows up in a new museum exhibit in Boston and Colette is determined to find out who it belongs to and what they know about the past, not matter the cost.
Many historical fiction novels that tell WWII stories in dual timeline have an elderly person in the modern timeline but I loved that in this book even though Colette is 89 years old, she’s still very much an active character, not just a reminiscent one and I appreciated that about this book. Also, it’s a little funny to picture her still stealing from people— she’s correct that no one would suspect her!
One of the more interesting aspects of this book is the moral dilemma of what Colette’s family does. Is it ever okay to steal?
I think during war-time, when people are being wrongfully rounded up and killed, to steal from the perpetrators in order to finance papers to help people escape that fate, it’s hard to not see that as heroic.
But this line of thinking can be a slippery slope. Harmel intentionally wrote about this morally gray-ish area and mentions it in the author’s note. She comments how “it was fascinating to explore how someone like Colette rationalizes her thefts— and to ask myself whether that reasoning is valid.”
It’s easy to look back on WWII and be thankful for those who lied or stole in order to save lives, but I’m not entirely sure how much biblical support that position has. I also think that humans are really good at justifying things and bad at making fair, unbiased judgements. I’m glad for what people did during the war to save people, but I don’t know if my feelings about it are necessarily biblical.
Even if the US is not currently at war, I’ve already seen examples of people justifying violence or destruction or theft just because people had different beliefs than them. There are certain groups of people pushing to classify certain words or phrases as acts of violence. If we start labeling words as acts of violence then that becomes the catalyst to justify morally wrong actions.
I don’t trust humanity to make really good judgments on what is right and wrong and what is justified and what is not. Sure, we may all agree on WWII acts of rebellion but all of humanity can’t agree on everything all the time. At some point we’re going to be on different sides of what we believe is justified. Then how do we determine?
Our selfishness and sin nature are too strong to ever support this notion that it’s okay to steal from the bad and give to the good. The working definitions of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ are too fluid.
I do like that Harmel points out that Colette bettered the world in more ways than just stealing diamonds— “through her volunteer work— and through the way she chose to show up for Aviva in her darkest hour.”
We are often short-sighted, thinking the only way to solve a problem or bringing good to the world is using morally gray means to achieve a desired outcome, but if we use our critical thinking and creativity, we see that there are so many ways to make the world better than our own personally identified methods of ‘redistributing wealth.’
Sure, Colette ‘redistributed’ over 30 million dollars worth of goods, but it was no small thing for her to step into Aviva’s life and be a mother figure, to extend generosity and love with her time and her words. It’s often the small things that make more of an impact than some sort of flashy gesture or widespread action.
“Change happens one act of courage at a time, one act of kindness at at time, one act of faith at a time. And those are things that all of us are capable of.”
Another thing Harmel mentions in her author’s note that resonated with me was the idea of Colette’s identity being in her thieving.
“Colette has essentially spent her whole life clinging to the sense of identity that comes with being a thief… she’s a woman worthy of love, whose identity isn’t determined by her vocation…”
Even though Harmel does not look at this from a biblical perspective, I love how she has Colette’s character develop to the point of recognizing that her identity has been wrapped up in stealing. It’s their family’s legacy; it’s a way she feels close to her mom. But it’s also been a big burden for her to carry. A burden that she is afraid to relieve herself of because if she isn’t stealing like Robin Hood, then who is she, what good is she?
We do the same thing. We believe so much of who we are is tied up in our jobs or our kids, our hobbies, or even our sexuality. But if those things are taken away (and they can), we are left feeling empty and purposeless. Our identity has to be outside of those things.
The Bible has the answer to satisfy that longing. Our identity should be in Christ who is an unchanging constant in our life. If we are children of God that can’t be taken away from us. It is security instead of a burden.
Recommendation
As with every other Kristin Harmel book I’ve read, I would definitely recommend this one!
Lots of layers of themes and emotions yet easy to read and enjoy with likeable characters and a great ending!
[Content Advisory: 0 f- or s-words; no sexual content]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
At this point I’ve read five of her books and loved them all. Harmel just has a way of storytelling that is so compelling and touches on all your emotions. She has a knack for finding and creating unique WWII stories around regular people doing heroic things to help others.
In the Stolen Life of Colette Marceau Harmel explores how people stole from the Nazis in order to help the Resistance. In this particular story, Colette Marceau is a jewel thief, taught by her mother. In fact, it’s been a ‘family business’ of sorts as they descend from Robin Hood. They live by the code: steal from the bad, give to the poor.
“‘No one who has earned his money or his worldly possessions honestly should be parted from them, even if he’s far richer than anyone should be. But he who has evil in his heart, or has used his fortune to bring harm to others, no longer has a claim on his property. Those are the people Robin stole from then, and they’re the people we steal from now.’”
Side note: if this concept intrigues you, definitely check out Connie Mann’s book The Crown Conspiracy which is an awesome book but instead of a Robin Hood jewel thief, the main character steals previously stolen artwork and replaces them with forgeries, returning the originals to their rightful owners.
I enjoyed the concept of this book. I enjoyed the characters. I liked that we get another taste of WWII from a different angle but it was also nice not to get into the nitty gritty of the war. There were definitely segments that were hard to read— like Colette’s mother’s arrest and torture. At times we need to confront the past in all its realities, but sometimes I prefer a ‘lighter’ book that doesn’t throw you in too deep.
I think I’ve read so many books that the ‘twists’ this book ends up having weren’t really surprising to me, but I wasn’t mad about it.
I also liked the themes Harmel explores: How is right and wrong determined? Is our identity more than what we do or more than our ‘destiny’? Can a lifetime of good wash away a long-ago sin? How and to what extent do we let our history shape our future?
I also love the thread of ‘diamonds are forever’ and what that means historically— that they get passed down from generation to generation and what they’ve ‘seen’ or been through could fill tomes.
It is aptly named— The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau— and has a complex meaning— the actual theft of jewelry but also the ‘theft’ of life, physically and emotionally, the ‘theft’ of an identity, the ‘theft’ of what could have been.
As with a lot of historical fiction novels, we have a dual timeline.
The historic timeline takes place during WWII where a young Colette is experiencing the hardships of the war. When their Jewish friends are rounded up and their jewels stolen, Colette’s mother steals them back from the Nazi who took them. This puts their whole family in danger. Colette experiences a lot of loss, including the kidnapping and death of her younger sister.
The modern day timeline (2018) follows 89-year-old Colette who now lives in the states and continues to steal from Neo-Nazis to help fund the Boston Center for Holocaust Education and other charities. All these years she has still wondered what happened to her sister and who betrayed her mother, leading to her arrest.
What ultimately ties these two timelines together is a very special set of bracelets. Handcrafted with hundreds of diamonds, these interlocking bracelets were designed for Colette’s mother’s friend Helene Rosman by her husband in honor of her newly born twins. Separate they look like lilies; together it’s a beautiful butterfly.
“‘It’s perfect… Helene and I will give our children wings and they will soar.’”
These bracelets are what Colette’s mom steals back and sews into the hem of Colette and her sister’s gowns for safe-keeping and bargaining power if they ever get into a bind.
Colette kept her bracelet her whole life, searching for the other half and the answers regarding her sister. The bracelet shows up in a new museum exhibit in Boston and Colette is determined to find out who it belongs to and what they know about the past, not matter the cost.
Many historical fiction novels that tell WWII stories in dual timeline have an elderly person in the modern timeline but I loved that in this book even though Colette is 89 years old, she’s still very much an active character, not just a reminiscent one and I appreciated that about this book. Also, it’s a little funny to picture her still stealing from people— she’s correct that no one would suspect her!
One of the more interesting aspects of this book is the moral dilemma of what Colette’s family does. Is it ever okay to steal?
I think during war-time, when people are being wrongfully rounded up and killed, to steal from the perpetrators in order to finance papers to help people escape that fate, it’s hard to not see that as heroic.
But this line of thinking can be a slippery slope. Harmel intentionally wrote about this morally gray-ish area and mentions it in the author’s note. She comments how “it was fascinating to explore how someone like Colette rationalizes her thefts— and to ask myself whether that reasoning is valid.”
It’s easy to look back on WWII and be thankful for those who lied or stole in order to save lives, but I’m not entirely sure how much biblical support that position has. I also think that humans are really good at justifying things and bad at making fair, unbiased judgements. I’m glad for what people did during the war to save people, but I don’t know if my feelings about it are necessarily biblical.
Even if the US is not currently at war, I’ve already seen examples of people justifying violence or destruction or theft just because people had different beliefs than them. There are certain groups of people pushing to classify certain words or phrases as acts of violence. If we start labeling words as acts of violence then that becomes the catalyst to justify morally wrong actions.
I don’t trust humanity to make really good judgments on what is right and wrong and what is justified and what is not. Sure, we may all agree on WWII acts of rebellion but all of humanity can’t agree on everything all the time. At some point we’re going to be on different sides of what we believe is justified. Then how do we determine?
Our selfishness and sin nature are too strong to ever support this notion that it’s okay to steal from the bad and give to the good. The working definitions of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ are too fluid.
I do like that Harmel points out that Colette bettered the world in more ways than just stealing diamonds— “through her volunteer work— and through the way she chose to show up for Aviva in her darkest hour.”
We are often short-sighted, thinking the only way to solve a problem or bringing good to the world is using morally gray means to achieve a desired outcome, but if we use our critical thinking and creativity, we see that there are so many ways to make the world better than our own personally identified methods of ‘redistributing wealth.’
Sure, Colette ‘redistributed’ over 30 million dollars worth of goods, but it was no small thing for her to step into Aviva’s life and be a mother figure, to extend generosity and love with her time and her words. It’s often the small things that make more of an impact than some sort of flashy gesture or widespread action.
“Change happens one act of courage at a time, one act of kindness at at time, one act of faith at a time. And those are things that all of us are capable of.”
Another thing Harmel mentions in her author’s note that resonated with me was the idea of Colette’s identity being in her thieving.
“Colette has essentially spent her whole life clinging to the sense of identity that comes with being a thief… she’s a woman worthy of love, whose identity isn’t determined by her vocation…”
Even though Harmel does not look at this from a biblical perspective, I love how she has Colette’s character develop to the point of recognizing that her identity has been wrapped up in stealing. It’s their family’s legacy; it’s a way she feels close to her mom. But it’s also been a big burden for her to carry. A burden that she is afraid to relieve herself of because if she isn’t stealing like Robin Hood, then who is she, what good is she?
We do the same thing. We believe so much of who we are is tied up in our jobs or our kids, our hobbies, or even our sexuality. But if those things are taken away (and they can), we are left feeling empty and purposeless. Our identity has to be outside of those things.
The Bible has the answer to satisfy that longing. Our identity should be in Christ who is an unchanging constant in our life. If we are children of God that can’t be taken away from us. It is security instead of a burden.
Recommendation
As with every other Kristin Harmel book I’ve read, I would definitely recommend this one!
Lots of layers of themes and emotions yet easy to read and enjoy with likeable characters and a great ending!
[Content Advisory: 0 f- or s-words; no sexual content]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
slow-paced
“Unlike drama or ballet or sculpture, you know when you’ve made comedy: it’s when people laugh.”
I guess this book should die because it really wasn’t very funny.
That sounds harsh and I’ll be up front that I don’t think I was the target audience for this book. It wasn’t quite the type of book I was expecting going into it.
I’m a pretty hilarious person so the idea that I could become even funnier if I knew all the principles of comedy is what drew me to this book. While there were some decent things to learn here, it turns out I really don’t know much about comedy or at least in the pop culture world because there were very few references that I recognized. I don’t know if it was because they were British things or if I’m just so illiterate of the comedic world— which is actually very possible.
The Office and Nate Bargatze and some random SNL skits are probably the big rocks of my comedic knowledge.
And if that tells you— I probably shouldn’t care what this woman says about this book— you may very well be correct.
I’m not out to write a really good comedy script or do stand-up. I just wanted to become a better storyteller or joke-deliverer. However, my husband is tinkering with writing some sort of funny animated show and so what I did highlight in this book was mostly things that I thought may be helpful to him as he’s thinking through that.
This book felt very, very long (it’s 57 chapters; 364 pages). I think it would have been more effective if it was shorter. Sooooo much of it felt repetitive. We get it. Evolution and comedy make total sense (nope…) and nobody laughs if they’re in danger and comedy is about defining groups and making people feel safe and you need to confound them. But we don’t need like ten chapters of each thing.
Maybe it’s because I read it so sporadically and if I had read bigger chunks at a time it would have felt like it flowed better. The science of comedy and the evolutionary exploration was towards the beginning of the book and I was pretty ready to be done with that so I skimmed a large portion of the book. And then I skipped over probably the 60-80% section so I have no idea what was in there. I liked the last section better where it talked about characters.
I think I probably could have skipped the first 175 pages in general and been fine.
If you’re wondering, the book is split into 6 parts: Comedy is Human; Comedy is Music; Comedy is Us; Comedy is Character; Comedy is Story; …And the Punchline.
I think it’s interesting how hard evolutionary biologists have to work to make sense of the world. He points out how humans are the only animals that make jokes: “There is, as far as we know, no comedy in the animal kingdom.” And somehow they’re convinced that millions of years of evolving led to people (or whatever they would call them) to be like, let’s start laughing more and being hilarious so our tribe can survive more, I think that would be a good idea.
I’m not here to debate evolution, that’s for an argument for A Biblical Case Against Theistic Evolution, but when I read about people trying to explain certain things by way of evolution, it just makes me stand in more awe of a Creator. It just makes me appreciate and love God more that he created humans with the ability to laugh and the minds to create jokes and comedy, and that he created a way to lighten our spirits and bond with others and that’s really cool.
To give you a better sense of what kinds of things are in this book, here are some quotes. Some of them are pretty good. But just keep in mind, these are within the context of a really long book and you might get a whole chapter talking about just one of these quotes over and over again but just with different words (and some same words):
“[Comedy] can help declare our values, when we want to say who we are, or feel that identity is under threat. It can neutralise threats with absurdity. It can provide relief when we need cheering up. it can help us bond with friends. What makes us laugh is as much part of our identity as what makes us dance, or cry.”
“The feeling of bottled hysteria— the recognition of common values, the hint of transgression, the moment of relief, the warmth of ownership and intimacy, the sharing— is the pure essence of comedy.”
“Every transgressive, dark or shocking comedy is still meant to reassure, by testing the boundaries of our group values. Shock comedy can be a way of ‘othering’ nonmembers of the group whom we wish to test, or drive away, but every offensive joke that horrifies an outsider solidifies the in-group by contrast.”
“We laugh more readily and more often when we are in company, because laughter is intended to be a social act.”
“There is notable statistical bias towards prioritizing humour as a desriable trait in a potential partner by women…”
“Incongruity is expecting one thing and getting another. And that’s how comedy works… Comedy is a game that humans play, which challenges other humans to guess what is coming next.”
“different sorts of jokes, such as puns, seem to light up different parts of your brain, which is a fascinating idea.”
… a summation of the essential elements required to make comedy might be listed simply as 1) Expectation 2) Surprise 3) Relief.”
“Comedy might be seen as the silly relation of the finer storytelling arts, but it gives your brain more extreme mental exercise, faster, than almost anything else. And that is really good for you.”
“What I think comedy has, at its best, is not truth, but clarity. And that’s because it is an art form that relies for its effects on balance, mirroring, symmetry, rhythm, contrast, pace, harmony, juxtaposition, and surprise.”
“Here are your three keys: 1. Construct (Interesting…) 2. Confirm (Of course… as I expected) 3. Confound (Hey!)”
“Character needs to be established quickly, and then we relax, and look for pattern matches.”
“Comedy is always the art of reading the room. Comedy has become a very different beast on social media in recent years, precisely because the difficulties of defining that room.”
“The common features of a joke are that: it plays games of expectation and surprise using our pattern-detecting system, it returns us to a safe state, which we may indicate to others with laughter, and it forms or reasserts a social bond within a group.”
“There’s an old comedy writer’s trick that your ensemble of characters is only ready for use when you know instantly how every one of them would react to the same stimulus.”
“If characters change, or obfuscate their motives from the audience, that’s getting dangerously close to drama.”
“Comedy isn’t meant to make everyone laugh at the same things. It’s meant to divide us, and delight us, to appeal to niche audiences. it’s not mean to bring the world together in harmony to laugh at the ultimate joke that tickles us all equally. It’s meant to gather us in small tribes, under the flag of whatever joke we, and only we, like best.”
Recommendation
If you are in the business of or would like to be in the business of stand-up comedy or writing comedy, you might find this book helpful.
If you want to know how many obscure comedy moments you know about, this might be the perfect test.
If you just want to be the life of the party, you probably don’t have the stamina for this book.
This book is for a very niche audience and I cannot tell you if that’s you. You must look deep inside yourself, all the way into your funny bone, and see if these words are written on its heart.
If that sounds dumb to you, you probably would actually like this book.
Anyway, why am I still rambling on… I don’t have much to contribute to this situation.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley— also I thought this was a new release because it was on NetGalley but turns out it was published in March 2024**
I guess this book should die because it really wasn’t very funny.
That sounds harsh and I’ll be up front that I don’t think I was the target audience for this book. It wasn’t quite the type of book I was expecting going into it.
I’m a pretty hilarious person so the idea that I could become even funnier if I knew all the principles of comedy is what drew me to this book. While there were some decent things to learn here, it turns out I really don’t know much about comedy or at least in the pop culture world because there were very few references that I recognized. I don’t know if it was because they were British things or if I’m just so illiterate of the comedic world— which is actually very possible.
The Office and Nate Bargatze and some random SNL skits are probably the big rocks of my comedic knowledge.
And if that tells you— I probably shouldn’t care what this woman says about this book— you may very well be correct.
I’m not out to write a really good comedy script or do stand-up. I just wanted to become a better storyteller or joke-deliverer. However, my husband is tinkering with writing some sort of funny animated show and so what I did highlight in this book was mostly things that I thought may be helpful to him as he’s thinking through that.
This book felt very, very long (it’s 57 chapters; 364 pages). I think it would have been more effective if it was shorter. Sooooo much of it felt repetitive. We get it. Evolution and comedy make total sense (nope…) and nobody laughs if they’re in danger and comedy is about defining groups and making people feel safe and you need to confound them. But we don’t need like ten chapters of each thing.
Maybe it’s because I read it so sporadically and if I had read bigger chunks at a time it would have felt like it flowed better. The science of comedy and the evolutionary exploration was towards the beginning of the book and I was pretty ready to be done with that so I skimmed a large portion of the book. And then I skipped over probably the 60-80% section so I have no idea what was in there. I liked the last section better where it talked about characters.
I think I probably could have skipped the first 175 pages in general and been fine.
If you’re wondering, the book is split into 6 parts: Comedy is Human; Comedy is Music; Comedy is Us; Comedy is Character; Comedy is Story; …And the Punchline.
I think it’s interesting how hard evolutionary biologists have to work to make sense of the world. He points out how humans are the only animals that make jokes: “There is, as far as we know, no comedy in the animal kingdom.” And somehow they’re convinced that millions of years of evolving led to people (or whatever they would call them) to be like, let’s start laughing more and being hilarious so our tribe can survive more, I think that would be a good idea.
I’m not here to debate evolution, that’s for an argument for A Biblical Case Against Theistic Evolution, but when I read about people trying to explain certain things by way of evolution, it just makes me stand in more awe of a Creator. It just makes me appreciate and love God more that he created humans with the ability to laugh and the minds to create jokes and comedy, and that he created a way to lighten our spirits and bond with others and that’s really cool.
To give you a better sense of what kinds of things are in this book, here are some quotes. Some of them are pretty good. But just keep in mind, these are within the context of a really long book and you might get a whole chapter talking about just one of these quotes over and over again but just with different words (and some same words):
“[Comedy] can help declare our values, when we want to say who we are, or feel that identity is under threat. It can neutralise threats with absurdity. It can provide relief when we need cheering up. it can help us bond with friends. What makes us laugh is as much part of our identity as what makes us dance, or cry.”
“The feeling of bottled hysteria— the recognition of common values, the hint of transgression, the moment of relief, the warmth of ownership and intimacy, the sharing— is the pure essence of comedy.”
“Every transgressive, dark or shocking comedy is still meant to reassure, by testing the boundaries of our group values. Shock comedy can be a way of ‘othering’ nonmembers of the group whom we wish to test, or drive away, but every offensive joke that horrifies an outsider solidifies the in-group by contrast.”
“We laugh more readily and more often when we are in company, because laughter is intended to be a social act.”
“There is notable statistical bias towards prioritizing humour as a desriable trait in a potential partner by women…”
“Incongruity is expecting one thing and getting another. And that’s how comedy works… Comedy is a game that humans play, which challenges other humans to guess what is coming next.”
“different sorts of jokes, such as puns, seem to light up different parts of your brain, which is a fascinating idea.”
… a summation of the essential elements required to make comedy might be listed simply as 1) Expectation 2) Surprise 3) Relief.”
“Comedy might be seen as the silly relation of the finer storytelling arts, but it gives your brain more extreme mental exercise, faster, than almost anything else. And that is really good for you.”
“What I think comedy has, at its best, is not truth, but clarity. And that’s because it is an art form that relies for its effects on balance, mirroring, symmetry, rhythm, contrast, pace, harmony, juxtaposition, and surprise.”
“Here are your three keys: 1. Construct (Interesting…) 2. Confirm (Of course… as I expected) 3. Confound (Hey!)”
“Character needs to be established quickly, and then we relax, and look for pattern matches.”
“Comedy is always the art of reading the room. Comedy has become a very different beast on social media in recent years, precisely because the difficulties of defining that room.”
“The common features of a joke are that: it plays games of expectation and surprise using our pattern-detecting system, it returns us to a safe state, which we may indicate to others with laughter, and it forms or reasserts a social bond within a group.”
“There’s an old comedy writer’s trick that your ensemble of characters is only ready for use when you know instantly how every one of them would react to the same stimulus.”
“If characters change, or obfuscate their motives from the audience, that’s getting dangerously close to drama.”
“Comedy isn’t meant to make everyone laugh at the same things. It’s meant to divide us, and delight us, to appeal to niche audiences. it’s not mean to bring the world together in harmony to laugh at the ultimate joke that tickles us all equally. It’s meant to gather us in small tribes, under the flag of whatever joke we, and only we, like best.”
Recommendation
If you are in the business of or would like to be in the business of stand-up comedy or writing comedy, you might find this book helpful.
If you want to know how many obscure comedy moments you know about, this might be the perfect test.
If you just want to be the life of the party, you probably don’t have the stamina for this book.
This book is for a very niche audience and I cannot tell you if that’s you. You must look deep inside yourself, all the way into your funny bone, and see if these words are written on its heart.
If that sounds dumb to you, you probably would actually like this book.
Anyway, why am I still rambling on… I don’t have much to contribute to this situation.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley— also I thought this was a new release because it was on NetGalley but turns out it was published in March 2024**
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
“Be steadfast. Even when there appears to be no answers to prayer— persevere. Even if you must pray out of a sense of duty, do it! Soon it will turn to delight as you concentrate on the character of God more than the charity of God.”
I think this book is definitely worth owning, even if you’re not a mom, but especially if you are. It enriches your prayer life and gives words to all the things you want to pray but never knew how to. It also brings up things you didn’t realize you needed to pray for but are glad you can now.
I’ve been using this book for a couple months now. I would take one or two prayers a day, read through them, and then personalize the concept to my own life. Normally I’m a very distracted pray-er and not a very consistent one. I would lose focus or just not know what to pray about. My mind was either blank or too overwhelmingly full to know where to start. This book has really changed the way I’ve prayed. I’ve prayed for longer periods than I ever have before.
There are so many ways you can use this book. You can go through the book cover to cover and let it give you an area to focus. You can search for the type of prayer that resonates with you on a particular day. You can send these prayers to others you know are struggling. You can pray them on your own for other people. You can use them as launching points to talk to your kids about certain topics or teach them how they can pray about things they’re struggling with. You can also gift this to another expecting mom at a baby shower!
The prayers are divided up into 12 sections ranging from prayers about the self, your home, rhythms of life, things our kids will have to deal with, things you pray you never have to pray, things for church and school, and more.
Within each section they have prayers titled well to help you find what you need like:
- When God Feels Silent
- Pregnancy Loss
- When My Child is Bullied
- While Doing Laundry
- Before a Family Trip
- Cultivating Sexual Faithfulness
- Stewarding My Body Well
That’s just a sampling of the 147 prayers in this book. You can also access the index in the back that categorizes the prayers by topic like ‘anxiety’, ‘comfort’, ‘culture’, ‘fear’, etc.
I appreciated the afterword and appendix that talk a little more about what prayer is for and what could hinder our prayers. The idea of creating a legacy of prayer really resonates with me even though I think I’m doing a terrible job of it right now.
Because I don’t like to pray out loud I know I’ve already missed a lot of great opportunities to pray more with my kids than I have. I worry they won’t even really know how to pray and I don’t want them to turn into me! So a lot of my prayers will be centered around asking for help and courage and motivation to be more intentional and purposeful with my prayers around my kids and trying to disciple them in prayer.
I have many memories of my own mom praying daily. I’m not sure my kids have those same perceptions about what I do with my time, at least yet. But I want them to know that prayer is important and commanded and I want them to know they grew up in a home covered in prayer.
Let me be clear: this book did not guilt me, it has encouraged me and reminded me how easy it can be to ‘pray without ceasing.’
Recommendation
I just really love the whole Mama Bear inventory. I’ve read their other books (THIS ONE and THIS ONE) and highly recommend them. They provide so many tools for parents to disciple their children and to answer hard questions and broach tough subjects as we point them to Christ. I cannot recommend their stuff enough.
Buy them because it’s not something you just read once and move on. It’s a reference and a resource and every parent should have them. This prayer book included. Although, one of their goals is that in using their book to help you pray that eventually you won’t need it anymore because you will have trained yourself in how to do it. At that point, then you can gift your copy to someone else.
So yes, I recommend this book one hundred percent. It’s enhanced and grown my ability to pray so much.
**Received a copy via Harvest House Publishing in exchange for an honest review**
I think this book is definitely worth owning, even if you’re not a mom, but especially if you are. It enriches your prayer life and gives words to all the things you want to pray but never knew how to. It also brings up things you didn’t realize you needed to pray for but are glad you can now.
I’ve been using this book for a couple months now. I would take one or two prayers a day, read through them, and then personalize the concept to my own life. Normally I’m a very distracted pray-er and not a very consistent one. I would lose focus or just not know what to pray about. My mind was either blank or too overwhelmingly full to know where to start. This book has really changed the way I’ve prayed. I’ve prayed for longer periods than I ever have before.
There are so many ways you can use this book. You can go through the book cover to cover and let it give you an area to focus. You can search for the type of prayer that resonates with you on a particular day. You can send these prayers to others you know are struggling. You can pray them on your own for other people. You can use them as launching points to talk to your kids about certain topics or teach them how they can pray about things they’re struggling with. You can also gift this to another expecting mom at a baby shower!
The prayers are divided up into 12 sections ranging from prayers about the self, your home, rhythms of life, things our kids will have to deal with, things you pray you never have to pray, things for church and school, and more.
Within each section they have prayers titled well to help you find what you need like:
- When God Feels Silent
- Pregnancy Loss
- When My Child is Bullied
- While Doing Laundry
- Before a Family Trip
- Cultivating Sexual Faithfulness
- Stewarding My Body Well
That’s just a sampling of the 147 prayers in this book. You can also access the index in the back that categorizes the prayers by topic like ‘anxiety’, ‘comfort’, ‘culture’, ‘fear’, etc.
I appreciated the afterword and appendix that talk a little more about what prayer is for and what could hinder our prayers. The idea of creating a legacy of prayer really resonates with me even though I think I’m doing a terrible job of it right now.
Because I don’t like to pray out loud I know I’ve already missed a lot of great opportunities to pray more with my kids than I have. I worry they won’t even really know how to pray and I don’t want them to turn into me! So a lot of my prayers will be centered around asking for help and courage and motivation to be more intentional and purposeful with my prayers around my kids and trying to disciple them in prayer.
I have many memories of my own mom praying daily. I’m not sure my kids have those same perceptions about what I do with my time, at least yet. But I want them to know that prayer is important and commanded and I want them to know they grew up in a home covered in prayer.
Let me be clear: this book did not guilt me, it has encouraged me and reminded me how easy it can be to ‘pray without ceasing.’
Recommendation
I just really love the whole Mama Bear inventory. I’ve read their other books (THIS ONE and THIS ONE) and highly recommend them. They provide so many tools for parents to disciple their children and to answer hard questions and broach tough subjects as we point them to Christ. I cannot recommend their stuff enough.
Buy them because it’s not something you just read once and move on. It’s a reference and a resource and every parent should have them. This prayer book included. Although, one of their goals is that in using their book to help you pray that eventually you won’t need it anymore because you will have trained yourself in how to do it. At that point, then you can gift your copy to someone else.
So yes, I recommend this book one hundred percent. It’s enhanced and grown my ability to pray so much.
**Received a copy via Harvest House Publishing in exchange for an honest review**
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“‘Sometimes I think I sold my soul for a handful of penny candy— as if some unseen devil heard Florence’s wish and granted it, using my talents as a vehicle for evil.’”
This is not my typical genre— gothic horror—and there were definitely parts that were not my favorite, but it had some redeeming qualities. I liked the second half a lot better than the first half.
I’ve probably only read a few ‘horror’ books so I don’t know what is normal for that type of read. For this book there were supernatural things happening and hauntings, but it wasn’t a super dark or gory story. Because it was set in 1925 the haunting part felt more like an atmospheric element than anything that was supposed to make me feel scared.
I would say it’s more gothic than horror.
The premise: Sadie, on the wrong end of a terminated affair with a married man leaves Kansas City, seizing on the opportunity to care for her great aunt in Arkansas, Marguerite, who is deteriorating with dementia.
“Marguerite was spirited. A chimera. An artist who broke rules and paved her own path in life.”
Family secrets come to light when Sadie experiences the supernatural through her aunt’s haunting portraits she’s painted of people now deceased. Sadie can see them walking in the house and can even be sucked into the paintings— portals to the past.
“‘This old house holds many ghosts, my dear. Some of them are mine.’”
The lure of the paintings centers on Weston Chase, the subject of one of the portraits who is also a womanizer. He seduces Sadie to carry on an intimate relationship through the painting portal.
“Weston Chase. Like something out of a tawdry romance. He’s a hunter, my dear. He chases. You fell right into his snare. But there’s a price to his pleasures. A price you’ll never be able to pay.”
But Sadie soon realizes something happened in Marguerite’s past that reveals these hauntings are part of a curse that must somehow be reversed before the rage of Weston kills them all.
“‘There’s a reason for her anger. Her pain. She just has trouble remembering what caused all of it.’”
“For the past few weeks, so much of what I thought I knew about my family has changed, as if I’ve been looking at them through distorted glass for all these years. Now I see them more clearly. How their well-bred ways were a facade for a well-hidden darkness.”
Okay, so the first half of the book felt largely unpleasant to read. Sadie was not my kind of girl. Carrying on an affair with a married man and then entering into another lustful endeavor with a ghost knowing the dangers surrounding it felt just very immature and selfish. I thought the whole book was just going to be about these supernatural escapades and how it deteriorates Sadie’s perception of reality. And if that’s all it was— and it did feel like it wasn’t really going anywhere— it was going to be a waste of my time.
Once I pushed through that part, we see some character development in Sadie as she recognizes that what she is doing is wrong.
“I’ve realized I’m not really in love with Weston. I’m addicted to him.”
She starts to have feelings for Beckett, the man on grounds who helps care for Marguerite— who is single by the way and not a ghost— and realizes what real love looks like.
So the main conflict becomes Weston’s rage when Sadie stops the relationship. He haunts the house and causes chaos and destruction. Even when they destroy the painting, it shows back up in the house. How can they stop him?
Then we have the portraits of the other people in the past that start showing Sadie Marguerite’s memories. Something terrible happened on a bluff in California and may be the key to reversing the curse if she can figure out what it was.
“‘But there are some things I’ll never tell you, child. I may be losing my mind. But I’ll take some of my secrets to the grave.’”
“The only way you’ll ever be free of him is by discovering the root of the curse. You must confront the wrongs of the past and make atonement— or the one who wronged him must, if they’re still alive.’”
I was glad when what I thought was just going to be a story about lust turned into more of a mystery about what happened in the past and that it was more centered around Marguerite than Sadie. Did she really have dementia? What memories could we trust? How do you kill a ghost?
The tension and conflict in the book built up a lot more and I really liked the ending. I thought it had a good balance of justice and redemption and allowing the grief of loss to linger. It’s not a completely happy ending, but it did resolve in a way that was satisfying.
Sadie’s selfishness turns to authentic love and care for her aunt and Beckett. She bears the burden of a lot of loss in her life, including her brother dying at a young age from illness and finding her father after he committed suicide on the day of her coming out party. Having been unable to save either of them, she feels compelled to do all she can for her aunt.
There is a discussion to be had here in terms of abusive relationships.
“Ted and Weston share many similarities. Passionate. Possessive. Dominant. And perhaps… duplicitous… What Weston offers me is familiar. But familiarity isn’t always good. Familiar can be dangerous.”
I was glad to see this growth in Sadie— not only that she recognized she didn’t want to be a mistress but that she realized she turned around and pursued a similar man, out of comfort of the familiar, which is not always good. Well, also he was a ghost, but you get it.
In the author’s note, Paulette says she was actually setting out to write a book about caregiving since she had some personal experience with it and wanted to highlight the challenges caregivers face and how our loved ones “teach us about living well and dying well in the process.”
But as she was writing, it kind of morphed into something more:
“While this is still a story about caregiving, it’s also one about generational trauma, and how the echoes of our actions filter down to our descendants.”
I thought this was interesting because I’ve recently been listening to Alisa Childer’s podcast series talking about demonic oppression and generational curses so for a generational curse to pop up in a fiction book I was reading was timely.
One of the ways Sadie attempts to combat Weston was to see a fortune teller where she got something to sprinkle in doorways, a charm to wear, and a prayer to recite. These are similar things to what is discussed in the podcast— what is demonic oppression and how do you deal with it?
I don’t usually choose to read books that have supernatural elements because some things depict reality and others dramatize or exaggerate for the story. I don’t want to romanticize, trivialize, or catastrophize the spiritual world.
If you are a Christian reader and you’re not sure what to think of things like this, I would recommend Childers’ podcast as a launching point to thinking more about these kinds of things.
Supernatural world aside, I do think that there is something practical to be said of family legacies and the things we pass down to future generations. Paulette chose to depict this using a curse. I don’t believe in curses, but I do think that how we parent our children is relative to how we were parented and will be relevant to how our children will parent their children. Abuse has been seen to be passed down. How we treat people. Our beliefs. Our way of seeing the world. Our values and priorities. The way we use our time and our money. All of these things influence future generations for good or bad.
And it’s not to say we can’t make mistakes, but what do we do with our mistakes? Do we cover them up or lie about them? Or do we confess and repent and teach people from our own mistakes?
It is right to think about the legacy we might leave for others. Are we leaving them a blessing or a burden?
A couple other random comments:
- I wish we had gotten more information as to what turned the paintings into portals. Was it something in the way Marguerite painted, was there an event that triggered it? Perhaps it would have been too complicated to integrate well into the book, but it’s something that just has to be accepted and I would have preferred a better explanation.
- We never did tie up the comments surrounding the Blaylock family and the death that occurred in the house. Was that just to add to the eerie vibes or was it meant to be some sort of plot point that got forgotten?
- I agree with another reviewer that I’m not sure I really felt the chemistry between Beckett and Sadie. I was not wanting the lustful connection Sadie had with Weston, but I do think there was something missing from Beckett’s character to connect the readers to him and Sadie’s relationship.
- I will also include this quote from the author’s note for readers more savvy than me: “Savvy readers will notice my nods to The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier, all of which helped inspire certain aspects of this story.”
I actually hated Wuthering Heights and am not a big ‘classics’ fan in general so I obviously didn’t pick up on the cues, but maybe you can!
- This book does have a touch of time travel and the idea that we have to be careful changing the past because we don’t know what it will affect in the future. That’s the thing about mistakes and regrets. They still shape who we are and our experiences that lead us to people and discoveries that we otherwise wouldn’t have.
- Based on the author’s content warning printed at the beginning of the book, she attempted to bring a lot of things to bear in this story. Some more so than others. I suppose it makes for book club discussions, but sometimes I think authors can try to shove too many hot button topics into one book. To be honest, though, most of these were so subtle that I didn’t even notice them or feel overwhelmed by them … other than when I read the whole list before starting. Luckily, I forgot about them pretty quickly.
Recommendation
This one is hard to know how to recommend. I’m not a fan of the lust and sexual content, or the first half of the book in general, but I was glad with the turn the book took and some of the themes that eventually shone through.
I think there are both reasons to read it and reasons not to read it. I think I’ve provided enough information for you to know if this is a good fit for you.
[Content Advisory: 0 f- or s-words; there is sexual content, nothing drawn out but a few sex scenes and lust is a main plot point; supernatural elements and a demon/ghost; LGBTQ+- Marguerite had several female lovers]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This is not my typical genre— gothic horror—and there were definitely parts that were not my favorite, but it had some redeeming qualities. I liked the second half a lot better than the first half.
I’ve probably only read a few ‘horror’ books so I don’t know what is normal for that type of read. For this book there were supernatural things happening and hauntings, but it wasn’t a super dark or gory story. Because it was set in 1925 the haunting part felt more like an atmospheric element than anything that was supposed to make me feel scared.
I would say it’s more gothic than horror.
The premise: Sadie, on the wrong end of a terminated affair with a married man leaves Kansas City, seizing on the opportunity to care for her great aunt in Arkansas, Marguerite, who is deteriorating with dementia.
“Marguerite was spirited. A chimera. An artist who broke rules and paved her own path in life.”
Family secrets come to light when Sadie experiences the supernatural through her aunt’s haunting portraits she’s painted of people now deceased. Sadie can see them walking in the house and can even be sucked into the paintings— portals to the past.
“‘This old house holds many ghosts, my dear. Some of them are mine.’”
The lure of the paintings centers on Weston Chase, the subject of one of the portraits who is also a womanizer. He seduces Sadie to carry on an intimate relationship through the painting portal.
“Weston Chase. Like something out of a tawdry romance. He’s a hunter, my dear. He chases. You fell right into his snare. But there’s a price to his pleasures. A price you’ll never be able to pay.”
But Sadie soon realizes something happened in Marguerite’s past that reveals these hauntings are part of a curse that must somehow be reversed before the rage of Weston kills them all.
“‘There’s a reason for her anger. Her pain. She just has trouble remembering what caused all of it.’”
“For the past few weeks, so much of what I thought I knew about my family has changed, as if I’ve been looking at them through distorted glass for all these years. Now I see them more clearly. How their well-bred ways were a facade for a well-hidden darkness.”
Okay, so the first half of the book felt largely unpleasant to read. Sadie was not my kind of girl. Carrying on an affair with a married man and then entering into another lustful endeavor with a ghost knowing the dangers surrounding it felt just very immature and selfish. I thought the whole book was just going to be about these supernatural escapades and how it deteriorates Sadie’s perception of reality. And if that’s all it was— and it did feel like it wasn’t really going anywhere— it was going to be a waste of my time.
Once I pushed through that part, we see some character development in Sadie as she recognizes that what she is doing is wrong.
“I’ve realized I’m not really in love with Weston. I’m addicted to him.”
She starts to have feelings for Beckett, the man on grounds who helps care for Marguerite— who is single by the way and not a ghost— and realizes what real love looks like.
So the main conflict becomes Weston’s rage when Sadie stops the relationship. He haunts the house and causes chaos and destruction. Even when they destroy the painting, it shows back up in the house. How can they stop him?
Then we have the portraits of the other people in the past that start showing Sadie Marguerite’s memories. Something terrible happened on a bluff in California and may be the key to reversing the curse if she can figure out what it was.
“‘But there are some things I’ll never tell you, child. I may be losing my mind. But I’ll take some of my secrets to the grave.’”
“The only way you’ll ever be free of him is by discovering the root of the curse. You must confront the wrongs of the past and make atonement— or the one who wronged him must, if they’re still alive.’”
I was glad when what I thought was just going to be a story about lust turned into more of a mystery about what happened in the past and that it was more centered around Marguerite than Sadie. Did she really have dementia? What memories could we trust? How do you kill a ghost?
The tension and conflict in the book built up a lot more and I really liked the ending. I thought it had a good balance of justice and redemption and allowing the grief of loss to linger. It’s not a completely happy ending, but it did resolve in a way that was satisfying.
Sadie’s selfishness turns to authentic love and care for her aunt and Beckett. She bears the burden of a lot of loss in her life, including her brother dying at a young age from illness and finding her father after he committed suicide on the day of her coming out party. Having been unable to save either of them, she feels compelled to do all she can for her aunt.
There is a discussion to be had here in terms of abusive relationships.
“Ted and Weston share many similarities. Passionate. Possessive. Dominant. And perhaps… duplicitous… What Weston offers me is familiar. But familiarity isn’t always good. Familiar can be dangerous.”
I was glad to see this growth in Sadie— not only that she recognized she didn’t want to be a mistress but that she realized she turned around and pursued a similar man, out of comfort of the familiar, which is not always good. Well, also he was a ghost, but you get it.
In the author’s note, Paulette says she was actually setting out to write a book about caregiving since she had some personal experience with it and wanted to highlight the challenges caregivers face and how our loved ones “teach us about living well and dying well in the process.”
But as she was writing, it kind of morphed into something more:
“While this is still a story about caregiving, it’s also one about generational trauma, and how the echoes of our actions filter down to our descendants.”
I thought this was interesting because I’ve recently been listening to Alisa Childer’s podcast series talking about demonic oppression and generational curses so for a generational curse to pop up in a fiction book I was reading was timely.
One of the ways Sadie attempts to combat Weston was to see a fortune teller where she got something to sprinkle in doorways, a charm to wear, and a prayer to recite. These are similar things to what is discussed in the podcast— what is demonic oppression and how do you deal with it?
I don’t usually choose to read books that have supernatural elements because some things depict reality and others dramatize or exaggerate for the story. I don’t want to romanticize, trivialize, or catastrophize the spiritual world.
If you are a Christian reader and you’re not sure what to think of things like this, I would recommend Childers’ podcast as a launching point to thinking more about these kinds of things.
Supernatural world aside, I do think that there is something practical to be said of family legacies and the things we pass down to future generations. Paulette chose to depict this using a curse. I don’t believe in curses, but I do think that how we parent our children is relative to how we were parented and will be relevant to how our children will parent their children. Abuse has been seen to be passed down. How we treat people. Our beliefs. Our way of seeing the world. Our values and priorities. The way we use our time and our money. All of these things influence future generations for good or bad.
And it’s not to say we can’t make mistakes, but what do we do with our mistakes? Do we cover them up or lie about them? Or do we confess and repent and teach people from our own mistakes?
It is right to think about the legacy we might leave for others. Are we leaving them a blessing or a burden?
A couple other random comments:
- I wish we had gotten more information as to what turned the paintings into portals. Was it something in the way Marguerite painted, was there an event that triggered it? Perhaps it would have been too complicated to integrate well into the book, but it’s something that just has to be accepted and I would have preferred a better explanation.
- We never did tie up the comments surrounding the Blaylock family and the death that occurred in the house. Was that just to add to the eerie vibes or was it meant to be some sort of plot point that got forgotten?
- I agree with another reviewer that I’m not sure I really felt the chemistry between Beckett and Sadie. I was not wanting the lustful connection Sadie had with Weston, but I do think there was something missing from Beckett’s character to connect the readers to him and Sadie’s relationship.
- I will also include this quote from the author’s note for readers more savvy than me: “Savvy readers will notice my nods to The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier, all of which helped inspire certain aspects of this story.”
I actually hated Wuthering Heights and am not a big ‘classics’ fan in general so I obviously didn’t pick up on the cues, but maybe you can!
- This book does have a touch of time travel and the idea that we have to be careful changing the past because we don’t know what it will affect in the future. That’s the thing about mistakes and regrets. They still shape who we are and our experiences that lead us to people and discoveries that we otherwise wouldn’t have.
- Based on the author’s content warning printed at the beginning of the book, she attempted to bring a lot of things to bear in this story. Some more so than others. I suppose it makes for book club discussions, but sometimes I think authors can try to shove too many hot button topics into one book. To be honest, though, most of these were so subtle that I didn’t even notice them or feel overwhelmed by them … other than when I read the whole list before starting. Luckily, I forgot about them pretty quickly.
Recommendation
This one is hard to know how to recommend. I’m not a fan of the lust and sexual content, or the first half of the book in general, but I was glad with the turn the book took and some of the themes that eventually shone through.
I think there are both reasons to read it and reasons not to read it. I think I’ve provided enough information for you to know if this is a good fit for you.
[Content Advisory: 0 f- or s-words; there is sexual content, nothing drawn out but a few sex scenes and lust is a main plot point; supernatural elements and a demon/ghost; LGBTQ+- Marguerite had several female lovers]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
“If you were accused of honoring the Holy Spirit, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”
[This is a shortened review- the full review can be found HERE]
Lots to glean from these pages as is typical of Packer’s books! Definitely one that would benefit from multiple readings if you can.
Unfortunately, I think that this book may not be as accessible as some of his others like Knowing God. I think many that begin to read might not stick with it. It’s definitely one you can’t read distracted. Even when I was really focused there were parts that I had to reread a few times to grasp.
Hopefully this review can help those who wish to read it— offer some framework and highlight some of his main points you can filter the book through. I also think that a pastoral take and consideration of this book will differ from a lay person’s view because pastors have had to navigate congregations of members with different views that lay people may not even be aware of.
I was really interested in what he said about charismatic practices as I’ve been skeptical of a lot of things. Packer affirmed some of my caution but also offered insights that helped me to think about those things in a different way.
Even though he addresses some highly divisive things, I don’t think this book made him any enemies. He approaches each view in a balanced way, acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses or vulnerabilities of each.
I will also say here that the book is full of Bible references to support all that he says; I didn’t include all of them throughout my review but want readers to know that this is a book written from reading out of the Bible not into the Bible.
The book I read was a re-print of the 2005 revision. The original was written in 1984 as a response to the charismatic ‘tidal wave’ that came across in Britain in the 1960s. There became divisions about what the ‘main role’ of the Spirit was as different groups focused on different aspects of the Spirit’s work and how to understand things like the gifts of the Spirit and speaking in tongues.
Packer said that he wrote this book to do four things:
1) restate the Christ-centered news of the Holy Spirit’s new covenant ministry, to counter the spiritual Spirit-centered news that was spreading
2) reaffirm the biblical call to holiness, in the face of the distortions and neglect from which it had long suffered
3) assess the charismatic movement and its claims even-handedly
4) show that in any case the charismatic vision falls short of the fullness of revival according to the Scriptures, so that however grateful for this movement we may be we must look beyond it.
Part One
“What is the essence, heart, and core of the Spirit’s work today?”
Packer describes several camps of thought, however subtle, that emphasize different aspects of the Spirit’s work. He first shows how these are all founded on a biblical basis of truth and all have importance in terms of how we look at the Spirit, but when we overfocus or take them beyond where they were meant to go it can turn into bad theology.
Power: “giving the ability to do what you know you ought to do and indeed want to do, but feel that you lack the strength for” [Keswick teaching falls here]
the critique: “To start with, it blurs the distinction between manipulating divine power at one’s own will (which is magic) and experiencing it as one obeys God’s will (which is religion).”
Performance: “exercising spiritual gifts… preaching, teaching, prophecy, tongues, healing”
the critique: “any mindset which treats the Spirit’s gifts (ability and willingness to run around and do things) as more important than his fruit (Christlike character in personal life) is spiritually wrongheaded and needs correcting.”
Purification: “cleansing his children from sin’s defilement and pollution by enabling them to resist temptation and do what is right.”
the critique: “Their tendency is to grow legalistic, making tight rules for themselves and others about abstaining from things indifferent, imposing rigid and restrictive behavior patterns as bulwarks against worldliness and attaching great importance to observing these man-made taboos.”
Presentation: “making us aware of things” [Bishop J.V. Taylor]
the critique: “it takes more to constitute real, valid saving knowledge of Jesus than simply being able to mouth his name… knowledge of Christ must be measured, among other texts, by how much of the New Testament teaching about Christ is or is not embraced.”
So while none of these are entirely wrong, imbalances in our thinking creates what he calls a “smudgy” understanding about the Spirit and can thus stifle His ability to work in our lives.
Packer offers a way of looking at the Spirit’s work in a more unified way. He calls it: Presence.
“The distinctive, constant, basic ministry of the Holy Spirit under the new covenant is so to mediate Christ’s presence to believers— that is, to give them such knowledge of his presence with them as their Savior, Lord, and God.”
Then it would follow that we would grow in fellowship with Jesus, be transformed to look more like Christ, and have assurance that we are loved, redeemed, and adopted into his family, encompassing all the other focuses listed above.
Another way to look at it is this:
“It is as if the Spirit stands behind us, throwing light over our shoulder, on Jesus, who stands facing us… The Spirit, we might say, is the matchmaker, the celestial marriage broker, whose role it is to bring us and Christ together and ensure that we stay together.”
Part Two
There are four chapters called ‘Mapping the Spirit’s Path’ that talk about holiness and the charismatic life.
“The pursuit of holiness is… a vital element in Christian mission strategy today. The world’s greatest need is the personal holiness of Christian people.”
He defines holiness as:
“Holiness is in essence obeying God, living to God and for God, imitating God, keeping his law, taking his side against sin, doing righteousness, performing good works, following Christ’s teaching and example, worshiping God in the Spirit, loving and serving God and men out of reverence for Christ.”
He critiques evangelicals for making holiness secondary. Saying we’ve become too busy in activism with little regard for our ‘inner lives’ just like the Pharisees.
He then goes through the principles of holiness (i.e. the nature, the context, the root, the agent, experience, rule, and heart of holiness)
One of the things he talks about that stuck out to me in this part was in regards to repentance: “Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.”
I also liked how he said that one of the ways by which the Spirit works in our lives is through helping us form holy habits. This is the counter to the ‘let go and let God’ approach and recognizes that the Spirit works through naturally formed habits and it doesn’t always (or usually) have to be a supernatural ‘spiritual experience’ to see the Spirit working.
He spends a chapter here discussing three views of holiness concerning the question- How do we achieve holiness?
I’ll try to make this part brief; it’s obviously more detailed in the book.
The Augustinian view, held by Lutheran and Reformed teachers (Calvin, Owen, Ryle), is based on the principle “that God out of grace (meaning, free, unmerited love to us sinners) and by grace (meaning the Spirit active in our personal lives) must and does work in us all that we ever achieve of the faith, hope, love, worship, and obedience that he requires… God gives what he commands.”
This view emphasizes humility in that we know we are sinful and cannot do anything good on our own, activity in that we must be zealous for good works doing all we can, and change in that we should expect to see transformation even as we acknowledge the daily struggle and failures.
It could be summarized by Phil. 2:12-13 which says- “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
The Wesleyan Perfectionism view holds that there is a second work of grace, post-conversion, in which “all sinful motivation is rooted out of a Christian’s heart.” and comes from teachings of John Wesley— also held by John Fletcher, William Booth, and Oswald Chambers— that actually may have been misinterpreted because of Wesley’s use of the word ‘perfection’. Packer thinks the term ‘total love’ would make more sense for this belief.
This view focuses on love of God and love for others as evidence of this second act of grace where we no longer desire to sin because we are so overcome by the love of God towards us; any sin you commit going forward would be involuntary because you would no longer voluntarily sin because of how much you love God. However, there is no biblical grounds to be confident that God would bestow that kind of transformation this side of heaven, indeed, our own reality and experiences shows us that sin is always creeping at the door. This view also creates uncertainty for Christians who can never seem to be ‘perfect.’
The Keswick teaching is similar to Wesleyan Perfectionism in that they both uphold a belief about attaining sinlessness on Earth. However, Keswick teaching denies human ability to do it. In this view it’s about ‘letting go and letting God’, trusting and having faith that God will keep you from sin. You still remove voluntary sin from your life but through a passive yielding to the Spirit to attain it.
One of the critiques of this view is their use of Paul’s words on ‘surrender.’ [Rom 6:13; 12:1] Packer says surrender here “is not meaning we lapse into inaction but rather that we should report for duty and set no limits to what Christ by his spirit through his Word may direct us to do.” We are not called to be passive, waiting for the Holy Spirit to pop up and change us, but that we are to “resolutely labor by prayer and effort to obey the law of Christ and mortify sin.”
Packer acknowledges that the draw for the Wesleyan and Keswick views is that these views attempt to encourage real hearts that struggle with the ongoing battle of sin and our desire to be free from it and victorious over it. Yet, the reality is that sin still dwells in our hearts and the sanctification process requires an ongoing battle, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to continue to resist temptation and to obey Christ’s teachings, until our promised glorification after this life.
Some might argue that they’ve seen or experienced lives changed by the Wesleyan or Keswick teaching and so doesn’t that mean something? Packer replies that 1) many might not actually get the complete teaching of that particular view but just an understanding of faith in Jesus and his power working in our lives and that 2) “God is very gracious and truly gives himself to all who truly seek him, never mind whether their theology is good or not so good.”
So then does any of this “justify the inaccuracies” of the teachings?
He says: “No. It is not much of a recommendation when all you can say is that this teaching may help you if you do not take its details too seriously… [and] if you do take its details seriously, it will tend not to help you but to destroy you.”
The details of our theology matter. He likens it to car parts being recalled for being faulty. Sure you may be able to drive, but would you want to be driving around in a car with a defective part? Pastorally, defective theology needs to be recalled and corrected.
Charismatic practices/beliefs can often be divisive in churches. What spiritual gifts should we expect to see today? Can/should people speak in tongues? What should worship look like? What should conversion feel like? What should we think about charismatic prophesying?
These are the questions Packer delves into and I can’t go into it all here— especially the speaking in tongues and prophesying parts as I believe his arguments are probably best read within the context of his entire book in detail.
While Packer does have some critiques of the charismatic movement, he spends time listing twelve positive aspects of it including Christ-centeredness, joyfulness, prayerfulness, communal living, and generous giving.
“No type of Christian spirituality is free from dangers, weaknesses, and threats to maturity arising from its very strengths, and it is not as if Christian maturity were overwhelmingly visible in non charismatic circles today.”
He challenges non-charismatic churches to learn from charismatics by being more exuberant and joyful in their worship, not to be passive and relying on their pastors to ‘do everything’ but to be active and fervent in prayer, using our gifts to serve, and being more open to the power of the Spirit at work in their lives. To seek to encourage congregation members to find a role to play in the church instead of being a consumer.
He admonishes any church that feels vindicated that they don’t have the ‘Corinthian’ problem and I agree that a lot of churches should be less orderly if it means the Spirit has risen them up!
“If our reaction as readers is merely to preen ourselves and feel glad because our churches are free from Corinthian disorders, we are fools indeed. The Corinthian disorders were due to an uncontrolled overflow of Holy Spirit life. Many churches today are orderly simply because they are asleep, and with some one fears that it is the sleep of death. It is no great thing to have order in a cemetery!”
He challenges charismatic churches to be more committed to seeking solid theology and a biblical basis for all that they do, to focus less on performance which often creates group pressure to conform in physical and emotional experience, and to be less focused on man-centered or supernatural experiences and more open to God working in the natural.
As for the gifts of tongues, prophesying, and healing, Packer provides biblical arguments for how what is practiced today cannot be convincingly viewed as a ‘restoration’ of what was practiced in Scripture by the apostles. However, he doesn’t necessarily condemn their practice.
For example, of glossolalia (tongues), he says:
“It is often urged that since God’s goal is full integration of the individual under fully self-conscious, rational control, the overall pattern of ongoing sanctification must involve steady recovery of such control as we move deeper into what Scripture calls sincerity simplicity, and single mindedness (Phil 3:13, 2 Cor 11:3, James 1:7-8) In that case, there can be no place for glossolalia, in which rational control of the vocal chords is given up BUT … it does not seem inconceivable that the Spirit might prompt this relaxation of rational control at surface level in order to strengthen control at a deeper level… In this way glossolalia could be a good gift of God for some people at least, on the basis that anything that helps you to concentrate on God, practice his presence, and open yourself to his influence is a good gift.”
You can find his nine conclusions for these things on pg 269-276 (end of Chapter 6).
Generally speaking, Packer applies both a credal and a moral test for the charismatic movement and finds the best practicers of this movement to be aligned with a right theology of the Incarnate Son (credal) and to have a desire to obey God’s commands, avoid sin, and love others (moral).
He reminds us that you don’t have to have perfect theology to experience God in a real way. That is true. Yet, we should be applying these two tests to anything we encounter because not all charismatic churches or experiences fall under ‘best practices.’ We should always be checking beliefs and practices against Scripture in any church we attend and make sure to give God’s Word supremacy over experience because He is our authority in his revealed Word.
[This is a shortened review- the full review can be found HERE]
Lots to glean from these pages as is typical of Packer’s books! Definitely one that would benefit from multiple readings if you can.
Unfortunately, I think that this book may not be as accessible as some of his others like Knowing God. I think many that begin to read might not stick with it. It’s definitely one you can’t read distracted. Even when I was really focused there were parts that I had to reread a few times to grasp.
Hopefully this review can help those who wish to read it— offer some framework and highlight some of his main points you can filter the book through. I also think that a pastoral take and consideration of this book will differ from a lay person’s view because pastors have had to navigate congregations of members with different views that lay people may not even be aware of.
I was really interested in what he said about charismatic practices as I’ve been skeptical of a lot of things. Packer affirmed some of my caution but also offered insights that helped me to think about those things in a different way.
Even though he addresses some highly divisive things, I don’t think this book made him any enemies. He approaches each view in a balanced way, acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses or vulnerabilities of each.
I will also say here that the book is full of Bible references to support all that he says; I didn’t include all of them throughout my review but want readers to know that this is a book written from reading out of the Bible not into the Bible.
The book I read was a re-print of the 2005 revision. The original was written in 1984 as a response to the charismatic ‘tidal wave’ that came across in Britain in the 1960s. There became divisions about what the ‘main role’ of the Spirit was as different groups focused on different aspects of the Spirit’s work and how to understand things like the gifts of the Spirit and speaking in tongues.
Packer said that he wrote this book to do four things:
1) restate the Christ-centered news of the Holy Spirit’s new covenant ministry, to counter the spiritual Spirit-centered news that was spreading
2) reaffirm the biblical call to holiness, in the face of the distortions and neglect from which it had long suffered
3) assess the charismatic movement and its claims even-handedly
4) show that in any case the charismatic vision falls short of the fullness of revival according to the Scriptures, so that however grateful for this movement we may be we must look beyond it.
Part One
“What is the essence, heart, and core of the Spirit’s work today?”
Packer describes several camps of thought, however subtle, that emphasize different aspects of the Spirit’s work. He first shows how these are all founded on a biblical basis of truth and all have importance in terms of how we look at the Spirit, but when we overfocus or take them beyond where they were meant to go it can turn into bad theology.
Power: “giving the ability to do what you know you ought to do and indeed want to do, but feel that you lack the strength for” [Keswick teaching falls here]
the critique: “To start with, it blurs the distinction between manipulating divine power at one’s own will (which is magic) and experiencing it as one obeys God’s will (which is religion).”
Performance: “exercising spiritual gifts… preaching, teaching, prophecy, tongues, healing”
the critique: “any mindset which treats the Spirit’s gifts (ability and willingness to run around and do things) as more important than his fruit (Christlike character in personal life) is spiritually wrongheaded and needs correcting.”
Purification: “cleansing his children from sin’s defilement and pollution by enabling them to resist temptation and do what is right.”
the critique: “Their tendency is to grow legalistic, making tight rules for themselves and others about abstaining from things indifferent, imposing rigid and restrictive behavior patterns as bulwarks against worldliness and attaching great importance to observing these man-made taboos.”
Presentation: “making us aware of things” [Bishop J.V. Taylor]
the critique: “it takes more to constitute real, valid saving knowledge of Jesus than simply being able to mouth his name… knowledge of Christ must be measured, among other texts, by how much of the New Testament teaching about Christ is or is not embraced.”
So while none of these are entirely wrong, imbalances in our thinking creates what he calls a “smudgy” understanding about the Spirit and can thus stifle His ability to work in our lives.
Packer offers a way of looking at the Spirit’s work in a more unified way. He calls it: Presence.
“The distinctive, constant, basic ministry of the Holy Spirit under the new covenant is so to mediate Christ’s presence to believers— that is, to give them such knowledge of his presence with them as their Savior, Lord, and God.”
Then it would follow that we would grow in fellowship with Jesus, be transformed to look more like Christ, and have assurance that we are loved, redeemed, and adopted into his family, encompassing all the other focuses listed above.
Another way to look at it is this:
“It is as if the Spirit stands behind us, throwing light over our shoulder, on Jesus, who stands facing us… The Spirit, we might say, is the matchmaker, the celestial marriage broker, whose role it is to bring us and Christ together and ensure that we stay together.”
Part Two
There are four chapters called ‘Mapping the Spirit’s Path’ that talk about holiness and the charismatic life.
“The pursuit of holiness is… a vital element in Christian mission strategy today. The world’s greatest need is the personal holiness of Christian people.”
He defines holiness as:
“Holiness is in essence obeying God, living to God and for God, imitating God, keeping his law, taking his side against sin, doing righteousness, performing good works, following Christ’s teaching and example, worshiping God in the Spirit, loving and serving God and men out of reverence for Christ.”
He critiques evangelicals for making holiness secondary. Saying we’ve become too busy in activism with little regard for our ‘inner lives’ just like the Pharisees.
He then goes through the principles of holiness (i.e. the nature, the context, the root, the agent, experience, rule, and heart of holiness)
One of the things he talks about that stuck out to me in this part was in regards to repentance: “Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.”
I also liked how he said that one of the ways by which the Spirit works in our lives is through helping us form holy habits. This is the counter to the ‘let go and let God’ approach and recognizes that the Spirit works through naturally formed habits and it doesn’t always (or usually) have to be a supernatural ‘spiritual experience’ to see the Spirit working.
He spends a chapter here discussing three views of holiness concerning the question- How do we achieve holiness?
I’ll try to make this part brief; it’s obviously more detailed in the book.
The Augustinian view, held by Lutheran and Reformed teachers (Calvin, Owen, Ryle), is based on the principle “that God out of grace (meaning, free, unmerited love to us sinners) and by grace (meaning the Spirit active in our personal lives) must and does work in us all that we ever achieve of the faith, hope, love, worship, and obedience that he requires… God gives what he commands.”
This view emphasizes humility in that we know we are sinful and cannot do anything good on our own, activity in that we must be zealous for good works doing all we can, and change in that we should expect to see transformation even as we acknowledge the daily struggle and failures.
It could be summarized by Phil. 2:12-13 which says- “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
The Wesleyan Perfectionism view holds that there is a second work of grace, post-conversion, in which “all sinful motivation is rooted out of a Christian’s heart.” and comes from teachings of John Wesley— also held by John Fletcher, William Booth, and Oswald Chambers— that actually may have been misinterpreted because of Wesley’s use of the word ‘perfection’. Packer thinks the term ‘total love’ would make more sense for this belief.
This view focuses on love of God and love for others as evidence of this second act of grace where we no longer desire to sin because we are so overcome by the love of God towards us; any sin you commit going forward would be involuntary because you would no longer voluntarily sin because of how much you love God. However, there is no biblical grounds to be confident that God would bestow that kind of transformation this side of heaven, indeed, our own reality and experiences shows us that sin is always creeping at the door. This view also creates uncertainty for Christians who can never seem to be ‘perfect.’
The Keswick teaching is similar to Wesleyan Perfectionism in that they both uphold a belief about attaining sinlessness on Earth. However, Keswick teaching denies human ability to do it. In this view it’s about ‘letting go and letting God’, trusting and having faith that God will keep you from sin. You still remove voluntary sin from your life but through a passive yielding to the Spirit to attain it.
One of the critiques of this view is their use of Paul’s words on ‘surrender.’ [Rom 6:13; 12:1] Packer says surrender here “is not meaning we lapse into inaction but rather that we should report for duty and set no limits to what Christ by his spirit through his Word may direct us to do.” We are not called to be passive, waiting for the Holy Spirit to pop up and change us, but that we are to “resolutely labor by prayer and effort to obey the law of Christ and mortify sin.”
Packer acknowledges that the draw for the Wesleyan and Keswick views is that these views attempt to encourage real hearts that struggle with the ongoing battle of sin and our desire to be free from it and victorious over it. Yet, the reality is that sin still dwells in our hearts and the sanctification process requires an ongoing battle, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to continue to resist temptation and to obey Christ’s teachings, until our promised glorification after this life.
Some might argue that they’ve seen or experienced lives changed by the Wesleyan or Keswick teaching and so doesn’t that mean something? Packer replies that 1) many might not actually get the complete teaching of that particular view but just an understanding of faith in Jesus and his power working in our lives and that 2) “God is very gracious and truly gives himself to all who truly seek him, never mind whether their theology is good or not so good.”
So then does any of this “justify the inaccuracies” of the teachings?
He says: “No. It is not much of a recommendation when all you can say is that this teaching may help you if you do not take its details too seriously… [and] if you do take its details seriously, it will tend not to help you but to destroy you.”
The details of our theology matter. He likens it to car parts being recalled for being faulty. Sure you may be able to drive, but would you want to be driving around in a car with a defective part? Pastorally, defective theology needs to be recalled and corrected.
Charismatic practices/beliefs can often be divisive in churches. What spiritual gifts should we expect to see today? Can/should people speak in tongues? What should worship look like? What should conversion feel like? What should we think about charismatic prophesying?
These are the questions Packer delves into and I can’t go into it all here— especially the speaking in tongues and prophesying parts as I believe his arguments are probably best read within the context of his entire book in detail.
While Packer does have some critiques of the charismatic movement, he spends time listing twelve positive aspects of it including Christ-centeredness, joyfulness, prayerfulness, communal living, and generous giving.
“No type of Christian spirituality is free from dangers, weaknesses, and threats to maturity arising from its very strengths, and it is not as if Christian maturity were overwhelmingly visible in non charismatic circles today.”
He challenges non-charismatic churches to learn from charismatics by being more exuberant and joyful in their worship, not to be passive and relying on their pastors to ‘do everything’ but to be active and fervent in prayer, using our gifts to serve, and being more open to the power of the Spirit at work in their lives. To seek to encourage congregation members to find a role to play in the church instead of being a consumer.
He admonishes any church that feels vindicated that they don’t have the ‘Corinthian’ problem and I agree that a lot of churches should be less orderly if it means the Spirit has risen them up!
“If our reaction as readers is merely to preen ourselves and feel glad because our churches are free from Corinthian disorders, we are fools indeed. The Corinthian disorders were due to an uncontrolled overflow of Holy Spirit life. Many churches today are orderly simply because they are asleep, and with some one fears that it is the sleep of death. It is no great thing to have order in a cemetery!”
He challenges charismatic churches to be more committed to seeking solid theology and a biblical basis for all that they do, to focus less on performance which often creates group pressure to conform in physical and emotional experience, and to be less focused on man-centered or supernatural experiences and more open to God working in the natural.
As for the gifts of tongues, prophesying, and healing, Packer provides biblical arguments for how what is practiced today cannot be convincingly viewed as a ‘restoration’ of what was practiced in Scripture by the apostles. However, he doesn’t necessarily condemn their practice.
For example, of glossolalia (tongues), he says:
“It is often urged that since God’s goal is full integration of the individual under fully self-conscious, rational control, the overall pattern of ongoing sanctification must involve steady recovery of such control as we move deeper into what Scripture calls sincerity simplicity, and single mindedness (Phil 3:13, 2 Cor 11:3, James 1:7-8) In that case, there can be no place for glossolalia, in which rational control of the vocal chords is given up BUT … it does not seem inconceivable that the Spirit might prompt this relaxation of rational control at surface level in order to strengthen control at a deeper level… In this way glossolalia could be a good gift of God for some people at least, on the basis that anything that helps you to concentrate on God, practice his presence, and open yourself to his influence is a good gift.”
You can find his nine conclusions for these things on pg 269-276 (end of Chapter 6).
Generally speaking, Packer applies both a credal and a moral test for the charismatic movement and finds the best practicers of this movement to be aligned with a right theology of the Incarnate Son (credal) and to have a desire to obey God’s commands, avoid sin, and love others (moral).
He reminds us that you don’t have to have perfect theology to experience God in a real way. That is true. Yet, we should be applying these two tests to anything we encounter because not all charismatic churches or experiences fall under ‘best practices.’ We should always be checking beliefs and practices against Scripture in any church we attend and make sure to give God’s Word supremacy over experience because He is our authority in his revealed Word.
“In evaluating charismatic phenomena, it needs to be remembered that group beliefs shape group expectations, and group expectations shape individual experiences. A group with its own teachers and literature can mold the thoughts and experiences of its members to a startling degree. Specifically, when it is believed that an enhanced sense of God and his love to you in Christ and his enabling power, accompanied by tongues, on the model of the apostles’ experience in Acts 2, is the norm, this experiences will certainly be both sought and found. Nor will it necessarily be a delusive, Spiritless, self-generated experience just because certain incorrect notions are attached to it; God, as we keep seeing, is very merciful and blesses those who seek him even when their notions are not all true. But such an experience will then have to be tested as an expectation-shaped experience, and the expectations that shaped it will have to be tested separately, to see if they can be justified in terms of God’s revealed truth.”
Recommendation
I know there was a lot in this review, but I hope it inspires you to give the book a chance. Read it in a group if it will help to put several minds together to grasp what’s going on (I made my dad book club this book with me and it helped a lot!).
It’s true that the inner life is neglected and we’ve been running around with an improper theology of holiness and sinlessness. These things are worth thinking about. We don’t want a smudgy view of Christ or his Spirit, do we?
Packer admonishes that we can’t just say, “Let’s be different!” because “that’s a principle of reaction, and reaction rarely works righteousness.” That’s where the pendulum starts swinging. We need to be thoughtful about what we’re doing and where we’re going, aligning with God’s Word and command.
Let Packer bring some clarity for you. Let him also challenge your church- charismatic or not- to consider how your practices do or do not honor the Spirit. Whether you need to seek more solid theology or to worship with more emotion and heart, be open to the Holy Spirit at work in your life.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
“Real love isn’t just gazing into each other’s eyes. It’s looking out together in the same direction.”- David McCullough
If I saw this book on the shelf, I probably wouldn’t pick it up. The cover isn’t very compelling and the phrase ‘A woman’s guide to having it all’ sounds artificially self-helpy and immediately turns me off. In short- it’s not really my type of book.
However, despite the ‘bleh’ marketing quips, I did find some very helpful insights in this book.
Megan Basham recently published the book Shepherds for Sale which looks at the ways progressive theology has infiltrated evangelical churches. That book has taken off a bit. In contrast, this book was written back in 2008 and is not from a religiously affiliated perspective. Megan Basham is a believer but has written Beside Every Successful Man as a religiously neutral book.
I would sum up the overall push of this book to be about how wives can come alongside their husbands to help them achieve their professional goals. It was largely inspired by a biography she read of John and Abigail Adams and how Abigail Adams was such an asset to John Adams and how their working relationship enhanced the intimacy of their marriage relationship at the same time.
Basham, using her journalistic skills and background, discovered that so many of the male success stories in the world include the female behind the scenes helping make it all possible. She shares many of these anecdotes throughout the book, as well as her own experience with her husband changing careers in his thirties to something he did not have the schooling for.
“Whatever else a wife chose to do, she could be a vital, interactive force in helping her husband realize his ambitions.”
Now the book intentionally says ‘beside’ instead of ‘behind’ because she believes that marriage is a team endeavor. She points out that this book is likely to ruffle some feathers because ‘progress’ says it’s somehow degrading to women to help men professionally.
Whether you believe that statement or not, this book is not about women as a whole elevating men as a whole. It’s about a wife who loves her husband and desires to help him succeed.
“It’s strange that we have come to a place in our society where a wife’s desire to support her husband’s career should raise anyone’s ire.”
Basham’s point is not about what a wife puts aside or ‘gives up’ to help her husband, but I do appreciate that she pushes back on the feminist battle cry because it tends to hurt marriages rather than help them. And Basham rightly asks of those who flinch at assisting their husband’s professional career— are you reacting to your husband and his personality and behavior toward you? Or are you reacting to an idea that has haunted the gender debate?
“Though the feminist movement was essential and positive in many respects, certain factions of it have led us to a place where women are encouraged to treat their husbands as rivals and their homes as battlegrounds over whether everyone is doing the same amount of the dishes and earning.”
So to properly gain from this book we must set aside any pride or cultural grooming that has put us at odds with the idea of a man in our lives being successful.
Besides, one of her main points is that this is a symbiotic relationship. If your husband finds professional success it benefits you, the wife, in many ways!
At the beginning of the book she shares a lot of statistics and studies that show that contrary to the loudest voices, most women don’t really want to climb the corporate ladder. Especially if they have families. They would rather work less to spend more time with their children.
[I’ll note here that yes, these statistics are old, but I’ve found similar things reported in books like Discrimination and Disparities and Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth and Radical Womanhood]
“A 2007 Pew Research Center found only 21 percent of mothers say they prefer full-time jobs…”
“In 2005 a study conducted among female students at Yale University 60 percent said they planned to cut back their hours or stop working once they have children.”
“Why, when half of all MBAs are earned by women, are only 16 percent of corporate officers female?… maybe women aren’t getting there because they don’t want to.”
Basham shared that she found women weren’t begging to get into the workplace more; a great deal of women would love to cut down their hours. And some would be able to if their husbands made more money.
“Unfortunately only those women on the high and low ends of the economic scale typically feel able to opt out…because unskilled labor isn’t worth the cost of child care… or husbands’ incomes give them the flexibility to choose… what about the vast majority of working mothers who are simply logging hours at a job but would opt out in a heartbeat if they believed it was financially feasible…”
The approaches discussed in this book “enable a wife who wants to prioritize her time at home over her time at work to use all the wonderful talent, intelligence, and skill she possesses to help her husband get ahead.”
The chapters discuss things like how we can offer psychological support, help our husband identify strengths and how to apply them at work, motivate him to persevere in the face of obstacles, advise him on people and relational problems, and see how to make connections and network in ways that help our husband’s work.
I think one of the biggest takeaways of this book is a principle that transcends just a professional work environment.
Basham describes how males and females think differently and how they value different things. She doesn’t really say this, but it’s the age-old love and respect paradigm.
So much of our husbands’ identities are wrapped up in needing to be good providers and having wives that view them as such.
She contrasts a ‘nag’ with a ‘cheerleader’ and reminds us that our husbands already have a mom. They want someone who is on their team, cheering them on and believing that they can accomplish what they want to. If their own wife, someone who knows them the best, doesn’t believe they can do it, they probably can’t. It defeats them.
That goes for work-related things, but also things like addictions. A man is largely motivated or demotivated to work hard or go to battle against a bad habit based on their wife’s view of their ability to do it.
(And if this feels like putting up a false front or manipulation then you probably need to do some reflecting on your relationship with your husband.)
It’s about loving your husband and understanding that trying to motivate him with criticism or threats of what will happen if he fails are just not going to work, and it’s going to damage your marriage.
If I saw this book on the shelf, I probably wouldn’t pick it up. The cover isn’t very compelling and the phrase ‘A woman’s guide to having it all’ sounds artificially self-helpy and immediately turns me off. In short- it’s not really my type of book.
However, despite the ‘bleh’ marketing quips, I did find some very helpful insights in this book.
Megan Basham recently published the book Shepherds for Sale which looks at the ways progressive theology has infiltrated evangelical churches. That book has taken off a bit. In contrast, this book was written back in 2008 and is not from a religiously affiliated perspective. Megan Basham is a believer but has written Beside Every Successful Man as a religiously neutral book.
I would sum up the overall push of this book to be about how wives can come alongside their husbands to help them achieve their professional goals. It was largely inspired by a biography she read of John and Abigail Adams and how Abigail Adams was such an asset to John Adams and how their working relationship enhanced the intimacy of their marriage relationship at the same time.
Basham, using her journalistic skills and background, discovered that so many of the male success stories in the world include the female behind the scenes helping make it all possible. She shares many of these anecdotes throughout the book, as well as her own experience with her husband changing careers in his thirties to something he did not have the schooling for.
“Whatever else a wife chose to do, she could be a vital, interactive force in helping her husband realize his ambitions.”
Now the book intentionally says ‘beside’ instead of ‘behind’ because she believes that marriage is a team endeavor. She points out that this book is likely to ruffle some feathers because ‘progress’ says it’s somehow degrading to women to help men professionally.
Whether you believe that statement or not, this book is not about women as a whole elevating men as a whole. It’s about a wife who loves her husband and desires to help him succeed.
“It’s strange that we have come to a place in our society where a wife’s desire to support her husband’s career should raise anyone’s ire.”
Basham’s point is not about what a wife puts aside or ‘gives up’ to help her husband, but I do appreciate that she pushes back on the feminist battle cry because it tends to hurt marriages rather than help them. And Basham rightly asks of those who flinch at assisting their husband’s professional career— are you reacting to your husband and his personality and behavior toward you? Or are you reacting to an idea that has haunted the gender debate?
“Though the feminist movement was essential and positive in many respects, certain factions of it have led us to a place where women are encouraged to treat their husbands as rivals and their homes as battlegrounds over whether everyone is doing the same amount of the dishes and earning.”
So to properly gain from this book we must set aside any pride or cultural grooming that has put us at odds with the idea of a man in our lives being successful.
Besides, one of her main points is that this is a symbiotic relationship. If your husband finds professional success it benefits you, the wife, in many ways!
At the beginning of the book she shares a lot of statistics and studies that show that contrary to the loudest voices, most women don’t really want to climb the corporate ladder. Especially if they have families. They would rather work less to spend more time with their children.
[I’ll note here that yes, these statistics are old, but I’ve found similar things reported in books like Discrimination and Disparities and Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth and Radical Womanhood]
“A 2007 Pew Research Center found only 21 percent of mothers say they prefer full-time jobs…”
“In 2005 a study conducted among female students at Yale University 60 percent said they planned to cut back their hours or stop working once they have children.”
“Why, when half of all MBAs are earned by women, are only 16 percent of corporate officers female?… maybe women aren’t getting there because they don’t want to.”
Basham shared that she found women weren’t begging to get into the workplace more; a great deal of women would love to cut down their hours. And some would be able to if their husbands made more money.
“Unfortunately only those women on the high and low ends of the economic scale typically feel able to opt out…because unskilled labor isn’t worth the cost of child care… or husbands’ incomes give them the flexibility to choose… what about the vast majority of working mothers who are simply logging hours at a job but would opt out in a heartbeat if they believed it was financially feasible…”
The approaches discussed in this book “enable a wife who wants to prioritize her time at home over her time at work to use all the wonderful talent, intelligence, and skill she possesses to help her husband get ahead.”
The chapters discuss things like how we can offer psychological support, help our husband identify strengths and how to apply them at work, motivate him to persevere in the face of obstacles, advise him on people and relational problems, and see how to make connections and network in ways that help our husband’s work.
I think one of the biggest takeaways of this book is a principle that transcends just a professional work environment.
Basham describes how males and females think differently and how they value different things. She doesn’t really say this, but it’s the age-old love and respect paradigm.
So much of our husbands’ identities are wrapped up in needing to be good providers and having wives that view them as such.
She contrasts a ‘nag’ with a ‘cheerleader’ and reminds us that our husbands already have a mom. They want someone who is on their team, cheering them on and believing that they can accomplish what they want to. If their own wife, someone who knows them the best, doesn’t believe they can do it, they probably can’t. It defeats them.
That goes for work-related things, but also things like addictions. A man is largely motivated or demotivated to work hard or go to battle against a bad habit based on their wife’s view of their ability to do it.
(And if this feels like putting up a false front or manipulation then you probably need to do some reflecting on your relationship with your husband.)
It’s about loving your husband and understanding that trying to motivate him with criticism or threats of what will happen if he fails are just not going to work, and it’s going to damage your marriage.
“By affirming his work as significant and his role as provider as important, you can motivate a man who is already doing well to achieve even more. And if he is floundering and doesn’t outwardly appear to be a good provider, your interaction with him can help him start to become one…”
“When a wife says and does things that show her husband she believes that he possesses his ideal qualities, he in turn lives up to her vision and moves closer to embodying them. In effect, her beliefs about him act as self-fulfilling prophecies. The bad news is that her unbelief is equally influential in moving him further away from his best self.”
“…we employ tactics that we think of as ‘reminding’ and ‘warning’ but that men invariably take as nagging… Nagging usually flows from a fearful suspicion that your husband isn’t going to live up to the expectations you have for your life together. (At least when it’s related to their careers)”
“If you talk to most husbands, it’s not their wives’ genuine desire to see them do well that they resent, it is when her questioning and criticizing imply that he isn’t up to the challenge… common ways a woman will try to motivate her husband actually feel like expressions of doubt to him. He then reads that doubt, however irrationally, as a sign of disrespect… it triggers all the insecurity that he has down deep in his heart…”
“The nag speaks from a place of fear or resentment, the cheerleader speaks from a place of unbreakable faith.”
These were all very good reminders of how I can be a better encourager, verbalizing my husband’s strengths and his character and saying— it might not be easy, but because of who you are, you can do this and I’m here to support you along the way.
I know it makes a big difference because I’ve fallen into these harmful patterns in the past. A lot of this book confirms what I already unfortunately discovered on my own in regards to communicating with my husband about his work and his fears regarding work. There was a time when my husband felt like I didn’t believe in him and that I looked at him with resentment that he wasn’t doing enough. It didn’t motivate him to change, it made him feel defeated and depressed. It created detachment and isolation, not teamwork and intimacy.
Another thing that stuck out to me was the realization that sometimes we can hinder our husbands from pursuing careers that better fit their interests or strengths if we shroud them in our fear of the unknown.
“How many great careers or public contributions have been sidelined by a spouse unwilling to gamble a comfortable present on a promising future? How many wives shut the door on opportunity because it lacked a guaranteed outcome… if helping your husband become his professional best is the goal, some risk is likely to be involved… You may have very good reasons for deciding that a change in your husband’s job or location isn’t a good choice for your family right now, but make sure you are basing that decision on solid risk assessment and not just fear of the unknown.”
Career change for the sake of career change may not be wise, but if you help your husband identify his strengths and how he desires to use them, it may make the most sense to try a career change. And it may be uncertain. And it may require stepping down to a lower income. But often, those changes become stepping stones to something better, financially or emotionally.
If your husband is floundering, you may have to sacrifice some comfort and immediate security to help get him to place a thriving. Career paths aren’t necessarily linear; there are ups and downs and lateral moves on the road to success.
I liked how she pointed out that there are different visualization techniques. Most people employ an outcome-based visualization— visualize yourself winning or getting a high score. But that the more effective strategy is not to focus on the outcome but to employ a process-based visualization— visualize yourself completing the steps that it takes to reach the desired outcome like doing the workouts and studying the material. You’re more likely to then accomplish those steps which helps you attain the outcome you were wanting.
I’m not a huge proponent of manifestation, but I can see how process-based visualization does help motivation. I realized I do this when I don’t want to clean all the clutter in my house. The night before I picture the next day and what I’m going to do first and then next, etc. Then it’s not so hard to get going the next day. It doesn’t feel as overwhelming because I’ve visualized the plan. If I had just visualized a clean house, I would have been too demotivated when I woke up to the clutter I still had to deal with.
She also brings up a psychological principle that may or may not be familiar to you. I’ll just briefly mention it here but it’s an important way of looking at life and hard situations:
“One of the biggest differences psychologists have found between optimists and pessimists is that an optimist will usually explain a defeat in ways that are temporary, isolated, and impersonal. A pessimist, on the other hand, will blame setbacks on reasons that are permanent, pervasive, and personal.”
A pessimist will say that they failed that test because they are dumb— something that is personal to them that they can’t change. An optimist would say they failed the test because they didn’t study hard enough or they didn’t get enough sleep— things that are not permanent but can be changed.
This isn’t an excuse to always blame external things for all our failures, but it’s something to be cognizant of when we’re looking at failure and trying to figure out how to move forward from it.
I will say that much of this book focuses on financial success. Success can be measured in a lot of ways but money is probably the most tangible. As a follower of Christ I understand that life is not about making the most money. In fact, the pursuit of money often leads to a lot of negative and harmful things.
Reading this book requires discernment and knowing that my goal is not to make sure we achieve success by the world’s standards— a huge savings account. That may or may not be an outcome of my husband’s career.
For some reading this book, seeking a higher income means a wife/mom able to stay home with the kids which is a noble goal. For some, it is more about helping your husband feel motivated and passionate about his work. For others, it’s more about knowing how to team up with your husband instead of feeling in competition with one another.
What I feel I’ve gained from this book is not a path to wealth, but principles that will enhance our marriage as I seek to support my husband in finding meaningful and God-honoring work that is best for our family. Principles that help me respect and love my husband in ways that he highly values. It reminds me that even if I don’t fully understand my husband’s job, he wants to feel like we’re doing it together, that everything he does is for me and our family. So being involved, whether that’s psychological support, networking for him, being willing to try something new, or using my actual skills to help him with work-related communication or materials, is important.
One critique for the book: I noticed there are no footnotes or notes in the back of the book. She quotes a lot of statistics and stories and such and I was really surprised not to see her sources for any of the quotes and all that. As a journalist, I would have thought that to be second nature. I don’t think she is trying to be deceptive, most of what she brought up rang true, but I think it would have been better to at least have sources in the back of the book to support her material.
I haven’t read Shepherds for Sale yet but I’ve been told that this is definitely not a problem in that book and that there are tons of footnotes to corroborate material there.
Recommendation
If you want to know how you can better help your husband in the workplace or how to motivate him in his work, I think you’ll find some great insights in this book.
If you’re looking for a path to enhance your husband’s career in a way that allows you to stay home, you may find some inspiration and things to try.
It also reads pretty quick and does not require an intense amount of brain power to understand. The stories she includes provide real life examples and make the book go fast.
This book is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s also not a comprehensive marriage therapy book. You’re not going to find all of life’s answers for what success really means and what it looks like for your family.
But as a woman, you’ll be able to understand better where some of the work-related conflict in your relationship stems from and how to combat that to love your husbands better.
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“‘Revenge can be a powerful motivator.’”
This one felt a little different than other books of this series (that I’ve read). Granted, there is a year break in between reading each one so my memory of them might not be the best.
A Dead Draw felt a little more technical with some of the descriptions of guns and shooting and the legal stuff in the trial. He brought in an autistic character and some commentary on video games. There was also a good deal of Tracy thinking about her sister Sarah.
I probably could have done without some of the gun details, but I didn’t have a problem with the other themes. It made the book feel a little more layered than usual, which isn’t a bad thing.
I liked the old Western vibes in this one— even if I don’t have the same ‘watching Westerns with my dad’ nostalgia Dugoni had— and liked the more atmospheric vibe that got woven into the plot.
The final duel was also pretty epic. I think the cover of this book should have somehow depicted the ghost town or something like that instead of the mansion.
This book doesn’t really connect with the previous ones and could probably be read as a standalone, but as with most series, it always helps to know where the main character has come from. Especially since this one talks so much about Crosswhite’s murdered sister.
This story begins with Crosswhite still working in the cold case department. She is working on a trial for Erik Schmidt, a suspect in two cold case murders of young women. During her interrogation of him she finds out that he was prison mates with Edmund House, the guy who murdered Crosswhite’s sister, Sarah.
Schmidt’s taunting gets under Crosswhite’s skin causing her to lose her cool. When he gets off on a technicality and threatens Tracy, she takes her family to Cedar Grove to get away.
But Schmidt won’t let her off that easily. He has some revenge to enact and it has more to do with Cedar Grove than Tracy realizes.
We know that Tracy did shooting competitions when she was younger and that she is an amazing shooter, but her nightmares and demons have affected her ability to react and discern at the speed her job requires. Can she get her ‘mojo’ back before she’s forced to face Schmidt?
Overall I really liked the book and its layered, different feel and atmospheric setting. But I do have one pretty big bone to pick that costs this book one star.
Dan, Tracy’s husband, runs into a suspicious guy at the coffee shop. When he tells her about it at home they wonder if it was Schmidt. Dan has to go to San Francisco for a trial but tells Tracy he wants to stay back with her.
She says no and that “We don’t have any evidence the man in the coffee shop was Erik Schmidt.”
Because all she does is ask Dan to describe the man he met. I’m tempted to put this in all caps but I’ll refrain: Why didn’t she SHOW Dan the MUGSHOT of Schmidt to verify if it was him?!?!?! Okay I had to use some caps, because duh. She HAS a mugshot because she gave it to the local police. Even if she didn’t, it’s called GOOGLE. He was just on trial and would have been in some sort of article or story online. It would be so EASY to make sure if the guy was Schmidt or not.
I was just dumbfounded. Man, I just really wish there was a way to know if the guy that threatened me is now in our very small town that we escaped to- what color was his hair and eyes again? Shoot, it’s so hard to know. Welp, time for you to leave for the airport- I’m sure everything is fine.
Even further, if we were getting out of town to avoid a dangerous guy that is out and about, I would be sure to know what that guy looked like so I would be on the lookout if I saw him near my family. Dan is a smart guy, but not smart enough in this scenario.
And it’s not just Dan. When Calloway goes back to the coffee shop to ask the barista about it, he tells Crosswhite that she “gave us a description.” He didn’t say anything about SHOWING HER THE MUGSHOT because God forbid we confirm an identity on the exact picture of a person. We just don’t have the technology.
At least it ended up not being as big of a plot point that I thought it was going to be, but even still, Dugoni really missed this one.
Part of Crosswhite’s extra training involves FSP games. I personally have not played any of these and I know there is mixed data on the use of violent video games. In the author’s note at the end Dugoni mentions his use of them in the book after talking with a friend in the gaming industry and how “games are not about violence but more about strategic thinking at a very high and very fast level.” I’m not entirely convinced of these benefits and would like to see more research on whether playing these games would actually improve someone’s actual shooting.
Along these lines Dugoni says of this book, “I wanted her to face a lawless situation where she stood isolated, on her own, and had to either kill or be killed, to put her shooting to the ultimate test— take a life or lose her own.”
I actually really liked this premise. It built on Tracy losing her shooting edge and needing to work to get it back using a unique method and encountering a young girl who reminded her of her sister who was arguably a better shooter than herself. It built on the Western duel and lawlessness culture.
It also tapped into Tracy’s motherhood and being part of a family who needs her. Dan gets involved with this one after Tracy doesn’t heed his advice, “During their years of marriage, he had become his wife’s conscience when she needed it most. He was the voice in her ear talking sense. And he would bring her home before she did something that would impact him and Daniella for the rest of their lives.”
He knew that she had gone and put herself in a dire situation without any backup and couldn’t let her put herself in harm’s way so deliberately.
It will be interesting to see where this series goes. Tracy moving into the Cold Case division was a way to stay out of the danger of the field and just use her detective skills after she had Daniella. Will she be able to go back to that situation or will she have to look at a different career path that provides more safety for her family? Is this series going to be wrapping up?
I also liked the way Dugoni chose to connect the video game aspect with real life— the idea of just focusing on the level that you are on, not the past level or what’s to come:
“‘One level at a time’… a way to live her life, not to dwell on past mistakes, regrets, or losses, and not to anticipate what could or might be— things that had not yet happened and might not ever occur. She would stay in the present, living each moment fully, handling whatever problem she might encounter, and enjoying every blessing.”
New word alert: I had never heard of the term ‘spaghetti western’ before. If you haven’t either, it’s a subgenre of Western films by Italian filmmakers mostly filmed in Europe in the 60s and 70s. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a popular one.
Recommendation
As with the rest of this series, I do recommend it. Tracy Crosswhite is a great character and I’ve loved seeing her progress not only in her detective career but in her family life.
You may not want to start with this one, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you did.
The main downsides to this book were just the increase in technical content and the mugshot debacle. Some reviewers thought there were too many uncharacteristic things of Tracy and that this book diverted from the typical caliber for this series. I did feel the difference but didn’t feel like it was entirely bad and I actually really liked the ending even if it was a bit dramatic. To me it fit the vibe nicely.
But definitely if you like police procedurals, strong female leads, Westerns, or a person with two big dogs, this book is for you!
[Content Advisory: 4 f-words, 35 s-words; no sexual content]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This one felt a little different than other books of this series (that I’ve read). Granted, there is a year break in between reading each one so my memory of them might not be the best.
A Dead Draw felt a little more technical with some of the descriptions of guns and shooting and the legal stuff in the trial. He brought in an autistic character and some commentary on video games. There was also a good deal of Tracy thinking about her sister Sarah.
I probably could have done without some of the gun details, but I didn’t have a problem with the other themes. It made the book feel a little more layered than usual, which isn’t a bad thing.
I liked the old Western vibes in this one— even if I don’t have the same ‘watching Westerns with my dad’ nostalgia Dugoni had— and liked the more atmospheric vibe that got woven into the plot.
The final duel was also pretty epic. I think the cover of this book should have somehow depicted the ghost town or something like that instead of the mansion.
This book doesn’t really connect with the previous ones and could probably be read as a standalone, but as with most series, it always helps to know where the main character has come from. Especially since this one talks so much about Crosswhite’s murdered sister.
This story begins with Crosswhite still working in the cold case department. She is working on a trial for Erik Schmidt, a suspect in two cold case murders of young women. During her interrogation of him she finds out that he was prison mates with Edmund House, the guy who murdered Crosswhite’s sister, Sarah.
Schmidt’s taunting gets under Crosswhite’s skin causing her to lose her cool. When he gets off on a technicality and threatens Tracy, she takes her family to Cedar Grove to get away.
But Schmidt won’t let her off that easily. He has some revenge to enact and it has more to do with Cedar Grove than Tracy realizes.
We know that Tracy did shooting competitions when she was younger and that she is an amazing shooter, but her nightmares and demons have affected her ability to react and discern at the speed her job requires. Can she get her ‘mojo’ back before she’s forced to face Schmidt?
Overall I really liked the book and its layered, different feel and atmospheric setting. But I do have one pretty big bone to pick that costs this book one star.
Dan, Tracy’s husband, runs into a suspicious guy at the coffee shop. When he tells her about it at home they wonder if it was Schmidt. Dan has to go to San Francisco for a trial but tells Tracy he wants to stay back with her.
She says no and that “We don’t have any evidence the man in the coffee shop was Erik Schmidt.”
Because all she does is ask Dan to describe the man he met. I’m tempted to put this in all caps but I’ll refrain: Why didn’t she SHOW Dan the MUGSHOT of Schmidt to verify if it was him?!?!?! Okay I had to use some caps, because duh. She HAS a mugshot because she gave it to the local police. Even if she didn’t, it’s called GOOGLE. He was just on trial and would have been in some sort of article or story online. It would be so EASY to make sure if the guy was Schmidt or not.
I was just dumbfounded. Man, I just really wish there was a way to know if the guy that threatened me is now in our very small town that we escaped to- what color was his hair and eyes again? Shoot, it’s so hard to know. Welp, time for you to leave for the airport- I’m sure everything is fine.
Even further, if we were getting out of town to avoid a dangerous guy that is out and about, I would be sure to know what that guy looked like so I would be on the lookout if I saw him near my family. Dan is a smart guy, but not smart enough in this scenario.
And it’s not just Dan. When Calloway goes back to the coffee shop to ask the barista about it, he tells Crosswhite that she “gave us a description.” He didn’t say anything about SHOWING HER THE MUGSHOT because God forbid we confirm an identity on the exact picture of a person. We just don’t have the technology.
At least it ended up not being as big of a plot point that I thought it was going to be, but even still, Dugoni really missed this one.
Part of Crosswhite’s extra training involves FSP games. I personally have not played any of these and I know there is mixed data on the use of violent video games. In the author’s note at the end Dugoni mentions his use of them in the book after talking with a friend in the gaming industry and how “games are not about violence but more about strategic thinking at a very high and very fast level.” I’m not entirely convinced of these benefits and would like to see more research on whether playing these games would actually improve someone’s actual shooting.
Along these lines Dugoni says of this book, “I wanted her to face a lawless situation where she stood isolated, on her own, and had to either kill or be killed, to put her shooting to the ultimate test— take a life or lose her own.”
I actually really liked this premise. It built on Tracy losing her shooting edge and needing to work to get it back using a unique method and encountering a young girl who reminded her of her sister who was arguably a better shooter than herself. It built on the Western duel and lawlessness culture.
It also tapped into Tracy’s motherhood and being part of a family who needs her. Dan gets involved with this one after Tracy doesn’t heed his advice, “During their years of marriage, he had become his wife’s conscience when she needed it most. He was the voice in her ear talking sense. And he would bring her home before she did something that would impact him and Daniella for the rest of their lives.”
He knew that she had gone and put herself in a dire situation without any backup and couldn’t let her put herself in harm’s way so deliberately.
It will be interesting to see where this series goes. Tracy moving into the Cold Case division was a way to stay out of the danger of the field and just use her detective skills after she had Daniella. Will she be able to go back to that situation or will she have to look at a different career path that provides more safety for her family? Is this series going to be wrapping up?
I also liked the way Dugoni chose to connect the video game aspect with real life— the idea of just focusing on the level that you are on, not the past level or what’s to come:
“‘One level at a time’… a way to live her life, not to dwell on past mistakes, regrets, or losses, and not to anticipate what could or might be— things that had not yet happened and might not ever occur. She would stay in the present, living each moment fully, handling whatever problem she might encounter, and enjoying every blessing.”
New word alert: I had never heard of the term ‘spaghetti western’ before. If you haven’t either, it’s a subgenre of Western films by Italian filmmakers mostly filmed in Europe in the 60s and 70s. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a popular one.
Recommendation
As with the rest of this series, I do recommend it. Tracy Crosswhite is a great character and I’ve loved seeing her progress not only in her detective career but in her family life.
You may not want to start with this one, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you did.
The main downsides to this book were just the increase in technical content and the mugshot debacle. Some reviewers thought there were too many uncharacteristic things of Tracy and that this book diverted from the typical caliber for this series. I did feel the difference but didn’t feel like it was entirely bad and I actually really liked the ending even if it was a bit dramatic. To me it fit the vibe nicely.
But definitely if you like police procedurals, strong female leads, Westerns, or a person with two big dogs, this book is for you!
[Content Advisory: 4 f-words, 35 s-words; no sexual content]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cursing
The Steadfast Love of the Lord: Experiencing the Life-Changing Power of God's Unchanging Affection
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. (Jn 6:68) If God’s love isn’t real and steady and ultimately steadfast, what hope do any of us have? To what philosophy of life will we turn?”
Sam Storms begins his book by confessing that he doubts the love of the Lord. He sees the tragedy and evil in the world and he, like I think most of us, wonders where God is and what he is doing. Is his love for us real?
How can he write a book about God’s love?
“the only way I was going to press through this dark season in my soul was to bathe it in the repeated theme of Scripture that ‘the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.’ (Lam 3:22)”
We might never be able to explain all the evil or the tragedies and hardships we encounter, but I love what he says here:
“I cannot, I will not, allow my intellectual shortcomings to account for the problem of evil to blind me to the bright light of the everlasting, unchanging, soul-saving, steadfast love of God.”
And so this book looks at what Scripture tells us about who God is and how he loves us. In Lamentations, right before verse 22 that’s quoted above, Jeremiah says, ‘This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.’
If we have lost our hope, then we need to do a better job of calling to mind the truths that God has revealed to us about himself. And Sam Storms does a wonderful job sharing them with us in this book.
I appreciated Dane Ortlund’s (Gentle and Lowly) foreword in this book because he focuses on who Sam Storms is. Storms covers a few touchy or controversial topics in his book and so when we read this we may say- well who does Sam think he is? why should I listen to him?
Ortlund says that Storms is four things: an exegete (trained well in handling the Scriptures in the original languages), a theologian (thinking deeply and biblically with both nuance and boldness), a shepherd (writing to build up the church), and a lover (passionately sharing about the exuberance of God’s love).
Therefore we trust what he has laid out in this book because he is qualified to parse Scripture and he’s doing it from a place of pastoral care and love.
I found this book to be very encouraging, giving me lots of truth to meditate on.
Right out of the gate he takes on a controversial issue— the progressive concept that ‘love is love’— but I think this is a great place to start because we need definitions of what we’re talking about, especially when it comes to love
Sam Storms begins his book by confessing that he doubts the love of the Lord. He sees the tragedy and evil in the world and he, like I think most of us, wonders where God is and what he is doing. Is his love for us real?
How can he write a book about God’s love?
“the only way I was going to press through this dark season in my soul was to bathe it in the repeated theme of Scripture that ‘the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.’ (Lam 3:22)”
We might never be able to explain all the evil or the tragedies and hardships we encounter, but I love what he says here:
“I cannot, I will not, allow my intellectual shortcomings to account for the problem of evil to blind me to the bright light of the everlasting, unchanging, soul-saving, steadfast love of God.”
And so this book looks at what Scripture tells us about who God is and how he loves us. In Lamentations, right before verse 22 that’s quoted above, Jeremiah says, ‘This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.’
If we have lost our hope, then we need to do a better job of calling to mind the truths that God has revealed to us about himself. And Sam Storms does a wonderful job sharing them with us in this book.
I appreciated Dane Ortlund’s (Gentle and Lowly) foreword in this book because he focuses on who Sam Storms is. Storms covers a few touchy or controversial topics in his book and so when we read this we may say- well who does Sam think he is? why should I listen to him?
Ortlund says that Storms is four things: an exegete (trained well in handling the Scriptures in the original languages), a theologian (thinking deeply and biblically with both nuance and boldness), a shepherd (writing to build up the church), and a lover (passionately sharing about the exuberance of God’s love).
Therefore we trust what he has laid out in this book because he is qualified to parse Scripture and he’s doing it from a place of pastoral care and love.
I found this book to be very encouraging, giving me lots of truth to meditate on.
Right out of the gate he takes on a controversial issue— the progressive concept that ‘love is love’— but I think this is a great place to start because we need definitions of what we’re talking about, especially when it comes to love
“So what do people mean when they say that ‘love is love’? Unless I’m mistaken, I think they mean that love is always accepting, never critical, entirely inclusive, and altogether affirming of the moral legitimacy of anything a person believes and however they choose to behave. To push back and argue that certain beliefs are false is not loving. It is hateful. To suggest that a particular lifestyle is morally perverse is not loving. It is bigoted. To employ any language that does not affirm the truth or legitimacy of something another person believes or does is an expression of intolerance and will probably subject you to being cancelled in some way.”
That is the world’s perspective of love. But Sam is not willing to acquiesce to such a concept:
“Let me say it clearly: to tell someone who is living in unrepentant homosexuality that his or her behavior is dishonorable, morally wrong, and puts their soul in jeopardy of eternal damnation is the most loving thing you could possibly say to them. I know that this runs counter to our society’s perspective today, but I don’t regard the world or its opinions as authoritative. Only God’s written word is authoritative.”
“You have a choice to make, and you have only two options: either you acknowledge and submit to the authoritative statements of the Bible or you acknowledge and submit to the passions, feelings, and opinions of your own soul. Either God defines your identity in his word or you define it according to your good pleasure.”
He defines love:
“My definition, the Bible’s definition, is that “love” is acting and speaking in such a way that the object of one’s affection is blessed in this life and in the age to come… To truly love a person you must say and do all that you can to direct them to beliefs and behaviors that align with their eternal destiny in the presence of God in the new heaven and new earth. That is love.”
Once we have that established, we use this framework to see how God’s love for us is, in the same way, giving us what we need to flourish now and in eternity. His love for us and our joy actually all converge to bring him glory.
So what do we learn about his love?
In Chapter 2 Storms walks us through Psalms to better understand the word ‘steadfast’ and that God’s love is enduring forever.
In the following chapters he looks at passages like Jesus washing the disciples feet, Jesus looking at Peter when he has denied him, and Jesus healing the leper to see how he is sovereign and serving and how even when we are his enemies he draws near to us and looks on us with compassion; no one is excluded from his love.
Storms draws on Ephesians 3 to explain how we actually need God to help us experience his love:
“Paul is praying that we would be strengthened… [because of] our inability to wholeheartedly believe in, feel, and rejoice in the love that God has for us in Jesus… To think that God loves me so deeply and intensely and sacrificially that he works in me by his Spirit to make it possible for God himself to fill me up with God himself— what words can adequately account for this?”
I think the chapter where he goes through John 3:16 may be my favorite chapter of the book. It’s a well-known verse but we don’t totally grasp the depth of what that verse means for sinners. He explains each part of the verse and has a lot of really good truth in this short chapter.
“I can assure you that neither [I nor my wife] said anything along the lines of, ‘I’m willing to marry a person who utterly despises me, who is worse than indifferent toward me. I’m hoping for someone who hates me, treats me with contempt and disdain, and who wants nothing whatsoever to do with me.’ But God did. When the Father sought a bride for his Son, he set his affection and love on a people who were his enemies.”
It was poignant here too that he also looks back to the bronze serpent in Numbers 21 and the correlation to sin and the snakes and that even if we’re surrounded by sin, God provides a way to be saved.
Because suffering is a primary example of when we start to doubt God’s love, Storms has a chapter dedicated to it. He even says that one of the main jobs of pastors should be to prepare their people for suffering. Suffering can shake faith or strengthen it, but if we are unprepared for it, we’ll probably waste our suffering.
“Suffering accomplishes nothing good in us if we don’t reflect on how God uses it to build endurance and perseverance in our hearts.”
We won’t always be able to explain why bad things happen, but we know that it’s not because God doesn’t love us.
“Don’t ever think that your hope is only as good as your ability to experience or feel God’s love for you. He most assuredly wants you to feel it, but even when you don’t, you can know his love is real and sure and certain by reminding yourself of the lengths to which he went in making you his child: the death of his own Son on your behalf.”
There are also a couple chapters that answer the question- Will God ever give up on me? Is our salvation secure? He looks at Romans 5 and 8 to answer these questions to assure us that when we are in Christ we are sealed with his promise and nothing can then ever separate us from his love.
He talks a bit about election and God’s sovereign and loving choice to save us. He pulled a lot in from his book that I also recently read called Chosen for Life so if that topic interests you I would recommend that for a more in-depth look at those doctrines.
I also liked his conclusion. He ends by a short meditation on 2 Thessalonians 3:5 which says,
“May the Lord direct our hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ”
When we are struggling to feel or know God’s love, it is right to pray for it. The Lord can direct our hearts to his love and to comprehend the steadfastness of it. And part of how we do that, as stated earlier, is to dwell on what we know to be true of God. Hope comes from recalling and recalling is worship.
“Worship your way into the experience of God’s love… Often we must sing to joy rather than merely from it.”
I will say, as a fairly unemotional person, sometimes I wonder if I’ve ‘felt’ the love of God very often. I’m still pondering this, but I think it’s less about feeling and more about knowing. At least for me. Experiences are fleeting and feelings go up and down, but the character and love of the Lord is unchanging. That’s comforting to me because even if I don’t know if I’m feeling it properly, I know it to be true.
And this book has encouraged me to ask God about it; maybe he will open up my heart to new ways of knowing him if I just ask!
Recommendation
I would definitely recommend this book! Sam Storms has a pretty clear and loving way of communicating, even hard truths, and reminds us of so many different facets about God’s love.
Truly, we can’t fully comprehend God’s love, but he has given us minds and hearts to know him in some capacity and this book brings to the forefront some very comforting truths— the Lord’s love is steadfast and gives us assurance in salvation and in the blessings that come with abiding in Christ.
Further Reading:
He referenced lots of books in his book, but here are a few mentions that I’ve reviewed:
The Intolerance of Tolerance by D.A. Carson
The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God by D.A. Carson (I just got this one in the mail to read)
Knowing God by J.I. Packer
Chosen for Life by Sam Storms
I also recently wrote THIS blog post that ties in some of themes that were in this book.
P.S. Also a shoutout for the book cover— really nice and applicable use of the infinity symbol!
**Received a copy from Crossway in exchange for an honest review**
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
“‘You two are either going to kill each other or be the best team ever. I can’t decide which.’”
It’s always a gamble when you read books from authors you’ve never heard of that are up and coming. The gamble on this book paid off!
I was pleasantly surprised by this time-travel science fiction novel and am looking forward to continuing the series— especially because this one leaves you on a cliffhanger!
I wouldn’t say the general time-travel plot of this book was incredibly unique— Earth destroys itself in a nuclear war (classic)— The Purge War— and in the year 2355 the earth is less and less inhabitable so they use time travel to try to go back and stop the nuclear war from happening.
The method of time travel, however, has some of its own flair. Or maybe it’s been done and I just haven’t read enough sci-fi time travel books to know about it. But they discovered an Anomoly— a wormhole— that they’ve ‘harnessed’ to send agents back in time on missions.
Agents have to undergo a genetic ‘rebirth’ that transforms them into a kind of superhuman with greater strength, physicality, and a stronger body structure to endure the effects of jumping into the The Worm. The agents that jump are linked via transponders. They can’t pinpoint an exact moment and place in time to jump to. Their accuracy is getting people to the right continent within a year or two of the right time so their missions have to be flexible and adaptable to wherever they end up. They also can’t really control when they ‘go back.’
There are a few main characters in the book.
Hope Bannister, aptly named, is living in the year 2355 and has fashioned this Time Forward force in an attempt to stop The Purge War from happening because if they can’t, the Keplers (the bad guys) plan to exterminate the natives of another planet in order to provide enough room to transport people from Earth to the habitable planet. Using The Worm is their last hope.
Then we have Kristen. She is also living in the year 2355 and not in a good place. Earth has a series of ‘bubbles’ that people live in. Her parents tried to take them from the Dallas bubble to the Kansas City bubble by using seeds to trade for a new life. Their plan went awry leaving them dead and Kristen captured. When she finally escapes she finds herself in a position to either be enslaved to another man or volunteer herself for Hope’s team. With no knowledge of what she’s about to embark on, her only choice is to leave Earth and hope for the best.
Kants ends up being Kristen’s jump partner. He was the last superhuman on Earth when The Purge War began back in 2098. Since then he has sought to change history and get back the wife he lost.
Hunter Coburn and his brilliant mind is the key to it all— somehow. He ends up getting linked to Kristen in her jumps. Wherever she jumps to, he ends up landing with her. When she jumps back to the future, he returns to his timeline which is 2025. Through one of Kants’ missions Hunter was recruited to the FBI and is developing sentient AI systems.
Which brings us to our last main character— Comperi. This is the first sentient AI created by Hunter. It helps Hunter in this book a little bit, but I have a feeling its purpose is going to expand and become more important in subsequent books.
As with all time travel novels, some of the effects of their time traveling on the future is often hard to grasp or follow or when they go back in time to tell someone they need to do such and such at a future time to help someone, it’s the whole chicken or egg scenario, but with this book I was generally able to understand what they were trying to do and what what would happen if they failed or succeeded.
The Keplers add a good element of unpredictability and mystery to this novel. Somehow they know wherever Kristen or Kants is jumping to and they have their own agents there already trying to thwart Kristen and Kants’ mission. We aren’t given enough information about that yet— why are they trying to keep the Time Forward Project from preventing The Purge War? how do they know ahead of time of where they’ll be? Are they actually bad guys or are they good guys trying to prevent worse things from happening that the Time Forward team aren’t aware of?
Hopefully we get some more pieces to the puzzle in the next book.
Other things that I hope are going to be fleshed out in the next book— what happened to Chen-Yi and why is she obsessed with Hunter? Will Hunter ever have his happily ever after with Rachel and his future daughter? What’s the deal with Kants? Is something going to get altered in time where he is back on the team in real time? Are we going to find out more about Kristen’s background— is there more to her parents’ death and the seeds or is that purely just the catalyst for getting Kristen to space? How is Comperi going to save the world?
As I said before, this book ends on a cliffhanger. Let’s just say that their missions aren’t as successful as they were hoping so we have to keep going into book two to see where they go next.
As to the writing style, it was better than what I was expecting and had good pacing to it. I don’t know if it had a unique or show-stopping quality to it, but it was easy to read and get lost in the story. There weren’t distracting things about the writing that jarred me away or annoyed me.
Recommendation
If you’re looking for a dystopian or space-y sci-fi book, I’m not sure this one will scratch that itch for you. The future is somewhat dystopian and in space but a majority of the book takes place on Earth before 2100. And the future parts are generally relegated to the space station.
But if you just want to enjoy a good time travel novel with elements of AI and space, then I think you’ll enjoy this book. Or if you are looking for a book with some whales in it— this is probably it.
I enjoyed the adventure and felt invested in the fate of the world. I’m looking forward to see what book two holds!
Also- if you’re interested, HERE are some more time travel books I’ve also reviewed if you’d like to go on a time travel binge.
[Content Advisory: a handful of s-words, some innuendo but no sexual content]
**Received a copy of the book from the author in exchange for an honest review**
It’s always a gamble when you read books from authors you’ve never heard of that are up and coming. The gamble on this book paid off!
I was pleasantly surprised by this time-travel science fiction novel and am looking forward to continuing the series— especially because this one leaves you on a cliffhanger!
I wouldn’t say the general time-travel plot of this book was incredibly unique— Earth destroys itself in a nuclear war (classic)— The Purge War— and in the year 2355 the earth is less and less inhabitable so they use time travel to try to go back and stop the nuclear war from happening.
The method of time travel, however, has some of its own flair. Or maybe it’s been done and I just haven’t read enough sci-fi time travel books to know about it. But they discovered an Anomoly— a wormhole— that they’ve ‘harnessed’ to send agents back in time on missions.
Agents have to undergo a genetic ‘rebirth’ that transforms them into a kind of superhuman with greater strength, physicality, and a stronger body structure to endure the effects of jumping into the The Worm. The agents that jump are linked via transponders. They can’t pinpoint an exact moment and place in time to jump to. Their accuracy is getting people to the right continent within a year or two of the right time so their missions have to be flexible and adaptable to wherever they end up. They also can’t really control when they ‘go back.’
There are a few main characters in the book.
Hope Bannister, aptly named, is living in the year 2355 and has fashioned this Time Forward force in an attempt to stop The Purge War from happening because if they can’t, the Keplers (the bad guys) plan to exterminate the natives of another planet in order to provide enough room to transport people from Earth to the habitable planet. Using The Worm is their last hope.
Then we have Kristen. She is also living in the year 2355 and not in a good place. Earth has a series of ‘bubbles’ that people live in. Her parents tried to take them from the Dallas bubble to the Kansas City bubble by using seeds to trade for a new life. Their plan went awry leaving them dead and Kristen captured. When she finally escapes she finds herself in a position to either be enslaved to another man or volunteer herself for Hope’s team. With no knowledge of what she’s about to embark on, her only choice is to leave Earth and hope for the best.
Kants ends up being Kristen’s jump partner. He was the last superhuman on Earth when The Purge War began back in 2098. Since then he has sought to change history and get back the wife he lost.
Hunter Coburn and his brilliant mind is the key to it all— somehow. He ends up getting linked to Kristen in her jumps. Wherever she jumps to, he ends up landing with her. When she jumps back to the future, he returns to his timeline which is 2025. Through one of Kants’ missions Hunter was recruited to the FBI and is developing sentient AI systems.
Which brings us to our last main character— Comperi. This is the first sentient AI created by Hunter. It helps Hunter in this book a little bit, but I have a feeling its purpose is going to expand and become more important in subsequent books.
As with all time travel novels, some of the effects of their time traveling on the future is often hard to grasp or follow or when they go back in time to tell someone they need to do such and such at a future time to help someone, it’s the whole chicken or egg scenario, but with this book I was generally able to understand what they were trying to do and what what would happen if they failed or succeeded.
The Keplers add a good element of unpredictability and mystery to this novel. Somehow they know wherever Kristen or Kants is jumping to and they have their own agents there already trying to thwart Kristen and Kants’ mission. We aren’t given enough information about that yet— why are they trying to keep the Time Forward Project from preventing The Purge War? how do they know ahead of time of where they’ll be? Are they actually bad guys or are they good guys trying to prevent worse things from happening that the Time Forward team aren’t aware of?
Hopefully we get some more pieces to the puzzle in the next book.
Other things that I hope are going to be fleshed out in the next book— what happened to Chen-Yi and why is she obsessed with Hunter? Will Hunter ever have his happily ever after with Rachel and his future daughter? What’s the deal with Kants? Is something going to get altered in time where he is back on the team in real time? Are we going to find out more about Kristen’s background— is there more to her parents’ death and the seeds or is that purely just the catalyst for getting Kristen to space? How is Comperi going to save the world?
As I said before, this book ends on a cliffhanger. Let’s just say that their missions aren’t as successful as they were hoping so we have to keep going into book two to see where they go next.
As to the writing style, it was better than what I was expecting and had good pacing to it. I don’t know if it had a unique or show-stopping quality to it, but it was easy to read and get lost in the story. There weren’t distracting things about the writing that jarred me away or annoyed me.
Recommendation
If you’re looking for a dystopian or space-y sci-fi book, I’m not sure this one will scratch that itch for you. The future is somewhat dystopian and in space but a majority of the book takes place on Earth before 2100. And the future parts are generally relegated to the space station.
But if you just want to enjoy a good time travel novel with elements of AI and space, then I think you’ll enjoy this book. Or if you are looking for a book with some whales in it— this is probably it.
I enjoyed the adventure and felt invested in the fate of the world. I’m looking forward to see what book two holds!
Also- if you’re interested, HERE are some more time travel books I’ve also reviewed if you’d like to go on a time travel binge.
[Content Advisory: a handful of s-words, some innuendo but no sexual content]
**Received a copy of the book from the author in exchange for an honest review**