The following are excerpts from the book as examples of what I mean.
"The lies we tell ourselves - I'm too old, too young ,too big, too small, too dark, too light, too new at this whole thing, too messed up too busy, too bored, too boring, too comfortable, too sinful, too far gone - stand like sentinels between us and the callings God has uniquely designed for us."
"On that night, there were no cell phones to keep us tethered to one another. No email. No social media. No text messages Nothing."
And the coup de grace: "My sister, Karen, is four years and eleven months young than me...When she was five, I was ten. When she was ten, I was fifteen." Seriously??? After telling me the age difference between the two of you, you feel you need to say it two more times? There aren't enough hours in my life.
Does this book have a good message? Likely, but I was too busy poking myself in the eye with a fork at all the grocery list paragraphs to notice. And if these list style paragraphs were sprinkled throughout the book for emphasis, that would be one thing but they literally make up at least half of every page. Painful.
I home school my three children and when my oldest son was in grade 6, he fell into this style of writing. But as his 'editor', I didn't let it fly because it's poor quality. So my big question is not what was the author thinking but why didn't the editor stop this before it went to print?
Here my free writing lesson for everyone out there:
Imagine that every word you write is worth a dollar and when you're finished, you're going to have to pay for that book to be published. Always use the fewest words possible to get your point across. See it as a game.
Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.
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