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Sunday, June 26, 2011

Like A 7 Day Old Cinnamon Roll


You know how some pastries look so fresh and delectable and then you bite in and the bread is stale, the taste has left and you are basically chewing a soft cracker?

That was this book. I was very excited to see this title offered through the Blogging For Books by WaterBrook. I had heard of the books "Every Woman's Battle" and "Every Man's Battle" but had not read them. So when I saw this one for singles I jumped at the chance to review it.

First off, it is not an original book. It takes excerpts from the above titles and regurgitates them. That to me is cheating LOL
I also should mention that it took the form of a workbook for a small group study. So lots of simple questions and yes/no responses made up the content. I didn't see that coming so perhaps if I was aware of that before hand I would be less disappointed.

Next misnomer was that nothing in it was FOR just singles, it was basic Christanese talk (don't know what that is? Just a made up word for the cliches and phrases that sometimes we Christians like to throw out) about sexual purity. Which is nice but I am a practical person, I don't need to hear "guard your heart", I want to know "here are a few ABC suggestions of what that looks like and how to do it"

That along with the fact that apparently, according to the author, women only struggle with emotional purity not physical was truly unbelievable. How can you write a book about sexual purity but never talk about physical sexual purity is beyond me.

This book took sections of the other books but instead of tailoring it to singles, it just basically said the same thing twice.

I'll be honest, I rarely read Christian help books for one reason- they are "encouraging" but never convicting. This was my main complaint about this book. You constantly feel like you have just been encouraged to do the right thing but never pushed to actually do it. Maybe I am reading the wrong books but this has been my experience with this genre.

I will say one good thing- all the excerpts from Every Man's Battle were the only thing that grabbed my attention. Those were direct, had a point and gave useful direction. So perhaps it is only books for women that tend to water down the lessons.

Final thought is to save your money and perhaps just go for the actual source and buy the two original titles. This is the clif notes version.


If perhaps you would like to redeem my wasted effort of reading this book, rank my review so I have a chance at getting to review better titles =)

They won't use your email for anything but verifying I'm not cheating and ranking myself a million times. Even on a Christian reviewing website you get the freaks who like to work the system *sigh*


4 comments:

  1. I hate it when authors do that. :-/ You might want to check out Dannah Gresh's book "What are you waiting for?" on this topic - it did a much better job of offering practical ideas, and giving the background needed to encourage singles in their quest for purity. Good luck!

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  2. Thanks for the suggestion! I will check it out today =)

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  3. Maybe if you had took more than 34 seconds to read it... =P

    I never read the male counterpart of the series. I never feel more dirty than after going to some conference or reading some book on Christian purity.

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  4. @ Wesley- Most self help Christian books are too watered down for me to put effort into it.

    Although I did find one that I have read through 5 times now and will keep it till I die.

    And I found a book that I thought about sending to you but on the off chance your mom opened your mail it might go down badly LOL

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