A Girl's Best Friend - Kristin Billerbeck

Blogger won't let me upload a picture. Sorry.

I just went to get the picture of this book and I noticed that the publishing house is called Integrity Publishers. HA! I would highly have to disagree with that name. The editor of this book should be fired because this book should never have been published without some major re-writing. See here's the deal. This book, which I picked up at the Multnomah County used book sale ( a whole bag of books for SIX dollars. Amazing bargain!) is in the adult Christian lit genre. And really, if a book is well written, I'll read Christian lit, Hindu lit, Jewish lit, whatever. I don't have a problem with a book that has religious values in it.

What I do have a problem with is a book that just throws a bunch of religious stuff into the story randomly when it doesn't relate to the story and, as in the case with this book, may even make the reader stop and go, wait a minute. What the heck is this doing here? There shouldn't BE parts in a book that make a reader do that. The characters in this book were supposedly trying to do a better job of living their Christian values. Great idea. And that's what the author kept trying to convince you of by throwing in some stuff about church or singles group or random Bible verses. But then she never went on to have her characters either (a) actually start doing the things they talked about or (b) own up to the fact that they weren't living up to their ideals. She just had them go on their merry way and acted like she'd never even mentioned those things.

I think this would actually have been an ok story if they'd just left the Christian aspect out. Seemed like they (author, editor, publisher???) were just trying to get into a niche market by plastering the book with platitudes, not because the story was better with this angle added.

I'm tempted (no pun intended) to read another of her books to see if maybe this was a fluke and a mistake, but then again, life's too short to waste on bad books, so maybe not.