phyllish
Written on Feb 25, 2018
If He Only Knew by Michelynn Christy, Brandi Gabriel
I really appreciate when an author is willing to write about difficult topics and present them in a Biblical perspective. The characters in this book had hard lessons to learn about forgiveness and forgiving, and the authors were very clear about the forgiveness that comes only from Jesus. This makes it very hard for me to write this review, because I know it was a labor of love. And my opinion is apparently in the minority because I have read other reviews and they are mostly glowing. Overall, the rating on Goodreads (out of 17 reviews, not including mine) is 4.22 stars.
This was a very difficult book for me. I’ll be candid with you, if I hadn’t committed to reading and reviewing it, I would have stopped reading it close to the beginning. The dialog and the story seemed superficial and lacking depth up until the big reveal and then things got emotional. The portion that dealt with forgiveness felt very preachy and contrived.
One of the characters, Rick, went to war and managed to forget he was reporting for boot camp the next day. That just didn’t seem realistic based on my experience (and my friend was going during peacetime). And then there was Rick’s return after he went MIA that was made very little of.
The hardest part to read was the subject matter. Without going into details, I’ll just say that it was a topic that is very sensitive and it was painful to read about, especially with the details that were given. I won’t give away any spoilers, especially because the authors are very clear about not revealing what the issues are, so if you want to know so you can make a decision about reading this book, feel free to send a note on my contact page and I can give you more details privately.
You can read Michelynn's and Brandi's guest post at AmongTheReads.net
This review was originally posted on AmongTheReads.net
I am grateful to Celebrate Lit for giving me a copy of this book. The fact I received this book for free does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.