Reviewed by Jane on
I originally rated this 3/5 stars, but I feel that's being too generous. There are so many issues with this book I don't understand why it was published before these were addressed—but then, don't I? Award-winning and/or best-selling authors carry with them a particular privilege which allows them to publish any book, figuratively speaking, for the sole purpose of publishing a book (for the author) and bringing in sales (for the publisher).
I'm not new to Christian fiction—there are many well-written novels our their featuring characters with agency. This book is not one of those; it's more the nth draft everyone up and decided they were tired of reading and send to the publishers.
I have more things to say, but for now, this is the gist:
1. The diction does not vary. You can find better diction and varying sentence structure on Facebook, reading your uber religious elder relatives' statuses. This book resembles mom blogs more—except I can't even say this in good faith, because it feels like an insult to all mommy bloggers everywhere.
2. Nicole has no agency. I'd be lying if I said she was role-model material and insulting all role models everywhere—and I'm not even behind the idea of putting people up on pedestals and looking up to them for #inspo or to be influenced. The plot drives her, and all conflict is external. Feelings come out of nowhere, and anytime either brother is in site for the first half of the book, she only thinks with her vagina. It's 2017. Where are the women who aren't boy-crazy middle-schoolers, growing all jealous within two seconds of meeting a guy?! Geez, girl—no wonder your ex-boyfriend was more into his music.
A part of me was to blame this on the Bible Belt Christian lifestyle, but Nicole is from Seattle—she's not from the Bible Belt, yet she's acting exactly like a Bible Belt-raised thoroughbred Christian woman: only thinking about breeding.
It made me—and continues to make me—want to bang my head against the wall because of the ridiculousness that is the entirety of Nicole: we get it, okay? You want a man, because you've been single for almost six months, and it's driving you cray-cray. But that doesn't mean you need to wait on men hand-and-foot, be there at every man's beck-and-call, and/or be afraid to stand up for yourself!
Fiction like this is a major issue because:
3. Christian women are not weak. We don't need society to see us this way, especially not when they already view women as a whole as "weak". We aren't dependent on men; we can take care of ourselves, thank you very much. We don't need to continue to write stereotypes to win over a crowd who seemingly likes this, because it does more harm than good. If we want change, we need to write the change. Disney fairy tales are not real life, and we need to stop treating them like such. I get this is for adults, but oh, my gosh, a kindergarten student could read this and write a much better story.
Because she lacks agency—and any personality other than judging everyone and everything (despite Carlson writing how Nicole is rarely judgmental), and thinking with her ovaries—Nicole is everything but relateable.
My corresponding blog post will be published 13 June, 2017 @ https://janepedia.com/carlsonm-uass/
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 29 May, 2017: Finished reading
- 29 May, 2017: Reviewed