shelfreflectionofficial's reviews
801 reviews

"In war, often the first strike is best, when the prey is still unaware of the imminent danger.”

Last summer I read Marr’s book The Family Bones which was about a family of psychopaths. The Alone Time also deals with a family, but the vibe is more mystery and trauma about the past than surviving in the present.

Both books are compelling and fast reads. The Alone Time probably doesn’t have as much action as The Family Bones, but it doesn’t really feel like that when you read it.

It also has a disturbing/haunting kind of tone to the story that I think threw off some readers about what they were reading. The story is a little out there, I believe intentionally, so go into it without trying to hold Marr to a completely realistic unraveling. Let it do its thing.



The main characters are Violet and Fiona, sisters. (Ironically, I just finished The Garden Girls which also features two characters with these names.)

Violet and Fiona, though now a bit estranged, are bonded by a traumatic experience from their childhood:

“I survived a plane crash that took the lives of my parents, that left me and my younger sister, Violet, to fend for ourselves for months.”

The pair (13 and 7 at the time) survived Olympic National Forest after their small plane, piloted by their father, crashed on the way to Canada for a family trip.

Since then, they both grew up and dealt with their trauma in different ways. Violet has battled drug and alcohol abuse and general aimlessness in life though now picking up writing again.

Fiona is part of the art scene making sculptures with organic materials:

“As my art dealer likes to promote my pieces: the tangible manifestation of trauma using the very source of trauma itself— nature. I’ll never be more than one of the girl-survivors, and I’ll never be allowed to work through my trauma on my own terms, via my sculptures. All they or I will ever be is an object of fascination and fear.”

It’s been 25 years since ‘The Alone Time’ but when a woman becomes breaking news claiming to be their father’s mistress the months leading up to the crash, the case of their parents’ deaths that was never closed has new energy, a pursuit of more answers as to what really happened out in the woods.

A filmmaker set on making a name for himself with a tell-all documentary is hounding the girls to tell their story, to tell the truth about what happened out there. Did their parents actually die on impact like they’ve always claimed? Or did they survive that first night and potentially more?



The formatting of the book is all first person POVs from alternating viewpoints of the four family members.

Janet and Henry (the parents) have chapters from ‘the wild.’ Fiona and Violet have chapters in both the past and the present. We also get snippets from the notebook Violet wrote in while they were stranded.

Elle Marr does a really good job of making you second guess what happened and who is really the dangerous person. They all have motives or suspicious behaviors. There was one reveal that I had figured out shortly before it was revealed and I thought it was an excellent twist!

Janet’s motive is the infidelity she has recently discovered about her husband who has largely been absent and selfish both as a husband and a father.

Henry’s motive his is life with a different woman whom he had asked to meet at a special spot on this trip. He also battles severe PTSD from his military career that often leaves him disoriented.

From Henry’s chapter he observes:

“Fiona’s emotions have pivoted from sobs to anger within seconds. Violet has remained stoic even through quiet tears. Which reaction is the more appropriate one, given the horror scene we all stumbled on? Could one of my kids actually be responsible for their mother’s death?”

And then we have Violet in the wild saying ‘the woman is back’ and we might have someone else out there with a motive to kill her mother.


I really enjoyed this book. I found it hard to put down.

I am a little surprised by some of the poor reviews of this book.

There are a few things that I agree didn’t make enough sense:

- That the sisters would be too worried about the case being re-investigated because I don’t think there could have been enough evidence to lead to any sort of conviction plus they were minors at the time and it’s been so long that I feel like any retribution wouldn’t have been too harsh. Also does seem odd that the woman would just now be coming forward with information— that trigger makes sense for what comes after it, but the ‘pushing’ of the trigger is absent.

- One reviewer commented on Violet’s poor spelling in her journal and I would agree with this, though I know my seven-year-old is quite advanced for her ability to spell. At the same time, though, I don’t think I minded it too much because it just drove home that Violet was a fragile little girl having to grow up to fast.

- The ‘deal’ with Violet and Wes seemed like a weak addition that either should have been removed or should have been played up more. It was too little that it just felt confusing and out of nowhere.

- I’m still not entirely sure how they survived for how long they did or that they weren’t rescued sooner. But I understand that’s a bit beside the point.


Overall though, I guess I disagree with the reviewers who complain about the logic and the out-there aspect of it. It is a bit of a crazy story. So is The Family Bones. I think Marr just likes to write about insane or disturbing types of scenarios.

This isn’t really meant to be a book where you can picture it happening in real life. It’s not meant to be an academic discourse on mental health. It’s also not necessarily to endear you to the characters.

It’s a thriller that is meant to be mysterious, to freak you out a bit, and to cycle through mistrust and wondering about each of the characters.

Marr says in her own Goodreads review of it: “This story was influenced by my wildest dreams and nightmares”

And that’s how I read it.

Also I really like the title. It’s an eerie reference and very fitting with the tale.


Recommendation

When a book has a ‘what really happened in the past’ premise with flashbacks, I am always leery if the reveal will be worth the anticipation. I do feel like this one holds up.

Sure, if you’re the type that wants to read stories you may find in the newspaper, this probably isn’t the one for you. But if you have a little bit more imagination and are willing to let it be what it is, I think you’ll enjoy it.

This seems to be a hit or miss book for people, but there really wasn’t anything that stuck out to me to be annoying or jarring me out of the story. It was compelling from start to finish and I would recommend it.


[Content Advisory: couple handfuls of f-words, a few s-words, one very brief sexual encounter that doesn’t go very far]

“I know the kinds of things that await me. I know what evil men can do.”

This is my first Jessica Patch book and I loved it!

It was suspenseful from start to finish. The opening prologue begins with a woman’s attempted escape from her captor. The action and intensity continues to the very end as a last rescue attempt is made in the middle of a hurricane on the Outer Banks.

Patch writes Christian fiction so one of the best parts of the book is that there is no swearing or graphic sexual content. It’s felt increasingly harder to find mainstream books without all of that so I’m glad to find a Christian author that can still write good (but clean) thrillers.

I would say Patch is in league with Steven James’s books. The Garden Girls felt a lot like James’s Patrick Bowers series about a serial killer. And if you like one of these authors, you’re sure to like the other.

They both get into the nitty gritty and aren’t afraid of portraying evil or killing off characters. Patch’s writing may have slightly more overt Christian undertones. James writes about moral and ethical questions and mentions God, but Patch writes more specifically about a character’s faith journey.

I will say, though, that I thought she did this in an organic and natural way. I have been a bit (probably overly) critical of a lot of Christian fiction for being cheesy or unnatural. But I didn’t feel that while reading this book.


The Plot and Characters

The Garden Girls is an intense thriller about a serial killer who abducts women with flower names and tattoos them with flowers from neck to thigh: blooms when they obey, buds when they don’t.

He has a secret garden in his house with human-sized bird cages where he puts them on display to dance for him.

So yeah. Pretty disturbing. I hadn’t thought about the concept of an abductor tattooing his victims which is such a permanent and flamboyant way to traumatize someone.

“You’re part of my private garden now. I’m going to teach you how to bloom.”


It’s got NCIS/Criminal Minds vibes with their SCU team (Strange Crimes Unit) which specializes in hunting down “sickos who kill people based on their religious beliefs.”

Here’s the team:

Ty (our main character) is the impulsive, smart aleck of the group and their resident religious behavioral analyst. He had left a cult as a teenager and had coped with his abusive childhood by studying religions and the psychology behind them.

They’ve got Selah, their computer hacker/analyst.

“Violet [the psychologist] had a superpower. She could slide into the brain of a serial killer and was rarely wrong.”

“Owen was a great geopattern theorist, and his work helped them triangulate where killers might live or work and where they hunted based on geographical patterns.” (just like Patrick Bowers…)

Asa is the father-figure, Special Agent in Charge.

Fiona is the profiler.

[It may be best to read the other books first or you might read a few little spoilers: Violet’s story is in Patch’s book A Cry in the Dark. Asa and Fiona’s story is in her book Her Darkest Secret. Both, I believe, also have serial killers]

Ty’s team takes on this case in the Outer Banks because the killer has a beef with Ty and is acting out his revenge.

“Tiberius would pay for his sins— pride at the top of the list. When he finally fell to his face, he would be humbled, humiliated and held accountable.”

The case gets even more personal when he finds out that a girl from his cult that he had fallen in love with as a teen—Bexley— and had planned to marry and escape the cult with all those years ago is still alive. And her younger sister, who he had also cared for, is now one of the missing girls.

To add to the turmoil he’s already feeling, he discovers Bexley had a son who is now 15. And Ty is the father.

Ty’s world is crashing down, the killer always five steps ahead, and just as they are getting answers to their questions, a cat 5 hurricane is bearing down on the East coast, threatening not only the missing women’s lives but their ability to finish the investigation and catch the killer.

“Ty wasn’t sure which scared him more— the unstoppable hurricane or the possibility that someone might be killing people as part of a revenge scheme against him.”

There is action and surprises up to the very end.



The Faith Part

I appreciate the way she showed the main character (Ty) with his transparent feelings toward religion and Christianity which were influenced by his cult upbringing, but how his relationship with his friends (who had their own faith journeys in other books) did life with him and their words and experiences helped penetrate the walls Ty had built up against God.

I thought it made a lot of sense to show how he came to the end of himself.

“He’d believed in no one but himself, and he was spent, stretched as far as one man could be stretched, feeling it in every beat of his heart and in every breath.”

That’s how it is for all of us. We think we can be in charge of our lives and that we have everything under control. If we just work hard enough and try long enough we can do anything, we can make it through anything.

But faith requires dependency on something (some One) outside of yourself. It doesn’t take too long to realize that we don’t have it in us. We are not enough on our own. There is not some magic in the fibers of our bodies that allow us to handle hard things.

There is grace. And mercy. And peace. And they come from a sovereign and powerful God who loves us.

That story was evident in The Garden Girls in a real life kind of way. There was real life suffering and grief. Real darkness. And then real light and hope even in the midst of loss.

I think that was an honest way to portray it because the Christian life is not a promise of an easy, care-free life of luxury. We are not called to endure nothing. But we persevere the hardship with the strength of the One who sustains the world and sustains our every breath and we know we can trust him.



Randos

I wanted to commend Jessica Patch on this well-placed cultural reference to a wonderful show:

“I’ll put this slow cooker on Warm unless you’re still freaked out about it since watching This Is Us.”



The book is mostly told in third-person, but the writing voice does change styles depending what character is the focus. This got to be a little confusing at times to know what perception we were getting.

Ty’s is the main voice and we probably should have had more of that. But there were times we were in the killer’s mind or in Bexley’s mind.

There was one first person POV from one of the women who was abducted.

Ty’s writing voice sections had more humor and sarcasm, Bexley’s had more anxiety and the others were meant to be more mysterious.

I thought Patch did a good job of creating unique characters with their own personalities and quirks. At times I wondered if the slang used for the son was too over-the-top, but it probably is how teenagers talk. I’m not around enough of them to know. But I do know ‘bussin’ is a thing so there’s that.

For the most part, I liked the way she wrote. She seems to have a good handle on humor and sarcasm and not all writers can do that realistically.



When they were going to get a sketch of the tattoo artist but the guy wasn’t going to get to it until Saturday I knew what was going to happen. In real life, if you’re about to get a sketch of a potential killer and you’re short on time you tell the guy to sketch that thing at home and text a picture of it! You don’t say- well, I guess we have to wait several days, he’s not scheduled to work. Hope he doesn’t call in sick!

I get that the sketch needed to come into play later for the suspense unfolding as Patch intended but I wish there was at least a better reason for the delay in getting that sketch so it made more sense than just waiting til the guy’s next shift of work.


Major Spoiler Comments

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I’m mostly satisfied with how everything ended up/was revealed, but one thing that I’m still trying to figure out is the tattooing.

Did Garrick do all the tattooing then? He was around that much to get that much tattooing done? And would Garrick listen to Lysander on what he wanted tattooed? How involved was Garrick?

It doesn’t really fit that Lysander was the tattooer, but the parts told from the killer’s POV call him The Artist. Without re-reading the whole book, my remembrance says it doesn’t really make sense that those parts were Garrick.

I guess I need more information about that tattoo aspects in relation to Garrick and Lysander.


I’m also not sure how much Ahnah was involved in. It seems like she was aware of what Lysander was doing with the girls. Knowing her background, it seems weird that she would have been okay with that kind of torture being done to women, especially the deaths.

I know those who are abused often end up abusing others. I also know Lysander had groomed Ahnah and she had loved him at one point, so it’s not like he was a stranger she was working with.

But it still feels hard to believe she was part of all that.


I really liked Owen’s character and was sad with how his story ended. But I also think it was a really neat and momentous aspect of Ty’s faith journey. Dang, though, that was an emotional scene!

“Live in the light.”

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SPOILERS OVER!!



Recommendation

Even though this is classified as a Christian fiction book, I would recommend this one to all readers. Especially if you enjoy intense thrillers, or serial killer thrillers.

The ‘Christian stuff’ doesn’t take you out of the story, but rather enhances the character development and it’s not preachy or cheesy. (Well, I’m sure there’s someone out there who will disagree with me, but out of all the Christian fiction books out there, this is on the very ‘less preachy’ side of the spectrum).

If you don’t do well with serial killer books, you won’t want to read this one. The killer is a formidable opponent with a lot of evil.

I’m excited to have found Jessica Patch and look forward to reading some of her other books.



Disclaimer: I will say that she writes books like these and she also writes for ‘Love Inspired Suspense’ and the book covers for books with that organization are less than appealing to me. If any of you have read her books in those series, let me know how or if they’re a different kind of book than this. The covers make the books seem more like a Nancy Drew type of book. But if the writing is the same, I can look past the cover for the story. I may have to try one and see for myself.


[Content Advisory: no swear words- it’s written that a character curses but doesn’t say the word; no graphic sexual content but the abducted women are naked and there is some sexual perversion with a few of the characters]

“My phone is a window into the worthless and the worthy, the artificial and the authentic.”

“With my phone, I find myself always teetering between useful efficiency and meaningless habit.”


This book is not an anti-technology book. Or even an anti-smartphone book. Reinke is fascinated by technology and its advancements.

“my aim is to avoid both extremes: the utopian optimism of the technophiliac and the dystopian pessimism of the technophobe.”

He has written this book to help us use our phone in better ways. To think about how our phones are influencing us and changing us and to help us take captive our habits and thoughts and order them properly.

 “The question of this book is simple: What is the best use of my smartphone in the flourishing of my life?”

There are numerous studies on the psychological and physical affects smartphones, social media, and internet usage has on people as individuals and on the society in general. We would be naive to think our phones aren’t changing us.

Reinke doesn’t dive into the psychological and physical, but instead veers to the spiritual. He spends time talking about nine biblical realities surrounding technology and how it pertains to creation, human power, our creativity, our health, our relationships and more.

It was convicting to read this book and realize the deeper influence my phone has on my ability to listen and hear God, distracting me from meeting physical needs around me (tangibly and spiritually), keeping me from silence, enabling me to speak harshly with little immediate kickback, inflating my fear of missing something, weakening my ability to process information, and luring me to become “like what I like.”

I think all would benefit from reading this book and changing our mindsets and boundaries with our phones.



I thought it was interesting when he compared our phones to the carved images and statues (idols) of Bible times. They weren’t used as tools, but they were worshiped for something else:

“These idols were more like our technologies, divine oracles of knowledge and prosperity, used by worshipers in an attempt to control and manipulate the events of life for personal benefit. The figurine and the iPhone appeal to the same fetish.”

There are definitely ways we use our phone as a tool, but if we aren’t careful, it becomes the means by which we seek to control and manipulate our lives for our own gain.

Similarly, in the foreword John Piper likens our phones to mules. If we live in fear, our phones become an escape from life or from fear of death, but as Christians we have hope in the resurrection of Christ and should not live in fear. Then our phones are more like mules— there to just get the job done and help us on our way to something better.

“Don’t waste your life grooming your mule. Make him bear the weight of a thousand works of love. Make him tread the heights with you in the mountains of worship.”



One interesting thing about this book is that it was written in 2017 and even in these 7 years between its publishing and my reading it, technology has changed. AI is on the rise. Facebook isn’t as popular. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Metaverse, and Fortnite are the time-wasters. And there’s probably a whole host of other apps that I’ve not even aware of taking over the interwebs and people’s time.

This book is more phone/internet-specific, but if you are interested in how we as Christians should view technology more generally, I would recommend Reinke’s book God, Technology, and the Christian Life which has some really good insights from the Tower of Babel and beyond and how God has used technology for his glory.



Though our world has advanced since its writing, the principles Reinke shares in this book are no less relevant.

I liked how he summarized the twelve points at the end of the book:

[I’ve removed chapter parentheticals for easier reading]

- “Our phones amplify our addiction to distractions, and thereby splinter our perception of our place in time.

- Our phones push us to evade the limits of embodiment and thereby cause us to treat one another harshly.

- Our phones feed our craving for immediate approval and promise to hedge against our fears of missing out.

- Our phones undermine key literary skills and, because of our lack of discipline, make it increasingly difficult for us to identify ultimate meaning.

- Our phones offer us a buffet of produced media and tempt us to indulge in visual vices.

- Our phones overtake and distort our identity and tempt us toward unhealthy isolation and loneliness.”

I think we can read these and all recognize areas of our phone usage that is not beneficial to our relationship with ourselves, those around us, or God himself.

But with every warning, Reinke pairs it with a positive, an encouragement and a grace. Just throwing out our phones is not going to solve the problem or change our hearts. We must use wisdom to understand our weaknesses and in all things seek Christ first.

Reinke promotes disciplines that tie in with each pitfall and points us back to Christ and the gospel freedom he offers us. It positions us to our phones in a way so we can use the phone for God’s glory instead of being at the mercy of our phone.



Some Standouts

Every chapter had great insights and I took a lot of notes, but here are just a few ponderings I will share from my readings:


In the throes of Covid, churches were largely forced to commune online. And even after we could meet in person again, so many people opted to continue to be churched from afar, electing to just watch the sermon online. What’s the point of dealing with the church body if I can just be taught at home?

But we miss out on so much when we are not meeting together in person as the Lord commands in Scripture. Sure, it might be awkward at times, or uncomfortable but we have to force ourselves out of the phone’s drive for immediate approval and its pull to like-minded people.

People are diverse. People have different strengths, weaknesses, and blindspots. The church is a place to feel unity and encouragement even in difference. To learn how to work through disagreements and talk through hard things, not avoid them.

“In the local church, I do not fear rejection. In the healthy local church, I can pursue a spiritual depth that requires agitation, frustration, and the discomfort of being with people who conform not to “my” kingdom but to God’s.”

We can’t live in a vacuum or on a pedestal of our own maneuvering. We need the body of Christ to challenge us and bear with us in our struggles. We need the honesty and tangibility of the church body.



As a reader, another of Reinke’s principles stood out to me. Our phones cause us to lose literacy. The shortness of tweets and posts and our constant scrolling and skimming erodes our ability to concentrate and read for long periods of time.

We are being conditioned for snippets and highlights, not depth and meditation.

“God has given us the power of concentration in order for us to see and avoid what is false, fake, and transient— so that we may gaze directly at what is true, stable, and eternal. It is part of our creatureliness that we are easily lured by what is vain and trivial.”

“We are called to suspend our chronic scrolling in order to linger over eternal truth, because the Bible is the most important book in the history of the world.”

We are called to know and love God’s Word. But to understand the Bible, we have to put in the work of studying it, and lingering over it. Taking it to heart. A random daily Bible verse on an app is not bad, but it’s not the kind of depth that is required of us.

I know not everyone can read the amount of books that I do, but it’s important not to shrug off reading altogether. We miss out on the very words of God when we settle for snapshots and scrolling instead of silence and savoring.



As an artist/creator/writer, his chapter on production and digital media and creations was interesting to think about. It reminded me a little of Rembrandt is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey as he talked about what art is meant to do, meant to portray.

Technology can help us create things. Make art. It is a platform to share our pictures and our words.

We need to think about where our art and our words lead people— towards God or away? Does it serve and build up our audiences?

We wield a power to influence many people and we should evaluate before every post or creation whether or not we are pointing to truth and the beauty of God and his world.

“take all of God’s created and revealed gifts to you and make all of them into a life that shows the world how glorious and satisfying God really is.”



I was shocked when Reinke shared this statistic:

“The average output of email and social-media text is estimated at 3.6 trillion words, or about thirty-six million books— typed out every day… which is one million more books than the Library of Congress holds.”

Seven years later, it’s got to be a lot more than this. That is a lot of words.

And it’s sobering when we consider that we will be held accountable for every idle word we speak or tweet or post or message. (Matt 12:36)

How much of our online presence or our phone usage is made up of idle, careless words? We may think what we do with our phones is anonymous or without consequences, but God sees every stroke and swipe and we will have to answer for every action we take on our phones, every choice we make with it.

That’s not to beat us down with the gravity of that reality and make us feel like failures, unable to atone for all those careless words we’ve written. Of course, we do need to feel the weight of our sin and the need for our Savior.

But Reinke also uses this verse to remind us that we are responsible for every word that comes from us— in word, thought, or deed— and it would be good practice to consider the idleness of our phone usage and our online presence. Can we stand behind what we do and say? And if not, what changes need to be made?



Conclusion

“If our digital technology becomes our god, our wand of power, it will inevitably shape us into technicians who gain mastery over a dead world of conveniences.”

I recommend this book to all people. Smartphones aren’t going away. Or if they do, they will be replaced by something even more invasive and alluring. We have to take the time to look at how our phones are changing us and what pitfalls we can easily fall into.

Reinke’s book is realistic and practical and written in a voice, not of abandoning technology, but in harnessing it and using it to point to God and his glory. To use our phones and not let our phones use us. To understand what sins poor phone usage can tap into and to seek forgiveness.

 “I am not my own. I am owned by my Lord. I have been bought with a price, which means I must glorify Christ with my thumbs, my ears, my eyes, and my time. And that leads me to my point: I do not have “time to kill”— I have time to redeem.” 

“We couldn’t possible contend with simultaneously observing all possible realities at once… but if we could, where would it take us?”


This book lives up to the hype!

This is my first Blake Crouch book and I know it won’t be my last. It was definitely a story that was hard to put down.

I know a lot people aren’t into sci-fi or feel like books about the multiverse hurt their brains, but I think this one is pretty accessible to any reader.


This book seeks to explore the questions— What if my life could have been different? What if I had made different choices? Am I actually living the life I want?

“My life is great. It’s just not exceptional. And there was a time when it could have been.”

Even though I don’t believe the multiverse exists, it’s a compelling concept for a story and a way to think about those questions that a lot of people ask themselves.

Our lives don’t always end up being what we thought they would. We have to make hard choices about where to go, what to do, and who to be with. Sometimes it’s tempting to ask- is this my best life?

“Fighting always against the whispers of what might have been.”

I really liked what Crouch did with these questions. There is a lot to be said of contentment. There is constant cultural pressure to dream big and do what it takes to achieve those dreams— whatever it takes— because we deserve them.

But there is not much said about self-sacrifice and self-denial for the sake of another. That’s generally seen as settling, giving up, and not living up to your potential rather than a noble choice with a meaningful purpose.

Dark Matter is a poignant tale that forces us to see that what we think might be better, may not actually be. Sometimes the little things are the big things.


Brief Plot Summary

The main character in the book— Jason— is an atomic physicist and professor at a small college in the Chicago suburbs married to an aspiring artist, Daniela, and father to a 15-year-old son, Charlie.

When he and Daniela got unexpectedly pregnant with Charlie they made the choice to build their family. Jason gave up intense quantum physics research. Daniela gave up time spent advancing her art.

They see friends and colleagues achieving the things they used to think they would do.

Well all that changes for Jason. A version of himself from a different universe made the choice to continue his research instead of being a family man. His research led him to create a special box that allows him to break the barriers of reality and traverse through the multiverse. Having realized his research-focused life was unfulfilling, he enters Jason’s universe and effectively takes over his life, forcing Jason to switch places with him.

This launches Jason into a heart-wrenching and devastating journey across the multi-verse to try to get back to his family. He has to continually make the choice whether to take the life he could have had or choose Daniela and Charlie as it is now, if he can even get back to them.

“What if all the pieces of belief and memory that comprise who I am—my profession, Daniela, my son— are nothing but a tragic misfiring in that gray matter between my ears? Will I keep fighting to be the man I think I am? Or will I disown him and everything he loves, and step into the skin of the person this world would like for me to be?”



If you like this concept, you should definitely read Brian Freeman’s book Infinite. It also takes place in Chicago and involves a man dealing with another version of himself from another universe ruining his life. I wouldn’t be surprised if Freeman was inspired by Crouch’s book since his came out in 2021. But it’s somewhat the inverse of Dark Matter in that Dylan’s wife has died and he has to struggle with not taking over other lives where she is still alive.

Also, this book feels similar to The Midnight Library by Matt Haig but with more action and violence.


Dark Matter

The book is called Dark Matter because dark matter is the term used by astrophysicists to describe “the [theoretical] force holding stars and galaxies together—the thing that makes our whole universe work.” and “some string theorists think it might be a clue to the existence of the multiverse.”

You don’t really have to understand the quantum mechanics of the theory at the base of this story. Thanks to Marvel we’re probably all somewhat familiar with the multiverse, and we can just accept the fact that the box works the way it does without having to fully comprehend the ‘how.’ Since that’s all theoretical anyway.


But let’s explore some of the concepts in this book for fun…

Part of the idea behind the box is the theory that “observation determines reality.” An object can be in two states at once until it is observed in a single state.

I don’t think that observation is the only thing that determines reality. Does observation require sight? Touch? Hearing? All at the same time? Not everyone can give that. Are their surroundings less real? Observation obviously influences our perception of reality, but it doesn’t determine reality itself.


I’m not sure how many people actually believe in the multiverse. But to indulge in that line of thinking I’ll also bring up that I disagree with Jason’s conclusion on how the multiverse influences his view of identity:

“My understanding of identity has been shattered— I am one face of an infinitely faceted being… I can’t help thinking that we’re more than the sum total of our choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity.”

Perhaps that makes sense within the context of the particular story, but I don’t think that theory can hold any weight. What a burden it would be to carry the weight of every choice you effectively DON’T take but COULD HAVE. What importance would any choice really have if the multiverse says you actually made every choice or your identity is formed in part from choices you didn’t take. How could you have any identity?


Plus this multiverse theory doesn’t hold up to a biblical worldview. In that theory, there would be universes where Jesus didn’t die on the cross. Universes where God’s actions didn’t happen. It is inconsistent with the character and sovereignty of God.

So if the multiverse scares you, fear not. It can’t be true biblically. We don’t have to worry about our other selves living in a universe where Jesus didn’t save us from our sins. A universe where Jesus didn’t defeat the death we deserve.

We only have one soul. It can’t be both saved and not saved.

Our hope is assurance, not just luck that we happen to be conscious of our self living in the ‘right’ universe.

But that does make your choices all the more important. You don’t get infinite chances to try until something works. You get this life. And your choices will have eternal consequences.


Jason comments, “I suppose we’re both just trying to come to terms with how horrifying infinity really is.”

Infinity is impossible to comprehend. And depending what infinity is applying to, it can be horrifying.

Or it can be comforting. I know that I will spend infinite time in heaven when I die. But if I wasn’t sure about that… that would be a terrifying reality I would have to contend with.



The multiverse is a fun idea that makes for good books and movies and creative hypothetical conversations. But it’s not real. It doesn’t excuse the choices we make today and it doesn’t burden us with the ones we didn’t.

It does allow us to ponder the significance of the life we wake up to every day and the choices we make right now. It does remind us to be thankful for what we do have instead of pining for what we do not.

And that’s what I liked most about this book. The way it invested me in Jason’s story and the way he fights for his family and his ‘mediocre’ life. The here-and-now taking precedence over the what-ifs.



Recommendation

I would definitely recommend this book! It is a super fast read because you won’t be able to put it down.

It immediately draws you into the main character’s dilemma and wanting his family to be together.

I could definitely have done without some of the swearing, but in this case I think the story was worth dealing with that.

Even if you don’t like quantum physics, I think you’ll still be engaged in the drama of Jason trying to get back to his wife and son.

The overarching concept of this story is relatable to pretty much everyone and will hopefully help you see the blessings of the life you currently live.



Book to Film FYI

This is being made into a series on Apple TV that is set to release with two episodes on May 8th and then weekly beyond that. I’m excited to see how they portray this story. Fingers crossed that they don’t increase the swearing/sexual content from the book, but these days that seems to be a lot to ask for.

I’ll add my book to show comparison at some point for anyone interested.


[Content Advisory: a decent amount of f-words (mostly used in relation to sex); a couple sex ‘moments’ but nothing graphic or erotic; some gore/violence throughout but a graphic stabbing/ ‘fight scene’ at the end]

“Perhaps the dead are afraid to live as much as we are afraid to die.”


I think I would have liked this book better if I hadn’t read the summary first. I did enjoy the book, but the summary was misleading to me:

“…the police begin looking at her brother, Gus, as their prime suspect, and Theo does the unthinkable in order to protect him. But the writer has left a trail, a thread out of the labyrinth in the form of a story. Gus finds that thread and follows it, and in his attempt to save his sister he inadvertently threatens the foundations of the labyrinth itself. To protect the carefully constructed narrative, Theo Benton, and everyone looking for her, will have to die.”

This is what I thought the bulk of the book would be describing. For one, this is probably only the last 20% of the book. Theo doesn’t disappear until 75% in. Two, the ‘threatening of the foundations of the labyrinth’ seems like a bad thing in this summary, but if Theo is stuck in there, isn’t that actually a good thing? Three, thread makes it seem like a continuous series of clues you keep pulling on until you unravel it, but in actuality, the thread was one not-so-hidden clue found by Mac, not Gus.

I thought the majority of the book was going to be figuring out what Theo’s ‘unthinkable’ thing was and that she had left a manuscript behind with clues in it as to where she is or what’s going on. That was an intriguing concept to me.

But it’s not quite so complex.


Theo, an aspiring writer, gets dragged into a mess of murders after she gets involved with another writer who she finds murdered in his home just 24 hours after she had given her manuscript to him.

As others around her also get murdered, she is a suspect… and by association her lawyer brother as well.

She has to figure out who murdered her friend and why. Who can she can trust now that she and her brother are in danger.

Another aspect of this book is the interspersed snippets of chat room discussion on a conspiracy theory known as the Frankenstein Project which they believe is an experiment being conducted on people, dead and alive, by an organization called the Labyrinth .

Having read it now, I think that I’m grasping what the author was attempting to do here, but at the same time, I’m still a little confused about what I’m supposed to see as a conspiracy theory’s tendency to exaggerate and dramatize the truth versus what I’m supposed to see as a shocking revelation of what’s really going on.

The author leaves you on a bit of a cliffhanger, but as far as I know this was meant to be a stand alone novel. So the last couple paragraphs made me just sit there for a minute trying to figure out what I missed. (One thing I completely forgot about was the prologue.)



The idea of incorporating a conspiracy theory into a thriller is super interesting to me, especially considering the power they have to change people’s behavior or cause mistrust.

In the book it says, “If you need people to distrust the education system, or the media, or fast food, [such and such] would develop a conspiracy theory that would do it.”

That statement seems to imply that all conspiracy theories are untrue, and we should inherently trust everyone. That’s what makes conspiracy theories interesting. What truths are they tapping into? Knowing people are sinful and have a capability for evil it takes a lot of discernment to know what to trust. While many conspiracy theories are beyond ridiculous (birds, for instance) I think we also have to understand the power move it is to label a belief as a conspiracy theory to convince people to ignore any of the truths that may be found in it.

However, in this book, the conspiracy theory just felt bizarre and confusing when it could have been fleshed out more. It was hard to tell how important the author wanted it to be in the story.

Also the Primus character didn’t seem to fit in the way it was supposed to considering who the person was and what their warnings were saying.



I think this book would benefit from a rewritten summary or even better— spend more time on the last 20% because that’s where the action happened. This book had a lot of potential, and I did enjoy reading it, but as I sit down to write the review I’m realizing more and more the parts that ended up being unsatisfying. It didn’t go the direction I was expecting/wanting and there was too much anticipation of the action on the front end.

Plus we jump months and even years into the future in the last few chapters which was disappointing and definitely played into the need to suspend belief. I feel like the author focused and expanded on the wrong parts.

Towards the end there was some confusion for me about what was happening, but I read a digital advanced reader’s copy and I’m assuming not all the formatting was in place. I plan to check the physical copy if my library has one to see how it ended up being written. It was jumping back and forth between two characters/locations but it wasn’t clear and I had to reread several parts because I was confused why those characters were all of a sudden in the same place (they weren’t).

But again— hopefully this was fixed in the official published version!


Considering the author is Australian and lives in Australia, I thought the Kansas setting was an interesting choice. Kansas doesn’t have a whole lot to offer (although she did send me down a crazy rabbit hole regarding The Bloody Benders who may have had a connection to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family). But I guess it is a good location if you want to incorporate some bizarre characters like the doomsday preppers with all their guns and bunkers and such.

Some reviewers mentioned that reading the book made you think all Americans run around with guns, but I didn’t think that at all. Maybe it’s because I’m from Iowa and guns are common but not everywhere? There are characters with guns, especially the preppers, but I don’t really think there were that many, if any, other characters with guns.

At one point a character comments that Americans respond to surprises by shooting, but that’s a well-known stereotype that I read more as humor than any actual attempt to label America, although even though not all Americans have guns, I would say that shooting at least with their words would probably be an accurate description of most. I also think readers are adept enough to understand that preppers don’t represent an entire country.



Even though we were in Kansas, Theo and Gus were Australians and we got to see Gentill’s roots show through: from Vegemite (which is to be spread sparingly over a thick layer of butter), to calling Americans emotional, the Tasmanian term for hippies being ‘ferals’ and how they called their parents ‘the ancients,’ to their eating of chicken parma (which I knew was a popular Australian dish because of Australian Survivor), it was kinda fun to see an Australian planted in Kansas.

Gentill had some good, interesting characters. I would probably agree with other reviewers that Theo was a bit boring, though, and I feel like she should have been more wary of one of the characters than she was, but considering what she ended up doing, I don’t know if it would have mattered anyway.



Recommendation

This one is hard to know how to recommend. I really did enjoy the book as I was reading it— I didn’t find it boring by any means, but overall it did feel unsatisfying for what I was expecting and what I feel the author could have done with the concept.

I think a lot of people will still like this book even with some of my qualms. Others may not think the reading was worth the convolution, or may not enjoy conspiracy theories.

I think I would still consider reading other Gentill books as many reviewers have said this book was different than her others.


[Content Advisory: 31 f-words, 2 s-words; one implied sex scene]


**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

“Somehow, it came to this: a dead body on my bathroom floor.”

Because of the swearing, the unlikable characters, and the loose ends, this book didn’t do much for me.

I am also not a huge fan of books (or movies) that start with the end and then rewind to tell us how we got there. It removes some of the mystery!

This book begins by telling us that Nadine, the main character, is in her bathroom with a dying man, choosing not to call the police and allowing him to die.

“You did this.” she says.


So who is this guy?

Stuart throws a lot of options at us throughout the book of men Nadine might have a motive to kill. I didn’t necessarily ‘figure out’ who the man was for awhile, but the problem with that is that we still have the issue of all these other guys that did these other things or were suspicious for something. Unfortunately, some of these things didn’t really get resolution in a satisfying way.

I admit that part of that is because this book takes place in one day: the day of the party which ends with the death of the mysterious man. We get a few flashbacks for context, but otherwise everything happens within one day— morning, afternoon, and evening— and all loose ends can’t easily be tied up in that time frame.


The party is a sixtieth birthday garden party Nadine wanted to throw for her famous writer mother, Marilyn.

But these ladies don’t have a great track record with parties.

This party occurs on the anniversary of her mom’s 30th birthday party which had ended in her mother’s 15 year-old sister’s mysterious death (whose body Nadine— just ten at the time— found). Plus just last New Year’s Eve they had a party where Nadine fell down the stairs and shattered her hip.

Besides party tragedy, we’ve got another trauma that happened just six weeks ago when Nadine’s daughter found her friend, River, overdosed and is now in a coma.

There’s something not right with this family.

Stuart gives us hints that Nadine is hiding something. Keeping some secrets. And that she will do anything to protect the ones she loves.

“My job is to protect Marilyn, even if that means keeping secrets from her. No one, not even her, knows the truth better than me.”

“Even a marriage that seems steady to an outside can be full of ups and downs. I’ve often thought that it’s the downs that ultimately bring you closer. The losses you endure. The secrets you keep. I hope that for all our downs, Paul and I will hang on forever. Because despite my wrongdoings, the risks I’ve taken with our life together, I don’t know what I’d do without him. I need to believe he’d forgive me for almost anything.”


What makes Nadine unlikable is a bit hard to pin down. She’s a bit of a control freak. Suspicious. She had an affair that, even though it’s over now, no one knows about. And her inner dialogue isn’t super pleasant to listen to.

I think the author writes her specifically like this. After all, we have to believe that she’s killed a man so something had to have driven her to feel the feelings required for that and it’s the day of, so no development can happen to progress to that point slowly.

Also she uses ‘Jesus’ and ‘God’ as a curse allllll the time. Which turned me off as well.


In some ways this book reminded me of The Guest List which is also a book that takes place in one day (actually it’s two)— a wedding instead of a birthday party— but both have a death of someone and you aren’t told who it is til the end. But I didn’t really like that one other. I think it’s an interesting concept for a book but I’m not sure I’ve read one done really well.

Maybe The Dilemma? That’s a book over a one day period with a party, but without a death. Just some secrets between a husband and a wife about their daughter and a bit of a twist at the end. But even then, there was just a disconnect between the reader and the daughter which felt important.

I think I just like to read books with more depth, context, and development. I think I’d prefer more of a locked room/Sherlock type of mystery in a situation like this rather than a domestic thriller type of suspicion.

I’m just not going to be super invested in the characters and it leaves me with too many questions.


In terms of A Death at a Party, I don’t want to share my unanswered questions because that would give away who is NOT dead and I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who is going to read the book.

I guess here’s a couple things I think I can get away with saying: Do we even really know WHY Nadine threw this party? What’s the deal with Marilyn? The two doors didn’t feel as momentous as I thought they were going to be. And I am just not sure what life will look like for Nadine after this because it feels like her problems are far from solved.

Some people like some open-endedness to books but that’s not my cup of tea.


Recommendation

I think there are some people who are going to like the book— especially if they like rewinded… rewound…? books or stories that happen all in one day. But those who like more of a developing plot and likeable characters may want to pass on this one.

As other reviewers have commented, the cover is really pretty, but it didn’t quite live up to what I was hoping for when I picked it up.

It just felt a little too unsatisfying when I finished.


[Content Advisory: 54ish f-words, 18ish s-words; lots of ‘Jesus’ and ‘God.’; Nadine had an affair and there are some references to the trysts]



**Received a copy from Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review**

“Faithfulness to God comes at a cost. It’s easier to submit to societal opinions than to stand on scriptural truth.”


[Note: if you are less of a reader and prefer podcasts, HERE is a link to one of Childers’ podcasts where she talks about a lot of this information.]



With the same easy to follow arguments and illustrations of her book, Live Your Truth (and Other Lies), Alisa Childers and co-author Tim Barnett expose what’s really happening during deconstruction and remind us of the importance of truth and holding fast to God’s Word.

Childers and Barnett take a nuanced and confusing topic— deconstruction— and bring clarity and distinction. It is clear they were committed to researching this topic within the spheres it operates and heard from the most influential deconstructionists.

They look at the what, why, and who of the whole process with a desire to help us understand the deconstruction community, of which our loved ones may be part, and to know how to stay grounded in biblical conviction with compassion.


They recognize that there are many things out of the scope of this book. They aren’t attempting to address every theological issue deconstructionists put out. (If you are looking for some answers and evidence surrounding specific beliefs, I would direct you to the books listed at the end of the review.)

But what they do address is the pull of the deconstruction movement and their desire for relationships to be restored, both between family and friends, but also between people and the Lord.

I thought this book was very well-researched and written in a firm but loving tone. I highlighted so much!


One reviewer was turned off, saying there was no room for compromise here. I’m not sure exactly what they mean by compromise, but I think this book was written for that very reason. Following Christ requires conviction. If you believe something is true, you don’t compromise that belief for a lie.

Following Christ will put us on the outs from our culture. Romans 12 reminds us to stop conforming to the world— stop compromising. Deconstructors tend to look at culture and their inner moral compass to determine what is right. As Christians we look to God and his Word to form our beliefs, even if those beliefs are condemned by the culture.


Deconstruct or Reform?

They make the important distinction that deconstruction is not the same as reforming. Though there are many different definitions of deconstruction, a fundamental aspect of deconstruction is the rejection of authority, aka the Bible.

“The church isn’t always reforming to keep up with contemporary culture, or to get rid of old, dusty orthodoxy. Rather, it’s always being reformed according to Scripture.”

Asking questions of your faith and your beliefs is a good and healthy thing. We should know why we believe what we believe. Doubts and questions should not be suppressed but brought to light and engaged with. But as Christians we hold up each belief to our authority— the Bible— as we should. (A circular reasoning that is required for any ultimate source of truth and authority.)

“We all have uncritically accepted beliefs, and some of those were true beliefs and some were false beliefs. This is why we need to understand why we believe the things we do.”

But this type of questioning and doubting is not deconstruction. A better word would be reforming. Aligning our beliefs and the things taught to us with God’s Word as the Bereans did in Acts.

Deconstruction, at its core, seeks to undermine Scripture. Reforming, at its core, seeks to understand Scripture.

Simply put, deconstruction:

“is not about trying to make your views match reality. It’s about tearing down doctrines that are morally wrong to you to make them match your own internal conscience, moral compass, true authentic self, or whatever else it’s being called these days.”



‘The Deconstruction of Christianity’ is divided into three parts.
Part One: #Exvangelical

These chapters look at the trending hashtag #exvangelical and how Christians are interacting with the deconstruction process.

Christians have tried to “baptize” the word deconstruction to try to make it ‘fit’ with Christianity. But as Childers and Barnett helpfully point out— not only does that just add to the confusion and miscommunication and appear deceptive to a community that already distrusts Christians, it also ironically plays out the deconstructionist idea that meaning is subjective.

We should let deconstruction mean what it means and interact with it as it claims itself to be, not try to change the word to mean something it doesn’t.


They don’t address or try to defend the term ‘evangelical’ as that word in itself would take an entire book to deal with.

“There are, no doubt, aspects of evangelical culture that need to be reformed.”

But they do acknowledge that the term evangelical has a lot of baggage:

“for many in the #exvangelical community, evangelical is perceived to be synonymous with misogyny, racism, homophobia, and the political support of Donald Trump.”

What is important to note here is that the beliefs of self-identified evangelicals vary tremendously. Almost half don’t believe Jesus is God, 38% don’t believe in objective truth, and over half think God accepts worship from other religions. These all go against biblical beliefs. So what does evangelical really mean?

It’s a big thing to unpack, and one place to start would be the book Gospel People.



It is true that their target audience for this book is Christians rather than deconstructors.

“While the book is primarily written to Christians who are experiencing deconstruction from the outside, we hope to present the topic in a way that is reasonable, accurate, and filled with grace for those experiencing it from the inside.”

Because of the nature of ‘beliefs’ there will be some things that deconstructors won’t like to read. For example, the authors say, “The reality, however, is that in deconstruction, one trades being a servant of Christ for being a slave to sin. It can feel like freedom at first because we love our sin, but it’s a path that leads to destruction.” We believe this because of Romans 6. Someone who does not follow Christ is not easily going to accept or agree that they are a slave to their sin because they don’t believe the Bible.

But the authors reiterate that they are not writing to tear down and criticize people. We need to see each other as image-bearers, God’s creation, and because of that— worthy of dignity and love. They write to tear down arguments in an honest and thorough search for truth. (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)

They don’t say these things to point out the worst in people. They say these things because it’s the gospel message: we are sinners who need a Savior. If we don’t know our disease, we won’t care about a cure.

We all believe something. We all worship something. If God and his Word is not our authority, something else is. Most likely the self. So scrutinize yourself as you do Christianity.

“When it comes to faith, some questions seek answers, and some questions seek exits. There are questions that seek after truth, but other questions seek to avoid truth.”


Part Two: Deconstruction

These chapters talk about the reasons why people have been walking away from Christianity.

Some reviewers have critiqued this book for putting up straw-man arguments, but I would disagree.

The authors are not trying to pin down ‘every deconstructor’ in this book. Each individual’s journey will look different and may be triggered by varying things. People will have different questions, hurts, and frustrations.

Childers and Barnett articulate that what they are trying to engage with are the most common issues and primary grievances prevalent among the most popular or influential voices in the conversation. The voices that the individuals may be listening and relating to.

They cover a lot of ground and everything they bring up is something I have seen expressed by others in multiple places. Each issue or argument may not describe every deconstructor but I think it would be hard to argue that they are misrepresenting the arguments as they quote directly from articles, tweets, and videos with tons of views.


Here Childers and Barnett offer the illustration of a two-level house.

“In this house, facts go downstairs, and preferences go upstairs.”

Most people today relegate religious beliefs to the upstairs. You can’t make objective statements about them.

But the problem is that pretty much all religions make exclusive and objective claims about themselves. They are worldviews and a lens in which you view the big questions of life- where did we come from, why are we here, what is the meaning of life?

“We’re claiming that Christianity is true to reality— it fits the way the world really is. It’s objectively true.”

Jesus says in John 18:37 that he came into the world “to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

Jesus was a real, historical man who made exclusive claims about himself and the truth. We have to engage with those in the realm of facts. Either they are true or not true. They can’t be mere preferences.

“Jesus was either raised from the dead, as a historical event in reality, or he wasn’t. If he wasn’t, then Christianity is false. If he was, then Christianity is true for everyone, whether they believe it or not.”


I think that is truly what is at the heart of any conversation regarding deconstruction: What is Truth?

Because deconstruction is rooted in postmodern ideas of rejecting authority and the ability to know anything objective, ‘truth’ becomes individualized. Relative. This is where we get ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth.’ And the idea that no one can tell you what to do, what is right, and what is wrong.

Postmodern thought desires to dismantle authority structures and to group people as either oppressed or oppressors. This is the origin behind claims that Christianity— as a set of beliefs— is a toxic and manipulative power structure seeking to control people.

An honest look at the Bible shows a holy God who must deal with sin in a just way. It shows a God overflowing with mercy, love, grace, forgiveness, and a heart for the marginalized and vulnerable. The entire book tells the story of God redeeming a broken people to himself and offering hope and salvation in a world of sin and evil.

But this mantra of toxic and manipulative authority is fundamental to critical theory and pervasive in much secular thought toward Christianity today, whether people realize or acknowledge it.

[This is fleshed out more in the insightful book Cynical Theories.]

You can’t follow the logic of relativism through everything without lots of problems. There has to be some sort of level of morality and truth for a society to function. Where do those standards come from? Can we really allow popularity, cultural acceptance, and our feelings to dictate those standards?

But there is more going on in deconstruction than just identifying what is true or false. More and more, people are not asking whether or not Christianity is true, they are asking if it’s good.

If this describes you, I would recommend the book Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn’t because Gavin Ortlund seeks to answer that question throughout his book and does a really compelling job of showing the beauty and goodness of God and his Word.

So many of deconstructors’ stories involve abuse of some kind from a church body or church leadership. The hurts are real.

Childers and Barnett do not make excuses for the harm done by those claiming the name of Christ. And they advocate for abusers to be held accountable.

Those who hurt and manipulate people do so against the teachings of the Bible, not in accordance with it. People will misuse the Bible and misinterpret the Bible, but that doesn’t make Christianity inherently false. As Christians, our authority is not in the people who wield the Bible, but in God and the words he has given us in Scripture.

“It’s fallen people, not Christianity, who are abusive. Jesus came to set captives free.”


Part 3: #HOPE

These chapters talk about the ways the church can be a safer place for people to feel like they can ask questions. They also challenge churches to offer better answers— meaning admitting when they don’t know or offering thoughtful responses that don’t simply try to shut down questions.

They also offer a process to consider when talking with loved ones who are deconstructing. This process is less about ‘correcting’ their theology as we tend to want to do, but listening and seeking to understand what they are going through and what is concerning them. It involves setting boundaries and respecting their boundaries.

“Many in the deconstruction movement believe Christians are fearful, simpleminded, and reactionary. Be the opposite. Break the stereotype.”

There may be a time to talk about evidence, but it’s important to be able to stay in their life and show them love.

In Neil Shenvi’s book, Why Believe?, he reminds us that “God’s purpose is to change hearts, not merely to change minds.”

There are beliefs that make up Christianity, but at the heart of Christianity is a person— Jesus Christ.

If someone can be argued into faith, they can be argued out of faith. Faith requires a heart change and a realization of their need for a Savior.

Shenvi also said, “Speaking personally, Christianity is the only religion or worldview or philosophy that correctly identifies the disease I know I have and the cure I know I need.”

If a person hasn’t reached that conclusion, no argument in the world really matters.

Childers and Barnett conclude with this:

“Christianity isn’t tidy, and neither is the church. As long as there is a church, there will be church hurt. As long as there is a cursed creation, there will be suffering. As long as there is mystery, there will be unanswered questions. But as long as there is a risen Savior, there is hope. And that’s what I want to leave you.”

And that is the wonderful news of the Gospel! Deconstruction is not new. The Bible tells of many walking away from faith. But God’s plan for redeeming his people cannot be thwarted by a clever hashtag and some earnest tweeters. Jesus is real; his death and resurrection were real; and therefore, hope is real.



Thus, the authors point out the confusion around the word ‘faith.’

Deconstructionists view faith as a blind leap, a belief without evidence.

“Certainly, there are Christians who practice a type of blind faith, but that does not mean that Christianity advocates blind faith.”

The authors remind us that even John the Baptist doubted whether Jesus was the one they’d been waiting for. When confronted with this doubt, Jesus responded by sending the message that “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” (Matt 11:5)

This was evidence for John’s faith; it was not in vain.

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and assurance entails solid reasons to believe something.”

“God has provided enough evidence for those who seek truth but has left enough concealed for those who don’t want to submit to truth… God gives us just enough evidence so that those who want him can have him.”



I highly recommend not only this book, but follow Alisa Childers’ podcast as she talks through all kinds of topics surrounding deconstruction and ‘problems’ with Christianity.

“If Christianity is true, the stakes are life and death. The destination of deconstruction matters.”

Ask to reform.

And pray for those who are deconstructing, that they would see the Lord.


For more quotes and a list of books for further reading, see ORIGINAL REVIEW. 


**Received an ARC via NetGalley & Tyndale Publishing in exchange for an honest review**

“I could stare into the blank space where his eyes should be all day.”

My husband saw this book on TikTok and got it for me for Christmas. I had never heard of it before. (Perhaps if I had been privy to any TikTok hype my impression of it could have been different, but we’ll never know.)

But once I saw the blurb on the front calling the book ‘Unfortunate’ and saw that these two comedians and writers decided to give the people what they wanted: a love story about a girl who falls in love with a mummy, I was in!

It truly is the story no one asked for and they play the best parts up in the best way.

You don’t read this book because you want to read a love story. You read it because it’s absurd and the authors know it. It’s only 173 pages so they don’t even ask for a big time commitment.

(Plus the authors really did their research on tropes, because they even got the main character named Sofia which is one of my prompts for my Reading Challenge because every author has a book with a character named Sofia.)


I think my favorite part might be the fact that Sofia has no idea that Seth is a mummy. The eye voids, the dust, the body wrapping, the desert-y smell. He must be a hipster, she thinks. And I can totally see the correlation. Hipsters are their own breed for sure.

My second favorite thing was the African sacred ibis. If you know, you know. And I’ve played a lot of Wingspan, so I should have known, but I’m pretty sure the base game is only North American birds and my expansion is Asian birds so I think I’m off the hook on this one. But I should probably go check…


So yeah, the new kid in school is mysterious. They fall in love immediately. Her best friend is a boy who is also in love with her but has been friend-zoned. The boyfriend gets kidnapped and so her and her best friend obviously run head first into danger to save him. Throw in some Egyptian mythology and boom, you have yourself a one-of-a-kind love story.

But if you’re not a fan of magic, don’t worry… it’s ONLY in regards to mummies. So it’s fine.



The Rundown

Sofia’s main character trait can be summed up as such: ‘word vomit.’ As the reader we get to experience her running inner dialogue with herself, but she also just speaks her thoughts out loud with no filter or abbreviation so everyone in her life basically has the same information as us.

Her second main character trait is an overproduction of saliva which I can one hundred percent relate too. I personally sometimes refer to my mouth as a water trough, and that’s probably gross to share here, but in the service of transparency and sharing in Sofia’s fictional vulnerability, there ya go.

But she does love cats and hates mini golf, so though I can respect the author’s decision to make her a flawed character, they did make some sad choices in flaws and I’m working through it.

At the very least she has a realistic view of cats:

“Like most cats, he’s a narcoleptic sociopath…”


Her dad is a pretty awesome character. He’s a weatherman…

“My dad was tall with strong arms from pointing at maps that don’t exist.”

…with an affinity for Mace…

“‘Well just remember what I always say—’’Yeah I know: Spare the Mace, spoil the boyfriend.’”’Sometimes I think you want to solve all your problems with Mace.’’Show me a problem that can’t be Maced, and I’ll show you a mugger with goggles.’”

… who gives great advice…

“‘If you feel stupid, it usually means you’ve learned something and you’re less stupid now.’”


Duncan is her friend-zoned admirer who can’t comprehend why she would rather love a mummy then him, her best friend who knows her so well and has been with her basically her whole life and through all the trauma of her mom walking out on her and her dad.

“I kinda sorta didn’t talk to Duncan at all for a few weeks. I felt more than a little bad. ‘A lot bad’ wouldn’t be overstating it, but it would be bad grammar.”

“I’m a living human your own age. That’s a huge thing right there: I’m alive. Isn’t that something you look for in a boyfriend?”


And then we have Seth, the dreamy mummy from thousands of years ago.

“One thing I knew for sure was how he made me feel. Different. Like tingly and allergic, but in a good way. I considered whether or not to tell him he seemed like benevolent ragweed and thought better of it.”

“How could you not trust those deep dark eye-areas and all that fabric hiding the area around them? He had honest eyeholes.”

But their love affair is not without its challenges. He keeps disappearing with no explanation, leaving Sofia hurt and confused.

“The love of my life was opening up to me about genealogy, and then I said something racist, and he was gone.”

“If he’s embarrassed to be kissing a girl who doesn’t wear cool bandages and dusty perfumes and know about other countries, that’s his problem.”



If the people who claimed to love her had just given her a smidge bit more information, they could have avoided a whole big mess of danger and violence. Per usual, without all the facts people do stupid things. Information is power. Speculation is worse than facts. Who knew?

“‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you everything sooner. I hoped I could avoid this kind of violent showdown by keeping you in the dark. I see now that this was the inevitable result of any relationship that lacks communication. Just stay calm and after we escape this, I’ll be open about my feelings and my needs. Promise.’”



Recommendation

I thought this was a funny, fun short read. It’s not a literary masterpiece. It’s not a heartfelt love story. But it’s a parody on the mythical creature love stories in a way that highlights some of the absurdity in these tropes.

There’s not really anything I took an issue with because my expectations were very low.

I get a kick out of reading some of the bad reviews because they complain that the book is stupid or that there is no character development or that the main character is so dense and correct me if I’m wrong… but is that not the point?

I perceive this book as a joke project the authors concocted while eating Chipotle and thought it would be hilarious to publish. I feel like they probably wrote it more for their own entertainment then to actually create a cult following for the mummy love story trope.

Don’t overthink it. Just accept it for what it is and have a good laugh and then move on with your life. It’s what they would want for you.

Again, it’s a short read and if you’re looking for a little chuckle in between reads, I would definitely recommend it!


[Content Advisory: a few swear words and some awkward inner thought speculation on sex with a mummy but nothing graphic and is presented in more of a humorous rather than erotic way]

“The Christian life is not just about giving our hearts to Jesus, but about surrendering every word, thought, deed, attitude and moment to Him.”


I am a fan of The Daily Grace Co. studies and resources. I’ve reviewed several on my website. 

James is a popular book of the Bible. It’s most known for the ‘taming of the tongue’ section, but I hadn’t realized how much of the book refers to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. 

The Schmuckers have written a great study resource for the book of James that helps us see the intent of the author and always points to the gospel. 


The author of James is James, the half-brother to Jesus. 

The Schmuckers begin the book by cluing us into the themes James writes about so we can keep our eyes open for them in each section we read. This is a good practice for me and grows my ability to study the Bible on my own as I pick up more and more on themes, commands, and repeated phrases.

The themes of James they point out are the commands and calls to obedience, the references to the Sermon on the Mount, the upside-down kingdom, and the relationship between works and faith. 

The indexes they supplied at the back of the book were helpful: an outline of the book, an author profile, cross-references to wisdom literature, and a list of Sermon on the Mount references. 



As is typical of Daily Grace Co. devotionals, it divides the book into chunks of verses spread across several weeks (7) that include reflection questions. Each week has a memory verse and a separate reflection section that asks us to think about what we’ve read and what it tells us about mankind, God, the gospel, and how we can actively be applying it to our lives. 

And also typical of these studies, it comes with a sleek design and pretty images. The version I got of this study is the ‘men’s’ edition so no flower pictures!

This study can easily be done individually or in a group (week to week).



I like that they titled this study ‘The Steadfast Life.’ Steadfast means resolute, unwavering. James exhorts us to be steadfast and patient in trials and suffering, but there is also this thread of steadfastness in conviction, in wisdom, and in obedience. 

A major principle of the book of James is faith in action. Genuine faith results in works. A healthy tree bears fruit. A faith that is rooted in Christ can’t help but bear fruit— works and obedience. Resoluteness can’t help but show up in the self-control of our actions and our words, our commitment to obey, and a trust in the One in whom we have rooted our lives in. 



There is so much to glean from the book of James. It’s not hard to see its relevance to our lives today. 

Even though I’d read the book many times before, having this devotional as an aide was a great help in understanding, applying, and making connections to other parts of Scripture. 

I definitely recommend this and other Daily Grace Study to enrich your Bible study and engage you with God’s Word. 

“No matter how large or small an illusion, there is one thing to remember: your audience is in front of you. Keep them there.”


I enjoyed the first Joseph Spector Mystery— Death and the Conjuror— and this one was similar.

Like the first book, it’s a good locked room mystery with a couple other ‘impossible’ crimes/situations on the side. As it is a series, the setting is the same— London in the 1930s— and the main character is the same— Joseph Spector, magician/detective.



The Murder Wheel introduces us to a new prominent character: Edmund Ibbs. A magician/lawyer. (Let’s just say it was a good era for magic.)

Spector doesn’t enter the scene right away. Ibbs is the focus as he is defending the accused in an impossible murder:

A husband and wife are at the top of a Ferris wheel when her husband is shot and she finds herself holding the gun. She claims she had nothing to do with it and doesn’t know what happened. A mysterious bystander with a limp was sighted by multiple people and throws suspicion on the case.

The Daily Chronicle posts a story asking readers to help solve “The Ferris Wheel Murder.”

Ibbs, being a magic enthusiast, is trying desperately to solve the crime. In all his efforts, he finds himself in the middle of more than one crime.

The second murder occurs on the stage of a magic show he attends. A trick gone wrong exposes a corpse (the Ferris Wheel operator) to the audience.

Spector and Flint (the police officer from the first book) arrive at the theater to put their expertise to work and solve the mysteries.

And then, Ibbs gets himself in a pickle:

“I don’t know what to make of all this. But we found you locked in a room with a corpse, with a smoking revolver in your hand.”



One comment I made with the first book was that it didn’t feel like we really got to know Spector’s character very well. I thought his character would develop as the series went on, but that didn’t really happen.

Spector was actually even less part of this book than the previous one.

It seems like Mead is more interested in the ‘tricks’ part of the books than the characters. Which is fine. I enjoy a locked-room mystery and learning about magic tricks. You just have to know going in that it’s not a series to really connect you with the characters. It’s more about the plot.


Another comment I made in the first book was that the mystery was revealed in monologue format. This time Mead did things a little differently. There was a bit of monologue. It’s written in third person POV so dialogue is our main media for getting information. But it wasn’t quite like the Agatha Christie style: get everyone in a room and expose the murderer. It was more spread out and the last few things we find out in the epilogue.

I was glad for that because I didn’t find the original explanation satisfying or believable so I was happy to find out there was more to it!


I don’t remember this being in the first book, perhaps it was, but this one had some footnotes during the reveals that tells you which page to go back to to see the original clue in the story. I’m not sure if the reader could actually solve these puzzles on their own, but it’s a nice touch to send the reader on their own clue hunt if they want to see what they missed!


The writing style is reminiscent of an Agatha Christie novel. It did have some lines that made me chuckle:

“His eyebrows were notable in that he had three of them; two over the eyes and another on his upper lip.”



If you’re looking for a low-key mystery to give you a break from the high octane thrillers, this may be a good palate cleanser.

If you’re a fan of the Christie, you should definitely give Tom Mead’s books a try.

But if you’re looking for a thrill ride with a lot of action or a series with characters you get to know really well, then this may not be for you.

Also, if you are interested in murders in Fleet Street then definitely read Charles Finch’s book The Fleet Street Murders (which is currently on my TBR).


Learning Corner

If you follow my reviews, you know that I enjoy learning new words or information. Here is a list of words (mostly) related to magic or illusions:

 acetabularri: history’s first recorded illusionists

 copropraxia: Ibbs is thrust into his position as the defense because the primary lawyer on the case came down with copropraxia and was prescribed bed rest. It is the “complex motor tic involving obscene gestures. And I can imagine this would be a problem in the court room.

 legerdemain: skillful use of hands in deception while performing tricks

 prestidigitator: another name for a magician

 perspicacity: perceptiveness

 Chubb lock: the unpickable lock designed in 1818; had a security mechanism that when someone attempted to pick the lock it would ‘re-lock’ and jam and would alert the owner that the lock was tampered with.

 insalubrious: unsavory

 Black Maria: another name for the black police vehicles during this time period

 pareidolia: the tendency to see or look for patterns in random images when there really is none

 Wicked Bible: an edition of the Bible published in 1631 that had two errors, one was the omission of the word ‘not’ in the commandment ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ Most copies were destroyed so the very few copies left are considered highly valuable.

 Jenny Haniver: a common old hoax; the carcass of a ray that is manipulated and molded to look like freaky monster things and passed off as evidence of dragons and other fanciful creatures.

 verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real




[Content Advisory: no swearing or sexual content]


**Received an ARC via NetGalley**