Hope you don't mind me posting after such a long time to add a comment, but I only recently got started on the "50 books" challenge and this was the first one I got after reading other people on the community rec it.
I agree with your last paragraph whole-heartedly, and I'd recommend it to any Christian teen questioning their sexuality. I'd quickly nominating if the local Unitarian church were collecting book rec's for the congregation. [Since that's where I personally go, not because I think it's particularly 'Unitarian' just to clarify.]
I did have issues with the book, however: I think it suffered for the prose format because I expected the side characters to have more development. I often felt like I was reading a script for a play, because the characters didn't seem as well fleshed out to me as they should have been in prose. It was kind of like... 'Here's this character, who fits this stereotype.' I also felt it was kind of light on details, and on giving more roundness to anyone other than the main two characters. I could accept that in a script though, because when you've only got so many acts, stuff has to get cut. Books don't have those kind of restraints, so it felt to me like it should have been a longer or more detailed book but an editor had swooped in on it with a pair of scissors.
Did I think it was a bad book? No. I enjoyed it as light reading. I've heard all the arguments for vs against Christian homosexuality before, but they're good arguments to pass on to someone who hasn't. Would I recommend it to someone who asked me? Yes, yes I would. I just felt like maybe it was in the wrong textual format for what it was trying to do.
Thanks for the rec to you and the several other community members who have posted about it. ^_^
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-06-23 02:50 pm (UTC)I agree with your last paragraph whole-heartedly, and I'd recommend it to any Christian teen questioning their sexuality. I'd quickly nominating if the local Unitarian church were collecting book rec's for the congregation. [Since that's where I personally go, not because I think it's particularly 'Unitarian' just to clarify.]
I did have issues with the book, however:
I think it suffered for the prose format because I expected the side characters to have more development. I often felt like I was reading a script for a play, because the characters didn't seem as well fleshed out to me as they should have been in prose. It was kind of like... 'Here's this character, who fits this stereotype.' I also felt it was kind of light on details, and on giving more roundness to anyone other than the main two characters. I could accept that in a script though, because when you've only got so many acts, stuff has to get cut. Books don't have those kind of restraints, so it felt to me like it should have been a longer or more detailed book but an editor had swooped in on it with a pair of scissors.
Did I think it was a bad book? No. I enjoyed it as light reading. I've heard all the arguments for vs against Christian homosexuality before, but they're good arguments to pass on to someone who hasn't. Would I recommend it to someone who asked me? Yes, yes I would. I just felt like maybe it was in the wrong textual format for what it was trying to do.
Thanks for the rec to you and the several other community members who have posted about it. ^_^