Family by Karen Kingsbury

This is another Christian book. Its aim is to show that fame and fortune are no substitute for family and love and a good relationship with God. It was okay. I don't think I'll read any more of Karen Kingsbury. I liked her characters, but the situations felt a little contrived and overemotional.

One thing I object to in these Christian books is how sometimes the authors contrive to force their main characters to make extreme choices for their own happiness. Like there can be no middle ground. In this book, our main character had to choose between his life as it was--as a Christian movie star--and his family and his love. His love essentially gave him an ultimatum: I can't stand your famous life, get out of it and move to my town or we can't have a relationship. What kind of love is that, I asked myself. Hm. The situation with his family was similar. He wasn't sure he wanted to get involved with their lives because of the rabid reporters that always followed him around. He didn't want to expose his family to this.

I guess the reason I didn't really enjoy this book is because I felt a lot of emotion was expended unnecessarily--I ended up skimming pages of angst in the last third of the book especially. I felt... manipulated by the author. The whole story felt manipulated. In the middle of some of the more frustrating experiences of the characters I questioned the plausibility of what was going on. When I have time to think about things like that in the middle of reading, it's an indication that the writing is too manipulative--and I, as the reader, have felt the manipulations.

I like Karen Kingsbury's aims. I like what she's saying in her story. But I think it's important--even in a "club" genre like Christian writing where there's a lot of "hugs and kisses" between authors, reviewers and fans--to keep the writing good and honest with no obvious manipulation of plot to teach a lesson and no heavy handed preaching going on. That kind of writing makes it hard for a good message to be effective. And it's one of my greatest objections to any religious writer. The story has to be the first thing. And the uplifting message must be totally embedded. Otherwise the book loses its entertainment value AND its effectiveness as a tool to uplift the lives of others--which is every Christian writer's avowed purpose.

This book was sweet and the message was loud and clear, but the story was misshapen to make a point and that made it bit less enjoyable to read.