Wayyyyyyyy too much Christianity crap and god references but that is pretty easy to ...
351416
Decent read with some interesting tips.  Wayyyyyyyy too much Christianity crap and god references but that is pretty easy to skip through.
961810
The author couldn't resist using an interesting TEOTWAWKI plot to proselytize for new age witchcraft and to put down Christianity. There was way too much Jack and Layla(the least interesting characters). I don't know why Christians seem to be such a favored target unless the author has her own prejudices. I just notice that other faiths never come in for the undermining and mocking that Christians do. The religious preaching was a subset of an interesting plot where heightened intuition is a by product of global trauma. In addition to the "bad Christians" theme it seemed to me there were too many survivors in a world where 99% of the population has been wiped out. Also, I've noticed that female dystopian authors generally loose steam and fall into stereotypes and overthinking while male authors get tired and roll out more weapons talk and battle scenes. It's the rare author who can keep a compelling balance.
1269010
I wanted to like this book, but there was far too much bad (and dangerous) advice - and had too many beliefs written as facts.

I was raised in a Christian home and am a believer, but I think there is a lot of toxic masculinity and rape culture in modern Christianity and I do not think it is healthy to further perpetuate those negative standards.

For example, read this TERRIBLE quote from the book,"When a woman loves a man in the way that God wants her to, she can make a bad man into a good man. Moreover, she can make a good man a great man, simply by taking every opportunity to build the man up." I do not appreciate the disgusting victim-blaming going on here. Too many Christian leaders encourage women to stay in abusive relationships and shame them for considering leaving for themselves or their children.

I'm sorry, but I would not recommend this book or buy it as a gift for others.
4613360
I've read a few Cheryl St. John books but Christian/Inspirational is not her forte. Or perhaps she's grown since this was her first one.

If you enjoy Love Inspired or Christan romance BUT despise the preachiness and overabundance of scriptures PASS this book on by like scenery.

I think overall there was a decent story here but he got boggled down with campy preaching and ridiculous copy/pasting of Scripture and just falling to your knees at any given moment praising the Lord. As a Christian, this book reminded me of those eye-rolling holy rolling, ridiculous televangelists. Like that ridiculous lady on the Christan network who's suppose to know God yet she alters how God made her with her cotton candy pink wigs and Joan Rivers like plastic surgery. Jane something or other.

The hero is SO dedicated to God's word that he sucks as a man, parent and father. Neglecting and just being freaking absentminded.

The heroine is weak and the kids are cute but annoying and one is just a witch.

The formula is bad. For the longest time the story just remained static. Didn't move an inch. The summary mentions the preacher going to Colorado but more than HALF the book is them staying in Nebraska and nothing progressing. From day one, Josie and 2 of Sam's daughters bonded. Duly noted Ms. St. John, get them to Colorado already.

Then as with the usual horrible formula's everyone apologized at 99.99999999% and the whole story is one big 'well what the HECK was the point?" when everything is DRAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGED out until the last minute.

Yuck. It's not worth even 30 minutes of your time. Pass it on by. There are many better Christian romance novels out there. It was just way too uneven and choppy. Not worth the read.
2691084
A topic as serious as this should show the influence of Almighty God, and the Holy Spirit, in it's content...this 'Comparison' is very opionated rhetoric of a closeminded author, who says he takes his Muslim 'counsel' from a dissenter of Islam.  The author has no understanding of the God to Whom Abraham and his family gave Honor.

  Anyone , Christian or Jew, who reverances Almighty God and the Holy Bible,  should look elsewhere ...or be mislead by this.

  I was looking to become more informed, so it was a waste of my money

Rev Dave
1365369
The book seemed promising until one realizes that it is religious propaganda ... Christian religion in particular. After a while it becomes nauseating with a clear distinction between a battle between good and evil. If you are not religious, you might tolerate it, but if you are an atheist, this book will quickly become unbearable. I have o idea why I decided to read all of it.
854787
I enjoyed the first and second books.  It's a good story and the author tells it well.

Now some have criticized the book because they think it should have somehow been more explicitly stated that it is a "YA Christian" book.  Now for the record, I don't even know what the "YA Christian" genre is...never heard of it.  But this is "Christian" dogma about as much as "Twilight" is the same story as "Dracula".  Is the "god" pretty much a clone of the Christian god?  Yes.  Is it obvious?  I suppose so....IF you have already been exposed to Christian teachings.  Does the book proselytize or try to convert anyone?  Absolutely not.  The book's god and religious beliefs are not central to the book and very little time (relatively) even even spent discussing it.

So my advice:  Don't get hung up on the similarity between the Christian God and the book protagonist's god...pretend the book's god is unique.  Enjoy the story.
2904630
This is an ok bible, but I am only giving it three stars for a few reasons:

1) What were the authors smoking when they decided to insert the 'apologetics' in seemingly random locations? There may be an apologetic insert on page 225, but it references a biblical verse that occurs on page 1500. I can't understand the methodology behind this. Also, the apologetics themselves are extraordinarily poor. The typical catholic 'twist and bend the words of the bible to fit the narrative' is very transparent.

2) Footnotes: If the 'twisting and bending to fit the narrative' isn't transparent in the apologetic inserts, it certainly is in the footnotes. It is amazing how religious people can take passages out of context to fulfill some nonexistent prophecy. I find it interesting how the word of god isn't good enough and the authors of this translation have to coach the believer along. I conclude that people who don't question their faith (perhaps out of fear) will read this bible and have their beliefs reaffirmed over and over (and over and over and over and over) without realizing they are being duped. If you read this book thinking 'man it feels like god is right here reading it with me!', confirmation bias will kick in at the highest possible degree.

3) I would have preferred the words of god/jesus to be written in red, but I understand that is usually only found in an alternative translation.

4) Pages are very thin and easily bend and tear.
1343345
There's an awful lot of religious dogma in this book.  I managed to get through 45% of the book before I just couldn't take it any more.  Mormons, in particular will not appreciate this book because the author believes they are as ungodly as heathens and Christians need to pray to save them from their ways.  If you can wade through the religious nonsense, there's really a sweet story there.  Everyone loves everyone, the parents are teaching their children to have respect for themselves, their elders, and for others.  The author acknowledges that the U.S. owes the "Indians" and the "colored" people, the first because we took their land and the later because we enslaved them.  However, because of the era this book was written in, all the servants are "colored" and their speech is written in the old school manner - "ye'sir" "ye'sim" - you get the picture.  Although this family believes it's better to serve the lord than to go into any other business, they are somehow very wealthy.  There's a lot of talk about just how wealthy they are, but that they don't squander their money on frivolous things and must give to others who don't have their privileges.

The Christmas at Grandma Elsie's was over and done with before the book was half way finished and then it dives deeply into religious dogma, and when I found I could no longer read around it, decided not to finish the book.

Only for the deeply religious.
2751545
There are good things in this book, but my goodness, the author presents himself as an authority on other belief system and religions that he obviously knows very little about, and therefore should not state as fact that which is only an uneducated opinion.  This made me wonder if what he reported regarding religions or thought processes that I was not familiar with could be trusted at all. I heard that he said in an interview that if people got hung up on these inaccuracies that  they were "missing the point."  Woah!  Blame the reader, and carry on!  Really??  Seems cocky and like there is an agenda that I cannot be okay with here. At times I felt he tried to make things more complicated than they needed to be as to seem super intelligent or deep.  I found this somewhat comical.  He loves run-on sentences where simplicity could easily make the point.  So, in spite of some  good thoughts that I gleaned from this book, in my opinion, it was not worth the price.
3232311
Promising start, as the story of a young woman breaking free of a religious upbringing and re-booting her life as a free thinker. Nicely written, reasonably engaging characters... until all the non-Christian characters suddenly turned into caricatures highlighting all that is evil in the world, and finishing with a yawn-inducing moral that to question religion is to start sliding down the slippery slope to alcoholism, promiscuity, drug addiction and *gasp* atheism.

The book ends with a bible study-style quiz about the lessons and messages we need to learn from the story and how we can improve our relationship with God.

Happy-clappy Christian propaganda masquerading as a novel.
1565435
I got the book as a free download not knowing it was going to be heavily based in Christian beliefs. I'm not overly fond of religiously motivated plots so it killed the book for me. If not for that this would have been a solid read
2887534
It is my belief that religious views should be kept to oneself, since organized religion causes most of the world's misery, so this book is a real turn-off.  I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because with simple editing it could be a pleasant read.  Story line in interesting.  I knew it was Christian fiction and have read a number of this type, but this one is way over to the Christian right.  Only good thing--it was free and you can quickly scan the offensive parts.
3115921
Seriously, this book was not for me. Aside from the extreme religious context of the book that I was totally blindsided by, the absurdity of some of the situations in the book were just too much to take. I don't mind religious fiction nor do I take offense to Christian values or themes but this was just ridiculous. The long stupid back and forth conversations between the main character and the holy trinity were boring and plain idiotic. I found myself skipping pages upon pages because I could not take the ludicrous banter between the characters. Unless you are attending a religious revival and won't mind the sacrilege of the holy trinity's appearance in this book don't waste your time.
2522269
This book is mostly a "pro-religion / all religions are OK in their own way / let's all get along" kind of book. However, despite its pro-religion emphasis, tidbits of truth and relevant information regarding  religion are available but be forewarned that there's a heavy dose of  pro-christian / pro-religion cheering in the book.
It seems to be making  an effort to recognize (as in acknowledge the existence of) all religions  but it also seems to be preaching that Christianity is the best,  Jewish/Islam religions are close, and all other religions have a ways to go  to measure up to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic GOD. In other words, typical  western style GOD propaganda rears its ugly head here.
This might be an  ideal book for fundies or devoutly religious folks (especially Christians)  to read in order to expose them to other religions in a manner which gives  them warm fuzzies about religion being an OK idea - for me, personally,  this is not the approach to take with kids, but hey, maybe better this  (tidbits of facts mixed with standard pro-religion propaganda) than nothing  when it comes to the brainwashed single-religion focus that most parents  inflict on their kids.
If you are seeking basic religious information for  your children (with scant details on actual facts and no information  regarding the truth or lack thereof regarding religious beliefs) along with  apologetics for ALL religions and (included at no extra charge) three  sentences on disbelief making disbelief appear to be a flawed way of  thinking, this is the book for you.
2564054
It really could have been a good read as some of the general ideas were interesting, but the preachy christian aspects of the prose became more grating and they also seem to have appeared more frequently as the story moved forward. Further, the overly simplistic portrayals of the "right" way to hord silver, gold, guns and food was more than a bit extreme. Please don't waste your money on this one unless you're swimming in the anti-government, pro-guns, heavily christian Kool-Aid!
27898
Anyone out there who has raised a child knows that by 3-4 years old they know a lot.  If they are raised in a small town, by a pastor father, go to Sunday school, and are read biblical stories every night they definitely can and will chatter like a scholar about all the Christian symbolism used to embellish this tale.  I'm not saying he didn't have an out of body experience. He might have. But the deal breaker for me in this piece of fiction is that it is far too full of biblical references the dad makes to try and convince us that his kid has been to heaven.  These references fit with 'his' interpretation of life after death, based on his religious beliefs (Wesleyan), which are very concrete. Too concrete. I don't know about you but I don't want wings when I get to heaven.  Why, as a human being, would I suddenly sprout wings, and why would I be running around in a robe from biblical times?  This view of heaven is far too limiting for any God of mine.  If I am born a Muslim, live a good life, then die, the God I believe in is not going to have me arrive in a place that is full of nothing but Christian symbolism.  The God I believe in is going to accept all good people, regardless of their faith on earth, because religions are man made things.  I doubt that 'religion' exisits in heaven.  Todd Burpo should read "Your God is too Small", because, his is.