Sunday, September 19, 2010

Forgotten by Melody Carlson from NavPress

Please take my personal review of Forgotten with a grain of salt. This is my first review for NavPress. The way this program works is that when you sign up to review for them, they offer you a few books to choose from, I believe it was 3. I prefer Christian Historical Fiction/Romance but that category was not available.
I had a hard time with Forgotten being written in first person. I picked it up thinking, “I committed to this review, so let’s get reading.” The very first page caught me and before I knew it, I was a third of the way through the book which was good. Then it slowed down, for me, because of the first person narrative mainly. The other characters were not as well developed as I would’ve liked either as this was written for teens.
I began to wonder: Where this book was going to end up at? Was she possibly going to attempt suicide? Where was God in this book except to criticize Adele’s Christian friends? Why would a teen want to read this as opposed to a classic that deals with the same issues? The story deals with all my questions eventually. It wraps up quite quickly, however, which was disappointing too, and made me think, “Is this how teens today expect a book to end, abruptly and neatly tied up with a bow?” My last question to myself is, “Would I let my teen read this book?” I have to answer, "I doubt it," because there is so much classical literature that addresses the issues of abandonment, neglect, society’s responsibilities toward the poor and homeless, social stigmas, etc. and does a better job of it, too. That's why they're called classics afterall, right?
I’ve had a hard time writing this review because, well, who would want to give a negative review? I’ve not read this author before and as stated earlier, this genre would not have otherwise interested me.

1 comment:

  1. I feel your pain!!

    - MJ
    www.CreativeMadnessMama.com
    Also chf.creativemadnessmama.com (CHF = Christian Historical Fiction)

    ReplyDelete