My thanks to NetGalley and Moody Publishers for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.
The following is my interpretation of this book. The author did NOT say this, it is all from my brain and thoughts from what I read.
Basically, if you and your spouse are not both Christians and are not both trying to work on a fabulous marriage, it isn't going to work.
BUT, divorce isn't a viable option.
Again, these are conclusions I drew from this book, it wasn't stated directly by the author.
However, since the whole point of this book is to strengthen a marriage via a Christian bent, this is not going to be a useful book for most people. It makes no mention of when divorce really should be the only answer: unevenly yoked, abuse, repeated adultery that will never change.
True story, my aunt found out her husband was cheating on her, she confronted him about it. His reply? "Yes, and when I come home from being with one of them, you will have dinner waiting on the table for me." He became an ex shortly after that.
I mean, what do you do with that? When one person in the marriage loves their addiction/sickness/something else, more than you, where do you go from there?
This book assumes you are both trying to work on the marriage, not that one person is trying and the other could give two darns.
Which I guess is helpful, because if you are in a dying/dead relationship, this book will sincerely drive it home to you. And make you feel guilty for the divorce, ESPECIALLY if both of the parties involved are "Christian". I use the quotes, because I have heard horror stories where both parties claimed to be Christian and one was most certainly NOT, yet they beat the other one over the head with how good they were and how lousy the spouse was.
This book isn't a bad one, it is well written, with plenty of real life examples and a decent suggested reading and notes section in the back. It is just for a very specific audience, so I'm not sure how helpful overall it is.
Again, not a bad book, but one which I would be very hesitant to recommend unless I knew the person to whom I was recommending it VERY well and knew it would fit their situation.
Three stars.