I take my responsibility as a media reviewer very seriously. Keeping in mind the goal of this site, which is to strengthen families, I look for books that are uplifting and do not contain offensive material. Unfortunately, as I carry out this search, I run into a lot of books that, in my opinion, do not live up to the aims of the site and so I do not review them.
I thought I would take a moment to mention some of the books that I’ve had to put down, in hopes that you can avoid running head-long into them like I did.
“The Birth House” by Tess Gerritsen. I will not read or review any books that promote self-abuse, and this, I’m sorry to say, was one.
“Garden Spells” by Sarah Addison Allen. This book had a darling premise, but then it went into some graphic descriptions of abuse a woman endured at the hands of her boyfriend.
“Running from the Law” by Lisa Scottoline. I was really loving this book. The main character had a wry sense of humor and I enjoyed it—but the farther we went, the more I ran into. It had to go.
“Stardust” by Neil Gaiman. The premise for this book sounded great, even more so when I saw that it was being made into a movie. But there was a really graphic sex scene about fifteen pages in. I was so disappointed.
“The Case of the Missing Books” by Ian Sansom. There were these people doing this thing, see.
“Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier. There was a lot of sexual discussion in this book, and I was so sad to see it. The topic was very interesting to me.
“Saints” by Orson Scott Card. The first part of this book was written to show the plight of the apprentices in England in the 1800’s, which truly was gruesome, but there were some things that could have been told rather than shown, and they were shown. Again, I was disappointed.
Each of these books had other things to recommend them, and if content is not a concern for you, you may find them enjoyable. But for the readers who do find content a concern, these are books you may wish to skip over. I readily admit that not everyone’s reading preferences will be the same as mine.
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