Joey O'Connor

This book is a re-telling, and a re-telling of a story will always have something in the original that doesn't translate quite properly to the modern page. That being said, the characterization in this book was sorely lacking. The story felt plot-driven which wouldn't be a problem except that the original was very much character-driven and an exploration of what asking the question "what would Jesus do?" would really mean changing in one's life.

As it was, this book was very much taking the characters and giving them the modern equivalency of what the characters in In His Steps had, while, at the same time, stripping all the hard morality away.

This book tosses out the backpedaling of one character, the death of another, and the disowning of another for washed-out versions of these plots. None of the characters in this book walk away from their promise, the only death is a character introduced in the middle of the book and not mentioned until the chapter where he dies, and the disowned character simply finds somewhere else to lived without any of the emotion of the original.

As far as Christian books go, this wasn't badly written. Unfortunately, it didn't capture the spirit of the original and settled for a simple plot rehash in the modern day where all the moral quandaries of a spiritually dead life can be solved by the fixing up of a local shelter and throwing money at your problems if you're rich.

Additionally, the girl who's a singer gives up her career in this one to keep singing at the local church. No mention is made of her trying to do anything else with her talents and she's apparently happy to stick with the answer "give up a career" as the answer to the question, "what would Jesus do." I don't really get it.… (more)