Review by DecoDaisy1925 -- A Good Boy by Anthony Andre
Posted: 25 Aug 2019, 12:19
[Following is a volunteer review of "A Good Boy" by Anthony Andre.]
2 out of 4 stars
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Anthony Andre’s A Good Boy introduces a new preacher with a handful of big problems: how does he save his crumbling church? How does he handle a tragedy that’s dividing his congregation and the larger town of Asheville, NC? And turning inward, how does he reckon with his own painful past?
Wesley Aames is the story’s driven, young pastor who is determined to save his congregation at New Covenant Church, both by finding the finances to keep the church open and by bringing young blood into the pews. But he’s not quite what everyone in the church has in mind for new leadership - he drinks occasionally, he’s still early in his preaching career, and he’s teaching another religion (gasp!) at a local college.
I really wanted to root for Wesley as he forges forward and bravely stands in front of a largely unsupportive cast of churchgoers. Unfortunately, I found Wesley’s first-person narration at times judgemental. His disdain for tattoos, certain body types, and “hippies” (among other things) made me feel a lack of closeness to him, and sometimes his views felt discordant. Additionally, the story’s flow (including some word choices and how characters interact with each other) didn’t feel natural. A major factor contributing to this was the extreme prevalence of recorded laughter, which occurred each and every time a character may have found something even slightly humorous. Throughout the book, there are 230 mentions of forms of laughter and another over 150 mentions of smiles and smiling. With the book being just under 300 pages long, the near constant laughter was distracting.
Overall, the characterization fell a bit flat, and the female characters fell even flatter. Susie, the church secretary, almost only exists to giggle and recite Wesley’s calendar. I would compare her to Amazon’s Alexa, but Alexa’s energy is not solely to serve men, unlike Susie, who in one scene is described as having a “cherubic face [that] was glistening from the attention of three men” (page 17). The other women in the story also read like stereotypes, from the Mysterious Violin Woman Whose Only Purpose Is to Be Attractive in a Single Scene to the Trashy and Selfish Mother Mostly Concerned About Her Five Minutes of Fame. I longed for a little more dimension.
I appreciated the real conflict that Wesley finds himself in later in the book because I could not predict how he was going to work through it. But, I wish the author would have focused on that conflict instead of tossing in short scenes that were supposed to function as shocking quips in the story. I suppose they were added to keep my attention, but the main conflict did that already.
I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars because I see potential that needs refining - there are good bits that are being clouded by extraneous material and some distracting grammar and syntax issues. This book may appeal to readers who are looking to mull a character’s motivations and experiences and have a bit of background in Christian ideology. However, there’s a bit of coarse language that could be offensive to those who prefer not to read such language for religious reasons. This story also has “fish out of water” elements that may appeal to readers who enjoy that genre.
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A Good Boy
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
2 out of 4 stars
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Anthony Andre’s A Good Boy introduces a new preacher with a handful of big problems: how does he save his crumbling church? How does he handle a tragedy that’s dividing his congregation and the larger town of Asheville, NC? And turning inward, how does he reckon with his own painful past?
Wesley Aames is the story’s driven, young pastor who is determined to save his congregation at New Covenant Church, both by finding the finances to keep the church open and by bringing young blood into the pews. But he’s not quite what everyone in the church has in mind for new leadership - he drinks occasionally, he’s still early in his preaching career, and he’s teaching another religion (gasp!) at a local college.
I really wanted to root for Wesley as he forges forward and bravely stands in front of a largely unsupportive cast of churchgoers. Unfortunately, I found Wesley’s first-person narration at times judgemental. His disdain for tattoos, certain body types, and “hippies” (among other things) made me feel a lack of closeness to him, and sometimes his views felt discordant. Additionally, the story’s flow (including some word choices and how characters interact with each other) didn’t feel natural. A major factor contributing to this was the extreme prevalence of recorded laughter, which occurred each and every time a character may have found something even slightly humorous. Throughout the book, there are 230 mentions of forms of laughter and another over 150 mentions of smiles and smiling. With the book being just under 300 pages long, the near constant laughter was distracting.
Overall, the characterization fell a bit flat, and the female characters fell even flatter. Susie, the church secretary, almost only exists to giggle and recite Wesley’s calendar. I would compare her to Amazon’s Alexa, but Alexa’s energy is not solely to serve men, unlike Susie, who in one scene is described as having a “cherubic face [that] was glistening from the attention of three men” (page 17). The other women in the story also read like stereotypes, from the Mysterious Violin Woman Whose Only Purpose Is to Be Attractive in a Single Scene to the Trashy and Selfish Mother Mostly Concerned About Her Five Minutes of Fame. I longed for a little more dimension.
I appreciated the real conflict that Wesley finds himself in later in the book because I could not predict how he was going to work through it. But, I wish the author would have focused on that conflict instead of tossing in short scenes that were supposed to function as shocking quips in the story. I suppose they were added to keep my attention, but the main conflict did that already.
I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars because I see potential that needs refining - there are good bits that are being clouded by extraneous material and some distracting grammar and syntax issues. This book may appeal to readers who are looking to mull a character’s motivations and experiences and have a bit of background in Christian ideology. However, there’s a bit of coarse language that could be offensive to those who prefer not to read such language for religious reasons. This story also has “fish out of water” elements that may appeal to readers who enjoy that genre.
******
A Good Boy
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon