3 out of 4 stars
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The Heavenly Grill Café by J.T. Livingston is a book filled with love and God. Bertie, Max, and Doug are all angels that are sent back to Earth to work at the Heavenly Grill Café. Well, they aren’t really angels since they all lived moral lives, but you get the point. Their job is to bring God into the lives of people who really need it. When Amanda’s father dies, she loses her house and her job. Left with nowhere to go, she gets in her car and drives. Something calls her to the café, and she stops to eat. The angels give her a job, and she moves in above the restaurant. Fast forward a few weeks, and Amanda meets Kris, a pregnant woman whose boyfriend had just taken all of her money and left her stranded. The two form an unlikely friendship, and Amanda moves in with Kris to help take care of the baby. Everything is going great, but when tragedy strikes, will they all be able keep their faith?
The plot of this book was excellent! It had a clear problem, climax, and solution and moved through each step of the book at a great pace. It’s very rare that a book does this as well as this book did. I was constantly finding myself wanting to pick up this book and continue reading. The development of the characters also made me want to keep reading this book. They each had unique personalities that made them exciting to read about. The author did a great job making each of the characters seem realistic.
Another aspect that I really liked about this book was the description of Heaven. I love reading books about this topic, and this one did not disappoint! The author definitely gave a unique perspective on what happens after we die. There were several scenes that took place in Heaven because the angels had to report back “home”. Each of these was depicted by italic print, which made it really clear when one of these scenes was occurring. I was laughing in almost all of the scenes that took place in Heaven, which I would not have expected.
There were only two flaws that I found within this book. The first was the lack of editing. The editing wasn’t terrible, but there were enough errors that it detracted from the overall quality of the book. Most of these errors were missing words and missing quotation marks. The other flaw is more subjective. In my opinion, I thought that some parts of the book were too “preachy”. There were several conversations in which the angels were basically preaching to the other characters. These conversations were long and drawn out. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the religious aspect of this book. However, I think that the author’s point would have been made just as well without these conversations.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I rate it 3 out of 4 stars. If the editing were fixed and the long, preachy conversations were taken out, I would definitely give it 4 out of 4 stars. I would recommend The Heavenly Grill Café to anyone who is looking for a book that makes you feel warm and fuzzy. However, there is a pretty big religious aspect to it. People who aren’t into the religious end of things might not like it as much.
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The Heavenly Grille Cafe
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